Many of you may remember back in 2012 when radio host and voice of the all-too-often downtrodden wealthy, older, white conservative male demograph, Rush Limbaugh called out law school student (aka hussy) Sandra Fluke for wanting hardworking, God-fearing Americans to contribute to her Sexapalooza GoFundMe page.
Well.. not quite. My guess is Mr. Limbaugh heard "blah blah blah women's rights; blah blah blah expensive; blah blah blah sex" and just kinda filled in the blanks as he was busy googling discount painkillers.
Essentially, Ms. Fluke's argument was that 1. The cost of contraceptives is astronomical. 2. Many companies can deny an employee coverage over any particular medication that doesn't jive with their personal religious standards (ironically enough, Viagra never seems to come up {boom-phrasing}). 3. Even married women, not just promiscuous ladies of the night, have a need for birth control. 4. Women's health clinics, an invaluable source of affordable contraception, are dwindling. 5. Said clinics have been drastically defunded by the government, while being simultaneously instructed to "step up" to the increasing need for birth control so insurance companies don't have to bother with it. 6. Medications traditionally used for birth control also are used to treat serious non-sexual conditions (my 80 year old grandmother, for instance, was put on contraceptive to improve her bone density {I'm uh, going to ignore that pun}). 7. Women are often interrogated as to why they need particular medications (HIPAA violation, much?) by employers. 8. Even lesbian employees have been denied coverage for contraceptive medication (for treatment for illness, obviously) under the assumption that the true intention is to prevent reproduction.......y'know...heterosexual reproduction. 9. In an awful twist of fate, many conditions that are treatable by contraception, if untreated, can result in sterility. 10. Many women believe that because contraception isn't covered by their insurance, nothing pertaining to women's health is. Due to this, a friend of Ms. Fluke did not seek medical care after being raped because she assumed her insurance would deny it. (Which sadly, given all the above points, this assumption isn't all that far fetched.) 11. Ignoring the particular health needs of women reverts us back to a more primitive culture and hurts our society. (If you've ever seen Boardwalk Empire, you'll know just how taboo even the simplest of women's health was considered.) 12. 94% of students at Ms. Fluke's university opposed the policy and were ignored, despite it being mostly their dollars funding the institution. 13. Women should not have to choose between getting the best quality of education possible and their own health and safety.
But of course, something must have gotten lost in the transmission. Because after a large scale game of telephone, public mayhem spread, housewives clutched their pearls and firearms, and the masses flooded the comment sections of MSN, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, and of course AOL and YouTube, to praise Rush Limbaugh's impassioned righteous fury.
Others, however, with the ability to analyze information and fact check, didn't take it lying down (no pun intended) and vocalized their support for Sandra Fluke and the countless women she represented.
The Reformed Whores gave an absolutely beautiful (and borderline annoyingly catchy) response to Mr. Limbaugh's asinine comments to an argument that he seems to have not even listed to. I dug up this little time capsule gem after randomly getting the song stuck in my head this morning- thus giving birth to the idea for this entry- and after a few google searches discovered it on YouTube.
There will always be the kids that try to wing the book report without opening the book.. and there will always be kids who act out irrationally in anger over the book they never read. Sometimes the best remedy is knowledge and a sense of humor. Four years after Rush Limbaugh's ridiculous rant, we are still in an age where a woman who 'doesn't know her place,' or who wants to use her brain to better herself, or who enjoys sex like a human is programed to, or who even gets on someone's bad side is automatically a "slut." Aside from fat (a descriptor like tall or brown-eyed) or ugly (an arbitrary opinion), slut is the go-to insult for a woman we don't like. We've come to a point where we've started to just roll with being called bitches, and it seems apparent we will eventually do the same with the term slut. Eventually they'll run out of meaningless, and almost humorous things to call us.
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As far as the controversy in 2012.. it seems that once again Rush Limbaugh wasted his breath. Birth control was guaranteed to all women in the US in 2015 under the Affordable Care Act, though as stated above, women's health clinics like Planned Parenthood are still fighting for funding.
