Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday said the AMC show “Mad Men” illustrated how “militant feminism” completely “screwed up human nature.”
On his show, Limbaugh responded to a listener who wrote in to address “Mad Men” and the “wild enthusiasm” of its viewers. The listener asked whether fans of the television show, which was set in the 1950s and ’60s, yearned for the “satisfaction and sexiness of traditional sex roles.”
“What are traditional sex roles? You start throwing around terms like that today to your typical, average agitated feminist,” Limbaugh said, before making an explosion sound. “You don’t want to be around for the reaction to that!”
Limbaugh said “militant feminism” is the crux of society’s problems.
“It totally screwed up human nature,” Limbaugh said. “It totally made everybody question what they naturally felt like doing. Who they naturally felt they were and thought they were. It total — and everybody ended up, or the people that bought into this, all of a sudden had to start playing roles. And the first thing you had to do was start figuring out what whoever wanted you to be and try to be it. Based on the politics of the day.”
“Back then you just, you know, who you were and it worked or it didn’t work,” Limbaugh continued. “But at least, the natural habitat, or the natural behavioral roles, while not universally accepted of course, they were not automatically questioned and doubted and attacked until the late sixties when this all intensified.”
Limbaugh explained why he thought “Mad Men” appealed to today’s women.
“A lot of women feel undesired and uncherished,” Limbaugh said. “Even though they may have achieved equality, they don’t feel the love, they don’t feel the warmth, they don’t feel the respect. And that’s what it all adds up to. And they watch ‘Mad Men’ and even though, even though all the secretaries are being chased around the office by these cads, the cads still respected them.”
Listen to the audio below, from Media Matters:
