Until I read that article, I have been focusing my attention on the good news: The assault on reproductive rights, from Komen and Santorum on, has finally made clear that the attacks on abortion are really just the front line of a greater assault on contraception and women's health. I've been assuming that this shock wave will mobilize young women, showing them that they cannot take feminist gains for granted.
But the heartbreaking story told by "Beantown Mom"-in which a crew of mean girls viciously bullies a fellow high school student who's taking the Pill for health reasons-reminded me that there are real-life consequences to the vicious language used to describe those who use contraception.
Perhaps Rush Limbaugh can be persuaded to start a reparations fund to pay for the viciousness that he has spawned? Yeah, right. You may remember that, two years ago, South Hadley, Massachusetts high school student Phoebe Prince committed suicide-and soon after, the local DA charged six of her fellow students for bullying her to death the technical charges included statutory rape and civil rights violations with accusations of sluttery and the like.
Those prosecutions were, to put it mildly, controversial. But whatever did or didn't happen to Phoebe Prince , apparently there are plenty of folks in Massachusetts who still think it's okay to shame and torment girls about the possibility that their bodies might be sources of joy. That horrifies me. Viagra-using Fourth Marriage Limbaugh's concept of female sexuality. I'd forgotten that someone like Limbaugh could believe women's bodies exist solely for male pleasure.
Yes, he " apologized. I've grown up in a world that takes for granted the fact that adults will have healthy, active sexual lives, and that they will behave responsibly about it. Honestly, the tremendous gains made in LGBT issues have led me to believe that Americans have gotten at least a little less crazy about sex. Silly me. Last week, as you probably know, Rush Limbaugh dove into a startlingly personal attack on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student who had been refused a chance to testify in the infamous Issa panel on the mandate that, under the new health care law's mandate on preventive services, insurers must offer coverage with no co-pay for contraception.
