You may recall that all-dude panel of “experts” at that recent congressional hearing on contraception. One of the reasons it was an all-dude panel was that congressional Republicans wouldn’t let Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke testify on the costs of birth control. (She later testified at a separate hearing held by Nancy Pelosi.)
Apparently stating publicly how much contraception costs when it’s not covered by insurance is basically the equivalent of pooping on the flag to some misogynistic assholes, among them the always charming Rush Limbaugh, who has denounced Fluke as a “slut” and a whore, saying, at one point, that she
went before a Congressional committee and said she’s having so much sex she’s going broke buying contraceptives and wants us to buy them.
Actually, she didn’t testify about her own experience at all.
Also, does Limbaugh even know how contraception works? Yes, the number of condoms one buys depends on how often you have sex. (Or at the very least how often you hope to have sex. Who knows how many boxes of condoms, purchased in moments of optimism, have quietly expired on the shelf waiting for their purchasers to finally get their mojo working. )
But the costs of many other forms of contraception have no relation whatsoever to the frequency of sex. Women on “the pill” take a pill every day, regardless of whether they are having sex that day or not. Women using IUDs don’t run down to the health center to have one installed every time their vagina expects a visitor.
Birth control, in short, doesn’t work like Oxycontin or Viagra, the two pills about which Limbaugh seems most knowledgeable.
Sorry to belabor the obvious, which apparently isn’t so obvious if you’re a right-wing, woman-hating asshole.
Anyway, now Limbaugh seems to think he’s entitled to watch Fluke having sex:
So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. … We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.
Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Here’s the excerpt from his radio show in which he makes this creepy demand.
It’s like he just discovered that people have sex. Or he still hasn’t discovered, and thinks this woman must be a special extra-dirty Sex Woman.
I can’t wrap my head around the fact that this man makes more money than me.
Ha ha, oh Rush. Remember that time you were busted coming back from Paid Sex Capital of the World, Dominican Republic, with Viagra that wasn’t even yours? Good times.
He thinks we take a pill every time we have sex because that’s how his non-prescribed Viagra works in the Dominican Republic.
And to think, he could have saved himself some trouble by looking up a porn site.
Well, it’s not like anyone accused the Oxycontinfather of being smart. Just a doped up jackass and sex tourist.
That gif is equal parts creepy and hilarious.
The gif isn’t animated; that’s actual footage of him bouncing up and down at some public event.
In his defense, he was making some sort of joke which he felt he had to illustrate by bouncing up and down.
In my defense, it is always hilarious to watch that.
I feel like it needs to be used for “I have no idea what you’re talking about, so here’s a bouncing Rush Limbaugh.”
Listening to that fucking hate-spewing idiot speak sends me into a blind rage.
This is actually an interesting case, because there’s two different layers of Arguments I Shouldn’t Have To Make here:
1. Some women take the pill for PCOS or other reasons; it’s not just for sex. But that shouldn’t matter, because sex is okay.
2. You take the pill every day, not just when you have sex. But that shouldn’t matter, because having lots of sex is okay.
I don’t know how many siblings (if any) this tub of guts has, but unless he comes from a family the size of the Duggar’s, then his mother practiced birth control too. Which makes her, according to him, a slut and a whore as well.
What an idiot.
Don’t the conservative folks sort of want us hippy libs on birth control? Fewer of us to belong to unions, attend university,become educated, enlightened, and outspoken, fewer of us to vote or argue with them. Cause I bet you the sex positive, “liberated” liberal folk are having a lot more sex than people who use it strictly for procreation.
I have to wonder if says things that are so factually wrong on so many levels because there are people who (through wilfull ignorance or the eroding of standards of sex education, and of course the general stigma against thinking/talking about sex unless it’s about how d00ds get pleasure) really *don’t* know how various forms of birth control work and think that pills *actually are* a use-on-demand thing like a condom, and he’s playing to that demographic.
Keep ’em ignorant and let their betters show them what to think!
(channeling Morgan Freeman here)
Let me get this straight. You think that women, even the chastest, most-dutifully-married women in the world, are secretly all sluts who spend their nights wasting taxpayer money having too much sex? And your plan is to make them do porn?
…Good luck.
Seriously, how is this going to improve things?
Also, how the heck are you defining “we”? Royal?
Ha ha ha, I love it when these super creepy dudes get into a groove and overshare their twisted nightmare selves.
“If women want to have sex then, then…then they should be my PERSONAL PORN SLAVES”
I don’t love it so much when they have a radio audience.
@Dracula, I don’t even have to listen to him. Just seeing his smug face and/or reading a synopsis of his arguments sends me into a blind rage. Trust that I did not click play.
Do you get a kick out of defending the indefensible?
This young woman CHOSE to go to a Catholic Uni. She wants the school to pay her to have sex. She doesn’t want women to be accountable for their own choices like MEN have to be. I’ve heard the commentariat here say that having coupled sex is not a right. I agree with all of you. No one owes women just for the fact that they’re women. If you’re going to have leisure sex then you have to pay for it just like MEN.
She does not want the school to pay for her sex. She wants her health insurance to pay for her contraception. The school does not pay for her insurance — she does, through the school’s group plan. In other words, she wants to use a service she pays for. How exactly is that “indefensible”?
@Buttman
What schools are paying people to go? Can I go there? Is it just Catholic ones?
“She wants the school to pay her to have sex.”
This is seriously the dumbest right-wing meme ever. And it’s at the top of a LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG list.
My mom suggested I go on the pill in order to deal with my migraines. However, I don’t think a video of me holding my head and groaning “Please kill me now.” would be that entertaining to Rush.
On the other hand, considering how much he hates women, it probably would be more entertaining to him than I thought.
but buttman, you don’t want to have consequences for your (incredibly juvenile and alienating) behavior. isnt it hypocritical of you to level that charge against someone else?
Wait, men have to pay for sex? Jesus, I’m WAY in arrears. I’ve been fucking since I was 18 and haven’t ponied up a dime.
No see, “MEN” have to buy condoms, which to Buttman is paying for sex. Because he lives in imaginary world where women never buy condoms.
Buttman, do you think insurance should cover the cost of childbirth?
Holly, do you even need to ask?
@ApeMan1976:
Yeah, it is a really dumb meme. It’s already been shown that abstinence-only education doesn’t work. Why? Because college kids are going to have sex, and not teaching about contraception just means its gonna be likely to result in a pregnancy.
And yet the meme implies that contraception causes sex! ^_^ How backwards… This is why health centers in schools provide condoms; because its a health issue (preventing unwanted pregnancy).
I have a bit of a soapbox rant and I hope you all will please indulge me. I’ve worked in the healthcare industry nearly all my working career and in numerous capacities. Everyone over 18 and in sound mind (i.e. capable of making a rational, informed judgement) has the right to have autonomy over their bodies. This is just fundamental medical ethics.
As much as these guys hate it, this includes the right of women to have control over their reproduction. And I use the word ‘guys’ because the majority of the assholes fighting insurance coverage of contraception are men.
There are benefits to women and families (which includes men) when they’re allowed to control the number of children they have.
Also these guys are making a lot of noise over the imagined high cost that will occur if insurance coverage is required to include birth control. But what is more expensive: providing insurance coverage for birth control, or the cost of prenatal care and then subsequent cost associated with raising a child? Because these assholes would also love to see abortion made completely illegal. These are also the same group of conscienceless scumbags who cut funding for social programs (like W.I.C) whenever they can.
Do they really want a society full of unwanted children who also will not receive adequate healthcare, nutrition, and decent living conditions? Do they realize what will happen? A large portion of the population will essentially be living in 3rd world conditions.
Actually they probably do realize this. They just don’t give a shit.
This is one of the things that disgusts me about the MRM. In their zeal to punish women for having sex and occasionally getting pregnant, they ignore the real possibility of the alternative.
@Lady Zombie:
But health insurance covering the cost of producing a baby is good, because the bible tells us to be fruitful and multiply!
That’s what this all pretty much boils down to anyway.
Uh, Buttman, dumbass, I ALSO think schools should give out free condoms.
FUCK I forgot to switch identities.
@ozy:
Don’t worry, it sorta makes sense. Condoms are the male birth-control pill to avoid child support payments, so they must be given free to all men for self defense!
@Ozy
Well, it makes sense that an alpha would want free condoms, they have everything else handed to them. /sarcasm
why do these right-wing fucktards only think single women are out there having sex? Aren’t married women also interested in birth control?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/rush-limbaugh-sandra-fluke_n_1313891.html?ref=politics
Apparently he’s decided to double-down on being a creepy asshole. It’s strqnge he decided to bring the aspirin contraceptive gaffe back in the spotlight, because we all know that’s such a winning soundbite for republicans. /s
I’m starting to think he’s trying to commit career suicide by scandal, so he can go on an extended Viagra and oxy holiday.
🙂 <3 🙂
It's always nice to see that there are people besides us Radical Fringe Feminazis who recognize this shit as wrong.
…Also, anyone who makes the “aspirin” crack loses all their rights to complain about not getting laid. This should be pretty obvious, right?
The women of Georgetown University should ask Limbaugh to buy them like a trillion packages of aspirin, he did say “as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want”, and on public radio no less.
It’s not physically possible for Rush Limbaugh to commit career suicide. His fan base is composed of people who are completely insulated from all reality, and everyone else already loathes him.
I keep thinking this whole argument is being used to distract feminists from how utterly awful and feudalist and untenable getting healthcare “insurance” through your employer or school is.
Buttman, okay, what do you want? I don’t think anyone should pay for what they find morally objectionable. That means no pacifists paying for war. That means no pro-lifers paying for abortion. That means no taxes. That means no mandates. That means no fucking State. I’m consistent, I’ll bite those bullets. Happily.
But the same people that are raising a stink about “paying for women to have sex” aren’t exactly fighting for a system that’s going to make it easy for women to access those services without mandates. You don’t speak up against the many many ways people are prevented from socializing the costs of healthcare voluntarily, or the many many ways that we aren’t allowed to have a free market in healthcare (The two are one, says the bigger l libertarian socialist and when you grasp that you will know the zen of mutualism) . You wave your hand at an increasingly theocratic bunch of power-seekers that want to make birth control unavailable… Not just “I don’t have to pay for it…” BUT UNAVAILABLE, and you ask yourself why so many women think the only way they’ll get access is these mandates. Wrong time to start talking about the issue.
If you destroy anything resembling a free market in women’s health, then complain about “having to pay for women’s birth control,” don’t come crying to me. You oppose force and mandates, you oppose ALL force and mandates.
… Anyway, I keep thinking this whole argument is being used to distract feminists from how utterly awful and feudalist and untenable getting corporate healthcare “insurance” through your employer or school is.
Wow, what a fuckbag.
No, wait, sorry. That’s an insult to bags.
And fucking.
Maybe they can sell the aspirin to get money for birth control.
Buttman:
Where do you stand on insurance covering gynecological services? Because, last I checked, women were getting a free ride there as well. Ditto with obstetrics: women get those services covered, whereas MEN do not. I mean, I could go into a hospital ER in active labor, and the staff wouldn’t lift a finger to help me because I’m a MAN. So much misandry.
Anyhow, keep fighting the good fight on this one. Because every time a woman gets something for free, millions of MEN die a horrible, painful death.
The pill is one of the Four Sirens of the Sexual Apocalypse, leading women to seek out alpha males rather than beta providers. Freed from the worry of having to find support for their bastard spawn, women have been freed to follow their tingle into the arms of waiting alpha assholes and unemployed DJs. The beta males who provide the support for society? Unrewarded with the pussy they deserve, they sink into Japanese porn and dreams of sexbots. We’re in the decadent last days, fucking as America burns. And it is good.
Also, the Titanic.
I will say, as a former Catholic, in the abstract I’m not totally opposed to Catholic schools being dickbags about this, because it would hasten the decline of Catholic schools as people realize “hey, if I go to a Catholic school, I’ll be getting second-class health care.”
But since actual human people would have to suffer in the meantime, I’m opposed to it in the real world.
Still, this is a good reminder – if you’re a woman don’t go to a Catholic school or any kind of religious school. They don’t think you’re a person. It’s right in their teachings; you can look it up.
@Lady Zombie, I, too, think it’s pretty odd to oppose all of a) affordable birth control, b) abortion and c) financial help for parents who cannot afford the number of children they have. What we need to do approach it from the point of view that children, especially poor children, aren’t people. They’re just ways of punishing women. If we take this to be true, suddenly there is nothing negative about a single mother trying desperately to get enough food to feed her children. The financial struggle and emotional devastation she suffers through is a just punishment for her using her sexual agency, and the difficulties the children face don’t matter because they don’t matter.
Now, it you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go shower 3 times to wash off the sick feeling of getting into the headspace of someone like Rush Limbaugh.
…I cannot even deal with the world today.
Still, this is a good reminder – if you’re a woman don’t go to a Catholic school or any kind of religious school. They don’t think you’re a person. It’s right in their teachings; you can look it up.
So every religion in the world (that might have schools) has a written “women aren’t people” clause?
I remember back when I was a sprightly young co-ed who did all the condom shopping because I don’t know Why, it’s just I always seem to be the one who takes care of it. If you want something done right and all that. Switching to the pill was not only more cost-effective( thanks, PP!) it also deprived he drug store cashier of his chance to be a passive aggressive moral scold. I never let his whining judgemental ‘are you sure this is all you’re buyig’ stop me for a second, but I never forgot it either.
My mom went to Catholic school. She told me that she once asked one of the nuns what should be done if continuing a pregnancy would guarantee the death of the pregnant person. The nun said (big surprise) that the woman should be allowed to die, explaining to my mom that the unbaptized fetus would be going straight to purgatory, whereas the woman would have a chance to get into heaven. Mom said she was pretty sure it had less to do with that and more to do with the fact that the fetus wasn’t a woman who had dared to have dirty dirty sex.