Not everyone was surprised. The activists who have for years protested online, in person or in the courts – when women were attacked with fierce misogyny simply for existing in public, when women’s healthcare was stigmatized and subject to punishing double standards, or, for that matter, when seven states passed mandatory ultrasound laws – had another sign to represent them: ”I cannot believe I still have to protest this shit.” But this time, they weren’t drowned out, they were joined with fierce, spontaneous energy. As my colleague Mary Elizabeth Williams put it, though she worries about her daughters facing a “harder and meaner” world for women than the one she grew up in, “I haven’t felt this strong a sense of ‘We are not helpless and this is not OK’ in a long time.”

That sense is evident not just because the attacks on women’s reproductive rights and bodily integrity have intensified, although by every metric they have. It’s also because of the growing realization that these aren’t isolated incidents, but rather systematic attacks based on a worldview that is actively hostile to female self-determination. And that realization is changing the game, even if that game is still made up of moved goal posts and partial victories.

Republicans are still scrambling to understand how much has shifted, though Democrats have gleefully jumped on the opportunity, only three months after the Obama administration was the justifiable target of pro-choicers for running scared on Plan B access. (Would that same capitulation have happened today, in this climate? It’s worth wondering.) You could almost forgive Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell for sounding baffled about the outcry over “transvaginal ultrasounds,” telling the National Review that “Virginia will now join nearly half the states in America that have some kind of ultrasound law. You wouldn’t know that from the coverage; you would have thought Virginia was doing something that had never been done.” He was right, as far as Virginia’s lack of innovation, but he had the relative misfortune of pushing his paternalistic, humiliating ultrasound mandate after the communal outrage over the Susan G. Komen Foundation punishing low-income women because Planned Parenthood also performs abortions, and after the image of the all-male panel on contraceptive access went viral.

And Rush Limbaugh has managed to get away with his sexist and racist slurs for years without any real repercussions, even if his attack on Sandra Fluke, a young, articulate woman whose sole crime was to testify before a House committee, was particularly vile. As writer Bilal Dardai tweeted, “If ‘slut’ ends up being what brings down Rush, it’s a bit like getting Capone on tax evasion. I’ll take it, but so many crimes unanswered.”

Why were Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers dropping by the hour this time around? A CEO of one advertiser told the New York Times that he’d seen shock-jock backlash before – notably with Howard Stern — but back then, “Social media was nowhere where it is today,” he said. But social media can’t be mobilized without genuine rage, and that’s what we’ve been seeing these past weeks. And it started with Komen, which fellow Salon writer Rebecca Traister describes as “one of the most un-coerced, unmitigated, unplanned visceral displays I’ve seen in decades.”

As I type this, right-wingers are spinning conspiracy theories about how the Obama administration cooked up the entire affair, how House Democrats allegedly forced Darrell Issa’s hand in barring Fluke from testifying at his hearing, in a document titled “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” Presumably, Democrats also forced Rush Limbaugh to spend three days trashing Fluke for speaking up for insurance coverage of contraception and to air prurient fantasies demanding that she film herself having sex — and endowed him with millions of listeners and the fealty of Republican leaders while they were at it.

Let’s put aside for a minute how many on the right don’t seem to know how hormonal contraception works, or, assuming they have heterosexual sex at statistically likely rates, how it is that their wives manage to not be perennially pregnant. (The writer Amanda Marcotte has memorably referred to this as the belief in “contraception fairies” that take care of it all.)  Or, for that matter, the misconception that a taxpayer subsidy is what’s at stake here, instead of a regulation for a privately provided benefit that comes out of employee wages.

The point is that Limbaugh went wildly off message from the pretense that this was about religious freedom, and fellow members of the right hastened to agree with him that this was actually about recreational sex. On Monday, a lone temperate voice in the conservative wilderness pleaded, “The Obama administration would like nothing more than to drag opponents of the HHS mandate into debates over the character of a particular young woman or the moral permissibility of contraception. These are traps. Don’t walk into them.”

Here’s the thing: It’s not a trap if it’s where you live. If you think employers should be able to deny women coverage of contraception while covering Viagra, because their religious philosophy happens to be that women’s purpose is baby-making, or that women should “pay a price” for having sex, or that you should be able to determine which uses of birth control are permissible and which are slutty, you’re a misogynist. Even if you use politer words than “slut” and don’t demand a sex tape.

If you believe that women who are about to have abortions don’t realize they’re pregnant, and that they need to be “empowered” by being shown a picture of their “child” (misrepresentations are courtesy of McDonnell), to teach them a lesson about what’s at stake, you’re a misogynist. Even if you’re not forcing them to have a transvaginal ultrasound.

The precise truth of the Virginia ultrasound bill, set to become law any day now, is not where the ultrasound wand goes. It’s the exception for rape victims – but only if they reported it, which many survivors don’t. In other words, it’s OK to violate the bodily integrity of a woman who consented to sex, but not if she didn’t ask for it.

This is the moment where all of the tweeters calling themselves #sluts in solidarity converged with the last time activists mobilized around the word: last year, with the wave of Slutwalks. Those were seen, rightly, as part of a youthful feminist resurgence – a Spartacus-like uprising against victim-blaming – but protesting against a societal attitude, even as articulated by a clueless cop, is a fuzzier proposition than pushing back against a coordinated attack on reproductive freedom, made up of very concrete laws put into place by very deliberate political officials. But when those officials, and the mouthpieces of their movement, make plain their belief that you are a dumb slut without the right to bodily autonomy, simply for being female, women can connect the dots.

It now falls to the people for whom this type of outrage and organization is nothing new to marshal that broad-based enthusiasm into something more lasting and less incremental – and more critical. When Limbaugh calls Fluke a slut and a prostitute simply for speaking out in favor of a public health policy and Michael Moore demands, “Who’s the prostitute now, bitch?” two sexist and sex worker-stigmatizing wrongs don’t make a right. When pushing back at those same attacks, it’s crucial to realize the ways in which Fluke’s whiteness and education make her the “perfect victim.” When Texas is currently implementing the country’s most draconian abortion ultrasound law, with forced viewing, even as it cuts crucial family planning funding, it’s accurate to call this, as Nicholas Kristof did, “abuse,” but also to point out, as pro-choicers have been, what’s wrong with “safe, legal, and rare.”  When attacks on birth control coverage imply that women who use it are greedy whores, even when they’re testifying on behalf of women who had lost ovaries or been too afraid to seek care after being raped, it’s important to note that married women use contraception and that it’s used for non-sexual purposes too, but it’s also important to stand up for the fact that women have a right to equal access to healthcare even if they are having sex five times a day.

The Rush Limbaughs of the world don’t get to define the boundaries of appropriate sexual or moral behavior. But something is happening: Women are defining those boundaries for themselves, with many men alongside them, and they’re being reminded that there’s a concerted movement to take that right of self-definition away. And we’re mad.

One of Rush’s biggest enablers has so far escaped attention: the American Forces Network. For years, Limbaugh’s show has been beamed around the globe to service members, military support staff and families. Other attempts have been made to remove him from that network and have failed.

This is the time.

In his more customized attacks on Fluke, it’s easy to overlook the fact that Limbaugh has a two-decade-long track record of classifying women as inferior goods. This is the man who coined the term “Feminazi,” who once stated that “feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.” In Rush World, most women are either babes, sluts or whores. They’re cunning and manipulative or whiny and weak. There’s not much middle ground.

Read the whole post on Open Salon.

I’m not making this up. I’ve been attacked by Limbaugh before; it’s an honor for liberals. But his remarks about Fluke are unbelievable. Literally. I had to hear it twice to believe it’s what he said. (After I wrote this, President Obama called Fluke to commend her courage and tell her that her parents should be proud of her.)

Limbaugh’s behavior is just the far-right edge on a continuum of conservative misogyny that’s gone beyond trying to outlaw abortion, moved into the once-unimaginable realm of contraception, and mocks women in a way we haven’t heard since my childhood, I think. His “joke” is based on the remark by Rick Santorum’s moneyman Foster Freiss, on the same day as Issa’s “hearing,” recalling the days when gals didn’t need birth control because they put aspirin between their knees. But it’s not just for fun: The entire GOP presidential field has endorsed a “personhood” amendment that could outlaw most non-barrier forms of contraception. On Thursday, Sen. Roy Blunt’s shameful attempt to give employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for any treatment they didn’t approve of – targeting but not limited to contraception – was tabled in the Senate, but not before it got 48 votes, including every Republican except the departing Olympia Snowe, plus three cowardly Democrats, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey.

I’m happy to say, though, that women – and the men who care about them – are fighting back as never before in my memory. We forced Susan G. Komen to rescind its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. Despite the frothing of conservatives, the Obama administration is still requiring insurers to provide cost-free contraception. The president’s courage on the issue is bringing women back into the Democratic fold, according to recent opinion polls – and has them running away from Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

But we have to do more. I’m putting my energy into two causes in the coming months: a grass-roots effort to turn out the women’s vote called #usethe19th – you’ve seen a lot of it on Twitter today – and helping to promote Salon Core. Salon has led the way in covering news about women, by women, since our founding in 1995. We stand out in a world where men’s voices are still dominant – after the discouraging news this week that the nation’s best magazines still overwhelmingly feature men on their table of contents page, ThinkProgress produced a list of 10 women writers they should hire – and two of them, Tracy Clark-Flory and Irin Carmon, work for Salon (and several of the others freelance for us).

Over the years we’ve featured an unmatched array of smart women; Arianna Huffington, Tina Brown, Anne Lamott and Camille Paglia as leading columnists; on the culture side, Laura Miller and my former colleagues Heather Havrilesky and Stephanie Zacharek, some of the smartest writers anywhere; Rebecca Traister is one of the bravest, clearest writers on feminism and American politics that I know. And Mary Elizabeth Williams is one of my favorite writers on everything she writes about. I couldn’t have done the work I do with total freedom and support any place other than Salon.

The only good thing about this assault on women’s rights is that the women writers I know are becoming even more active than ever before. A whole lot of people have jumped into the #usethe19th fray – join us! We need to elect better leaders. We need to tell our stories. And we need to put our money where our mouths are – behind media outlets that tell those stories, as well as politicians who listen.

Over the years Salon has often turned to its readers for support, and this year we’re developing a new membership program to support our work – and support yours, too. I’ll be out on the road during this election season covering the candidates but also meeting Salon Core readers at a new roster of events we’re putting together for our members. When my book comes out in November, we’ll have a special offer for Core. We’ll be hosting members-only chats and other political convenings through November.

Republicans like to say this is the most important election year of their lifetimes. I agree. Make noise. Lobby. Campaign. Run for office. Raise money. Write. Vote. Join Salon Core – support those who support you. And piss off that angry old misogynist, Rush Limbaugh.

“Something tells me, that if the upcoming election could be decided on social issues, the Republicans could win that in a landslide, because we are on the right side of the culture war,” he said. “The problem is, we’re scared to death of it. The Republican establishment wants no part of it.”

Smart Republicans are indeed afraid of the culture wars – because they know they’re on the losing side. Sadly, there aren’t very many smart Republicans anymore; or at least there aren’t very many who will stand up to extremists in their base and say enough is enough on their jihad against birth control.

A majority of women voters, 51 percent, now approve of the job Obama is doing, according to the weekly Gallup tracking poll, up from a low of 41 percent last August (only 43 percent of men approve.) A Democracy Corps poll taken from Feb. 8-13 found Obama now leads Mitt Romney 65-30 among unmarried women, an 18-point swing since November. (Yes, Democracy Corps is run by Democrats, but they regularly deliver bad news for their party when their polls require it.) Women may also be behind some more bad news for Republicans: A majority of seniors, thought to be the party’s base, now view the GOP negatively, according to Democracy Corps. Most seniors happen to be women.

It’s not only women who disapprove of Republican extremism on contraception, though: a New York Times poll this week found that two-thirds of all voters support requiring health care plans to cover the whole cost of birth control – including almost three-quarters of women. By the way, Catholics support the measure 67-25. The only group that has a problem with it is evangelical Christians, the core of the GOP base.

Please remember that all three of those polls were taken before Thursday, when Rick Santorum’s money man Foster Freiss made his idiotic joke about aspirin serving as birth control (if it’s held tightly between the knees, a joke straight out of a ’50s locker room) and Darrell Issa assembled only men on a panel to talk about what women can do with their bodies.

That’s why Rush Limbaugh can’t even keep up the pretext that contraception is a winning issue for his party throughout an entire broadcast. During the very same show in which he told Republicans they’d win if the election was decided on culture-war issues, he also accused Democrats of starting the birth-control debate to hurt Santorum. But how can it hurt him if a culture war is good for Republicans? None of his callers asked him that question. Here’s more of what he said:

The whole point of bringing up contraception and trying to make it look like the Republicans want to ban birth control is simply something to excite the Democrat base, which has been depressed as it can be because their president has done a rotten job.  The economy is in the tank.

Of course, Limbaugh is wrong about that too. The economy isn’t great, but it’s improving and voters are giving the president better marks for that, too. Also: the base isn’t depressed. The Democracy Corps poll found that Republican Party extremism combined with the improving economy is revving up the Democratic base again, pulling what they call the “Rising American Electorate” of young people, unmarried women and non-white voters back behind Obama and his party. Meanwhile, it’s the GOP base that appears depressed, with turnout either flat or down in every primary and caucus except South Carolina.

Even Michael Steele didn’t try to spin the bad news for his party on “Hardball” today. I did catch him trying to blame Obama for craftily making the contraception debate about…contraception. How dare he?

Here’s my “Hardball” conversation with Steele. I had the easy side this time.

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