Young: Women can handle tough-talk politics

The controversy over Rush Limbaugh's attacks on law student and activist Sandra Fluke -- whom he branded a "slut" for advocating mandatory insurance coverage for contraception -- has turned into a broader discussion of misogyny in political speech. Unfortunately, most of this discussion has been about partisan point-scoring. Worse, labeling any nasty jab at a woman as misogynistic may bolster an insidious sexism: a chivalry that treats women as too frail to cope with rough talk.

Many commentators, mainly on the right, have been calling for equal condemnation of hateful language toward conservative women. Even if this is largely a ploy to divert attention from Limbaugh, they have a point.

For some on the left, women who aren't the right kind of feminist are gender traitors. After Sarah Palin became the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, Salon.com ran a piece by Cintra Wilson that declared, "Sarah Palin may be a lady, but she ain't no woman," and mocked her as the right's "hardcore pornographic centerfold." It's hard to say what's more troubling: The notion that women who don't toe the party line aren't "real women," or that they're fair game for pornographic invective.

Last year, political comedian Bill Maher (who has recently defended Limbaugh) slammed Palin with obscene sexual epithets. Female conservative pundits have also been targets of sexist abuse, from MSNBC's Ed Schultz calling talk-show host Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut" to an online Playboy article on right-wing women with whom liberal men would like (paraphrasing here) to have hate sex.

But the conservative narrative of left-wing misogyny tends to miss two important points. Many of these offenses were rebuked (Schultz was suspended and apologized; the Playboy piece was quickly taken down). And it's not a single culprit on the right versus many on the left.

Columnist Michelle Malkin claims the right is being demonized over "one radio comment," when the left has "systematically slimed" conservative women like herself. Nonsense. First, Limbaugh's broadside against Fluke was not "one comment," but three days of rants. Second, he has a history of attacking Democratic women specifically as women: Hillary Clinton is a castrating female with a "testicle lockbox," the rise of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a "triumph of estrogen." And he has plenty of company on the right, from fellow talk jocks to singer and frequent Fox News guest Ted Nugent, who once brandished two rifles onstage, inviting Clinton to "ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch."

Do the accused liberal sexists deserve the "sauce for the gander" treatment? Some do; Maher, for one, has long gotten a pass on male chauvinist piggery (including Limbaugh-esque comments about America's "feminization") couched in ironic liberal hipness.

But some critics of leftist misogyny decry language that, while rude and even vicious, is hardly gender-specific, such as presidential wannabe Michele Bachmann being called "bat- ------ crazy." (Rick Santorum has hardly received gentler treatment.) Or take TV host Keith Olbermann's Twitter comment that Planned Parenthood foe S.E. Cupp was a good example of the need for birth control. Mean-spirited? Sure. Sexist? Hardly.

Sometimes, gender makes a difference. Calling a female public figure a vulgar word referring to her anatomy is not the same as similarly insulting a male politician, because reducing women to their sexual parts is a traditional way of "putting them in their place." But to look for sexist subtext every time a woman is verbally attacked is just the sort of politically correct hypersensitivity conservatives once rightly ridiculed.

Let's by all means have more civil political discourse -- but not in the name of shielding female sensibilities. Palin herself once warned, discussing Hillary Clinton's campaign, that any "perceived whine about that excess criticism" was bad for women. She changed her mind when the "excess criticism" was toward her. But the point still stands.

Cathy Young is a regular contributor to Reason magazine and Real Clear Politics.