Male-Female Relations Are Approaching the Status of Race Relations

RUSH: Okay. I just have one more thing here before we swerve back into the sexual harassment story. And I have to tell you, folks, there’s a part of this that is beginning to make me nervous, as an umbrella thing, not specifically. I’m just spotting a trend, and I know you have too. I’m sure I’m not the only person in this crowd. But you know, this business of sexual abuse is quickly approaching the same dynamics as racism in our culture.

And just as racism is a horrible thing to be accused of, and depending on how it’s done it’s sometimes hard to disprove it, it’s the same thing here with being accused of all kinds of improper behavior against women, especially blind allegations, they can be really tough to defend, especially the way the table is being set today. That women never make it up, that women don’t lie about it, that women must be believed. This is not an anti-woman screed. Now, don’t anybody misunderstand me here.

I’m addressing this as though we’re all human beings. Forget sex, gender, and all of that. I’m just assessing where our culture is going. And it’s because of the politicization of everything, because we have politicized relationships now. We have politicized the way men and women interact. That all began with feminism in the modern era of the late sixties. We politicize everything. The NFL is politicized, you name it, it’s all politicized now. And so since it’s politicized, those who use politics as a weapon then seize on everything that occurs and they use it as a weapon.

And so now male-female, man-woman, boy-girl relationships end up being weaponized by the people who have an agenda attached to them. And so if you’re going to come along, if we as a society are going to agree because of the hot-button tensions of the moment that the women must be believed, and I’m just pointing it out here. This is not yet a direct criticism of this. I’m just chronicling that this is happening where we are.

If that is going to be our standard as a society as we strive to fix this problem, if part of our decision, part of our technique to fix it is to say women never make it up, women must be believed, then it’s gonna be very, very difficult to ever defend against a surprise allegation that comes out of the blue. And what’s gonna happen is is that people are going to become more distant from one another. People are going to be suspicious and cognizant and sensitive to even the most innocently stated thing or innocently-engaged-in behavior could be grossly misunderstood and a life or future destroyed because of it.

And so people, to guard against that, are gonna clam up and they’re gonna avoid, because look what happens here. Take the case of Roy Moore and you’ve got the original allegation. Now how many of them are there? Five or six? And what’s happening? Every woman is believed because of the politicization of this. Every woman is believed, not doubted at all. It’d be the same thing with Franken except in his case we’ve got a photo, and in his case we have a body of evidence that backs up the allegation.

But there’s gonna be a time where somebody totally innocent is accused of this and isn’t gonna have a photo that would disprove it. So I’m just alerting you. I mean, you know how paralyzing the allegation of racism is. And you know how the whole subject of race, even though we have gone to war, even though 500,000-plus Americans have died to end slavery, we may as well have not taken one step toward ending slavery as the entire subject of race is used as a political weapon in America today.

And because of the immediate benefits, the perceived immediate benefits here politically of identifying somebody as a reprobate or a thug or a pig, you name it, the politically oriented are glomming onto this, and it has the potential of spiraling way out of control because, as you know, not every one of us is clean and pure as the wind-driven snow.

Not every one of us is honest. Not every one of us is satisfied with how much money we have. Not every one of us believes that the way to get more money is to work hard for it. Not every one of us believes innocent ’til proven guilty. Not every one of us is willing to offer the benefit of the doubt to people that make us mad or offend us.

We wish that was the culture we lived in. We wish that was the society we. But we don’t anymore. We live in a “get even with ’em as fast as you can-ism” kind of country now. We live in a “take ’em out before they know what hit ’em” culture now. And of course the reason we hit ’em before they know what’s hit ’em and the reason we want to take ’em out, that’s political too. It doesn’t matter if they’re nice people or not. It doesn’t matter if other people love and respect them, doesn’t matter.

If somebody can get rich quick, if somebody can get rid of a political enemy, if somebody can get rid of a president, then who cares if some small fry people fall by the wayside in the process. Now, it’s even risky to say what I just said, because it could easily be demagogued. You could easily see a story later: “Limbaugh thinks sexual harassment is never happening and is criticizing women who lie when they come forward.” And I didn’t say anything even approaching that, but this is how it now works.

If you don’t get with the groupthink, if you don’t adopt immediately the cultural and conventional wisdom, if you don’t loudly and publicly let everybody know that you think like everybody else does and you agree with what everybody else is agreeing with, then you are identifying yourself and you’re painting bull’s-eye on your back. And I of course experience this daily because I purposefully do not follow conventional wisdom precisely because it is groupthink.

And if I ever find myself thinking like the group does, I immediately grab hold of myself and say, “What am I doing wrong?” Or, “What am I not thinking through?” Or, “What’s happening?” ‘Cause never, ever do I go with the flow. Well, I can’t say never, ever. I mean, there have to be times where I agree with the majority, but I’m just saying as a general principle, when you’re talking about the political conventional wisdom of the day, I am not a practitioner. Just the opposite. I go the other way, in some cases on purpose.

But just my announced and professed concern with the quasi-warning about where we might be headed, could be and probably will be twisted into saying something I never said. And then the allegations will be out there, and I’ll have to come to you the next time and start defending myself for something I didn’t say. Whereas other people are going to be in the precarious circumstance of defending themselves against something they didn’t do. This is precisely how groupthink and politically correct tyranny triumph by literally frightening people into not saying anything that doesn’t already comport with the conventional wisdom.

RUSH: Okay. Now, you can pooh-pooh what I said. Feel free. But let me just ask you a couple behavioral questions. As you know, the way we have been created as human beings, there are various roles that men and women have been assigned that we call human nature. And, of course, with everything there are exceptions. So nothing is uniform. But it has genuinely been accepted human behavior over the course of millennia that men chase women. Correct? Nothing wrong with that. Men face a lot of rejection. Women have to get good at doing it.

Woody Allen said, “The only difference I’ve noticed about success is being rejected by a higher class of woman. That’s all success has meant to me.” Yes, there are women who pursue men. I know this. But the general rule of thumb has been that it’s men who propose, men who ask women out on dates. The question is this: If the politicization of male-female relationships continues on its present path, and if men become afraid of even that behavior, if simply asking for a date is considered stalking or is considered harassment — and don’t think it can’t get there.

We’re on that path now. Then what happens? What do men do? Rather than run the risk of being accused of being a stalker or harasser? Because, look, sometimes you have to ask a woman out four times before she’ll say “yes.” In the old days — right, Snerdley? — sometimes it took more effort than that. What if the second time is considered stalking? What if the third time is considered harassment? So what are men gonna do if they decide, “Okay, screw it! I don’t even want to run the risk, and so they stop the pursuit?” The healthy pursuit, I mean.

What happens? Do women pick up the slack? Does it become acceptable for women to then become the, shall we say, aggressors, the person of action in a couple scenario like this? I don’t know. I have no answers to this. I could guess. But men are amazingly adaptive. Men want to be around women and will do whatever it takes to succeed. They will fake being pro-choice, for example, like in Hollywood. They’ll totally lie about it. They will say, “Oh, yeah, man! I would love to go to the museum and look at elephant tusks.” They’ll do anything, if they really want to be with a woman.

So what’s the adaptation gonna be if even the slightest approach or bit of attention runs the risk of a stalking charge or an harassment charge? Back off! Don’t do it. Find some other way. (Hello, Playboy magazine? I don’t know.” And maybe nothing. I mean, I could be, you know, exaggerating this to the point none of this is gonna happen. But I nevertheless ponder it, because take the circumstances we’re all facing now with race. I mean, look how race is permeating everything. We have ended slavery, 500,000 Americans died, and it may as well not have ever happened.

The NFL is destroying itself over the premise, essentially, that that didn’t happen, that we haven’t solved anything, and that there is still wanton lynching and murder of innocent African-American men. You know it as well as I do. And there are lies aplenty. “Hands up, don’t shoot.” It didn’t happen, and yet how many of these NFL players protesting still to this day probably think that it did? So how does that affect other people who don’t want to go anywhere near being accused of racism. They just stay away, right? It leads to segregation, in that case, in that instance. Will that happen with men and women? I doubt it.

RUSH: I tell you what’s gonna happen. If asking a woman out on a date becomes sexual harassment or stalking, I tell you what’s gonna replace that: Sex robots. There are already stories of sex robots that are out there and being tested and supposedly enjoyed. Don’t laugh, folks. People are very creative and resourceful when it comes to sex.

True and that still makes them tourists; just the "bridge & tunnel" kind. :-)

It's like people who live in the outer burbs of Chicago and those from Wisconsin, on the Mag Mile in Chicago. :-)

I'd rather NOT have to have a car and the rest of your post is spot on...for me and many others! :-)

When I was growing up, the adult soloists, in our church choir, were opera stars. And the little boy who played Winthrop, on Broadway, was in our children's choir.

And if that wasn't enough or a kick, later on, we didn't even have to leave home, to hear a WORLD FAMOUS opera star, because you could hear her practicing in my parent's guest bathroom. LOL

I'm not all that familiar with San Fran, but I DO know Chicago! The symphony is ( or was ) great, ABT and the Joffrey ballet companies did come to Chicago with the premier dancers and Maria Tallchief lived there and was the director of the Lyric Opera company's ballet and started and ran the CHICAGO CITY BALLET, when we lived there. Though Chicago wasn't/isn't NYC ( getting certain foodstuffs being a major problem !), it was/is ( is more so now, actually )close enough for most things.

Well I can watch any Cultural event on the computer....just enjoyed ‘Notre Dame de Paris’ again. I don't have to ‘be there’ to appreciate....and I have a front row seat!... Plus we have wonderful cultural theaters here for live if one desires.....I'm not a 'star struck' individual so it's not high on my list of what's significant in where I choose to live.

This is the theater I went to in another smaller city I lived at in PA. who certainly do get top entertainment.

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