Jessica Valenti | The Nation

Rush Limbaugh is worried about penises. Specifically, he’s concerned that feminism (I’m sorry, ‘feminazis’) have contributed to decreasing penis size. Responding to an Italian study that reports penises are 10 percent smaller than they were fifty years ago, last week Limbaugh pointed to feminism, feminazis and “chickification” as the cause.

Ladies, the cat is out of the bag. Our cover of fighting for equal social, political and economic opportunities for women has been blown. The phallus has always been the centerpiece—and the target—of all feminist thought. The upside is that we can finally be open about our true agenda: A small dick on every man. (’Cause who likes a big one, amirite?!)

This isn’t the first time someone has caught on to feminism’s real goal, of course. The world has a long history of outfoxing Operation Chestnut.

As the “war on women” continues, my sole comfort has been watching dumbfounded Republicans try to explain away the misogyny that’s so foundational to their agenda.

In the midst of the fallout over Todd Akin’s comments claiming “legitimate” rape victims are unlikely to get pregnant, the science-whiz whined to Mike Huckabee in a radio interview that he “made a single error in one sentence.” He was frustrated that people “are upset over one word spoke in one day in one sentence.”

Bryan Fischer, a spokesperson from the American Family Association, complained about the Akin backlash, saying, “You talk about somebody being a victim of forcible assault, that would be Todd Akin.” Mitt Romney denounced Akin’s remarks as “insulting” and “inexcusable,” but accused the Obama campaign of trying to link Akin to the GOP as a whole, calling it “sad” and that the move stooped “to a low level.”

I don’t cry very often. When the news you follow and the work you do is centered on injustice, there’s not much room for breakdowns; there’s always a new and more distressing story on the horizon. And besides, there’s work to be done.

So it took me by surprise that when a close relative approvingly shared this video on Facebook, I started to sob. It wasn’t about the video’s content—a “gotcha” compilation about contraception taken at an Obama rally where Sandra Fluke spoke. It was the heartbreaking realization that washes over you when you remember that the opposition to your deeply held values is not just a faceless, evil enemy—it’s family.

People like the ones who created this smirking video believe that women who want birth control covered by insurance are stupid. Maybe even whores. Conservatives have framed basic preventive healthcare as something seedy and contemptuous. (Perhaps because at the heart of it they find female sexuality seedy and contemptuous, but that’s a post for another day.) We should “keep our legs closed,” put “an aspirin between our knees” or if we want to “be paid to have sex” we should “post the videos online so [people can] watch.” This video isn’t just a “joke,” it’s a clear-as-day statement about how ludicrous the right finds women.

In one of my favorite feminist movies—the 1996 flick Girls Town—a group of fed-up young women write the names of the men who raped them on their high school’s bathroom wall. Other students join in, listing their attackers from schoolmates to teachers—warning other women and reclaiming public space.

Today, a Kentucky teen is facing jail time for doing much the same thing: naming her rapists on Twitter. Seventeen-year-old Savannah Dietrich was sexually assaulted by two acquaintances while unconscious—her attackers took pictures and sent them to friends. After the young men pleaded guilty to the attack and agreed to a plea of felony sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism, the judge ordered that no one speak about the court proceedings or the attack itself.

“I was crying as she was reading that,” Dietrich told a local paper. “They got off very easy…and they tell me to be quiet, just silencing me at the end.”