By now most of you have heard of Rush Limbaugh’s comments regarding Sandra Fluke. He called her a slut and a prostitute, showed his complete lack of understanding of how prescription birth control works, and said that in return for birth control, Fluke should post sex tapes of herself online.
You can read about this from several different perspectives here, here and here. The first covers the story, the second gives a conservative’s opinion of Limbaugh’s remarks, and the third is from the Close Read column in the New Yorker online.
Limbaugh doesn’t seem to understand a variety of things about Fluke and birth control.
First, he apparently doesn’t realize that being on birth control doesn’t necessarily mean you’re having sex. In addition to all the off-label uses of birth control, many young women choose to be on birth control for other reasons, including to be prepared for the decision to start a sexual relationship within a committed relationship or to regulate their periods. I imagine some women choose to go on birth control as a just-in-case measure – just in case they choose to have sex, just in case they have unplanned, unprotected sex, just in case they make a mistake, just in case someone rapes them. Limbaugh didn’t deign to notice that Fluke didn’t talk about her or anyone’s sex life in the clip, he just jumped in with accusations of prostitution and promiscuity.
Second, he apparently doesn’t understand that she’s not asking to be paid to have sex, nor is she suggesting women should be paid in goods to have sex. She is saying that birth control is an important part of women’s healthcare and should be covered by health insurance. It’s not as if Fluke was asking for insurance to cover pills meant to arouse her sexually or help prepare her body for sex, oh wait, doesn’t insurance do that for men?
Third, to suggest that Fluke should post homemade porn online to “repay” the taxpayers for birth control is disgusting. I don’t really want to go into this much, but does Limbaugh somehow think that only people interested in homemade porn are going to be responsible for the cost of birth control?
Finally, Limbaugh seems to think that more sex requires more birth control. One article alluded to Limbaugh and some little blue pills, so maybe he thinks birth control works like Viagra? Whether you have sex twice a day or once a month, the amount of birth control needed doesn’t change. When it comes to the traditional pill, it’s once a day. The other methods are similarly constant in the amounts needed regardless of the amount of sex one is having. Maybe he’s just a really ignorant, stupid person. Or he thinks we’re all taking boatloads of morning after pills?
amandatheatheist 