Oy, Sorry for more Rush Limbaugh-related crap, but this cartoon, by Gary McCoy, was just too appalling not to post.
I’m not even going to get into the slut-shaming, or that the cartoonist is bizarrely trying to fat-shame someone who is not actually fat, but I would like to point out once again that WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT PROVIDING FREE BIRTH CONTROL (even though that sounds like a nifty idea to me). We’re talking about INSURANCE COMPANIES COVERING BIRTH CONTROL LIKE THEY COVER OTHER MEDICAL EXPENSES. You know about insurance, right? That thing that people PAY FOR THEMSELVES, with THEIR OWN MONEY?
Are Rush and his fans really so ignorant and obtuse that they’ve somehow convinced themselves that this is about the government paying for birth control? Or are they deliberately misrepresenting the issue, knowing that most of their readers/listeners/whatever won’t bother to check the facts?
So… other than it being sexist and dumb…
But in that first panel… is her left leg even attached to her hip?! Escher girl, much?
It didn’t know Buttman was a Faux News sheep. A fine MRA you are, Buttman.
To be fair, it *IS* true that Planned Parenthood and other “family planning” programs in CA (I think it’s state-based, not federal, though) will give very poor people low or no-cost birth control options (I myself got birth control pills at no cost for years as a poor starving student while I was in college but not covered on my parent’s health insurance due to being over 18 and this being before they signed that law allowing young people to stay on their parents health insurance until 24).
However, all abortion services were COMPLETELY paid for by the person getting said abortion, regardless of your poorness, as a friend of mine found out firsthand when she had to get an abortion for medical reasons.
But I personally think it’s bullshit to go on against birth control pills or other such things, especially when they’re going to the most needy and least-needing-to-get-pregnant people. And if we ALL pay taxes, then I guess that, hey, I *did* pay for all those pills albeit indirectly. We don’t get to choose which taxes to pay and which not to pay. It’s all or nothing. I don’t like portions of my taxes going towards BIG FARMING and BIG PHARMA or subsidies towards all number of private companies that then screw us over a second time by charging us outrageous amounts of money for their goods and services, and yet, it’s taxes and I pay them.
Anyone who wants to bitch and complain that they don’t like the way their taxes are being spent needs to either VOTE against said tax initiatives being passed (as most are put up to vote byt the average person) or they need to start lobbying and creating legislation to change things. Anything else is blowing hot crappy fartsmoke out of one’s ass, and I don’t have the stomach to put up with the smell.
I’m still astounded that there exists a debate over how much people have to pay for various medical costs IN ADDITION to their monthly payment for health insurance, which may or may not be more than the cost of the treatment/service they are looking to obtain…
No, Buttman, she’s not looking to have the government pay for birth control, she wants her insurance company to pay for it. Right now, the company only pays a part of it, and in all likelihood she pays more in monthly costs for insurance than the cost of the birth control.
George Carlin has (I still refuse to admit he’s dead :p) a sketch where he says that being “Pro-life is Anti-Woman!” as refusing healthcare treatments, especially medically necessary ones, can and does kill women, who in turn cannot have any more children… if you want women to have lots of children, allow them to get abortions when they need them. If you don’t want women to have abortions very often, let the have access to birth control so they are less likely to have those unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
There is more than one way to make a person into a slave, and if you make them slaves to their biology, it makes them unable to look beyond their own immediate problems.
Just imagine what it was like when both men and women were held hostage in the tyranny of forced marriage and a gazillion children. Just imagine how hard it would be to, say, fight against inequality from the rich or fight against injustice done from the rich to the poor when you have 10 mouths to feed and the heirarchy of your life is set up so that the man is the automatic Dictator of Familytopia who can rape and beat his wife as much as he pleases, turn her into his own special slut/whore scapegoat and by god SHE NEEDS HIM and must therefore acquiesce to this treatment.
When each man is pushed into a situation where each woman becomes his slave, he becomes less concerned about who is enslaving HIM. Many of these shitheads are simply trying to enact a heirarchical structure that is aided by biological function (multiple pregnancies without birth control options) that will cut out the voices of 50% of the population (women) and silence the majority of the poor men (as they will be given a convenient direct scapegoat for all their problems- women) and then a ton of children that they will both be forced into economic and physical slavery to take care of so that they will never be able to think of anything beyond their own nuculur Familytopia.
I’m not saying that heterosexual relationships are somehow wrong and bad, but the way that many of these anti-birth control zealots believe- the majority of their plan revolves around taking any and every choice away from the individual- trapping them in their biology, in stilted “traditional roles” that are mandatory instead of chosen, and then using these prisons to control the majority of the population even more than they already do.
Of course, maybe they’re just idiots. But I’d have to say that I’ve spent too much time watching these shenanigans going on to think that it’s all just harmless fluff.
So here’s the video I was talking about: (warning, George Carlin. NSFW Swearing, some parts may be offensive to you, I tried to mention the relevant parts)
http://youtu.be/AvF1Q3UidWM
up until 1:50 or so he talks about abortion, then again around 3:15-6:50 is the rest of his stuff on abortion, but really the whole video is great (including Chickens being decent people)
Hey, everyone knows “facts” have a liberal bias. The readers/listeners won’t believe the facts because Rush has told them that all of the factual sources are full of lies and propaganda. And the whole government thing acts as a smokescreen. Once those fans hear the word “government,” they lose access to their higher cognitive processing centers.
Fun fact: About 20ish years ago, I was channel surfing late at night and stumbled on the weirdest talk show. There was this blowhard-type guy sitting at a desk like on all the normal Carson/Letterman/Leno shows, but all this dude did was rant about feminazis and the government. I thought he was the funniest damn thing I’d ever seen and started watching the show whenever I was up late because I thought it was comedy. Nobody could be THAT ignorant. Then he became extremely famous and it was only then I realized it wasn’t an act. Oops.
Crumbelievable:
That is not relevant. By emphasizing that point, you’re contributing to the slut-shaming.
@blitzgal
please oh please tell me that second image is a fake. I hate republicans so much, they are controlling, evil people.
but to lighten the mood a bit, this is relevant…I should have posted it on the first post about Limbaugh
@Brian X
Not that I don’t see where you’re coming from, but I think the other side to the issue is that, by concentrating on whether or not there’s a moral issue involved here (not that combating slut shaming isn’t important and necessary), the fact that there are medical needs for hormonal BC tends to get shunted to the side. Therefore issues like women needing BC for things like ovarian cysts tends to be absent from the discourse because of the conservative slut witch hunt.
That’s right buttbrain. When she buys insurance she expects to get what she pays for, just like the boys do. Somehow women buying insurance that covers viagra and not birth control simply does not make sense for those of us who do not suffer from buttbrain.
So the cartoon is implying that free birth control should be provided by the government to anti-choice advocates? Or that abortions should be available, but only to people who deliberately eschew all other forms of birth control?
I mean, I get that the cartoonist is trying to portray feminists and/or Honorary Strawfeminist Sandra Fluke as hypocrites, but it doesn’t work, even a little bit. Like, not even without any of that pesky “what she actually said” context — there’s not even a rudimentary zing there.
@Kyn
I think the zing is supposed to do with how she looks? Or the fact that she wants control over her body and choice in her bc? I dunno, the first seems to make more troll sense, while the second isn’t a zing…
The cartoon implies that women should have no say regarding birth control, as they only use it to slut around. It’s bizarre. What about married women trying to plan their families? This class of men has to, has to, control women’s fertility. The reasons are thousands of years old.What would it be like if they were forced to lay off? This is what keeps me going, this idea that women could plan their families, make sure they could feed the new baby, retain their health.
Ugh. Did this cartoonist not learn anything from the Limbaugh blow-back? There are two separate ideas here, one of which is factually wrong and one of which is morally reprehensible. The factually wrong one is the “government paying for contraception” thing. The morally reprehensible one is the idea that if the government does pay for your contraception, then the government basically owns a share in your reproductive system. Which is why it’s hypocritical to protest restrictions on abortion by saying “get your laws off my body” because hey, your body is public property now, right? It’s the same justification as Rush’s “make some porn for me” demand. You might as well say that anyone who receives Medicaid should be forced to donate blood, bone marrow, and a kidney, because their bodies are public property now.
Ok, here’s what I really don’t get about the health care debate… The mandate requires religiously-affiliated health-care providers to provide birth control.
Two sets of providers, religious and secular. The secular ones will provide birth control anyway to everyone who wants it, and the religious ones wouldn’t. Anybody covered by a religiously-affiliated health-care plan would therefore have an inferior service to those who are covered by the secular ones. Anybody interested in birth-control would therefore try to be covered by secular providers.
BUT!!! Not everyone has this choice; some people, due to their situation, can only be covered by the religious providers. The debate is thus those people’s rights to the same level of health care and the desires of the provider.
If there is to be a debate, it should be whether birth control should be covered by insurance at all. Giving religious organizations an exemption from providing certain services that were judged to be worthwhile to provide makes the religious option inferior to the secular one, and some people don’t have the choice to take the latter.
Oh God, don’t even say it.
God bless you David.
I thought our misogynists were quite dire but we don’t have the same level of right wing shock jocks (although they try on TalkSport)
And contraception is free-apart from condoms (misandry)
Please keep up the good work
That was their illustration of the logical conclusion of the Blunt amendment, which would allow any employer (not just religious ones) the right to deny coverage of any medical service that they deem is morally objectionable.
…because the best thing, for the economy right now, would be to have, let’s say, 25% of the workforce get pregnant and go home and raise kids. That wouldn’t affect overall productivity, at all. (/sarcasm) I mean, besides the gross human rights aspect, and the moral aspect, and everything.
Also, if I personally got pregnant, I’d probably have to get divorced, as Mr Cendare informed me early on in our relationship that he’s 110% certain he doesn’t want kids. Thanks, right-wingers, for creating a single mother and ruining two people’s financial stability!
Is it just me, or are all these “traditional family values” people hellbent on creating horrifically dysfunctional families which have the veneer of 50’s nuclear fluffiness?
zha3ngpei3man: Are you trying to aggravate my ulcer? What was the point of linking to a webpage that shows that women are clearly favoured in Higher Education as they are in other realms of education.
Another point that is missed in this debate is that women are clearly favoured in health care. The majority of health care spending is for women. There are special government agencies created for women’s health but none for MEN.
WadeBoggs: I don’t even get Fox News. The only time I see it when businesses leave it on. It must be good if it drives you crazy.
This is the aspect that they conveniently ignore as they continue to pretend that it’s only 20 year old sluts who are on birth control. Nearly all American women have used birth control, including 95% of Catholic women. Married heterosexual women rely on birth control, because without it their only choices are to either never have sex with their husbands or to be constantly pregnant and have a dozen children.
And that, my friends, is the crux of the issue. Social conservatives have been stewing about birth control for the past fifty years. To them, there is nothing more frightening than a woman with control over her own biology. They WANT women to be enslaved to their own bodies. They freak out at the idea of a woman with agency who can live on her own, choose to not get married, and support herself.
“Also, if I personally got pregnant, I’d probably have to get divorced, as Mr Cendare informed me early on in our relationship that he’s 110% certain he doesn’t want kids. Thanks, right-wingers, for creating a single mother and ruining two people’s financial stability!”
Maybe he should get a vasectomy instead of paying thousands of dollars in birth control pills. He is setting himself up for disaster when you get baby rabies. And left-wingers created the single mother industry. It wasn’t an unintended effect of the welfare state. It was intentional destruction.