Resorting to one of the oldest and most attention-hungry strategies in the misogynist’s playbook, Rush Limbaugh this week called a Georgetown Law Student who advocated for free contraception at her university a “slut” and a “prostitute,” saying she wanted others to pay for her supposedly out-of-control sex life. Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke on his radio show on Wednesday, and again for more than an hour on Thursday.

“What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? [...] It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.”

Aside from Limbaugh’s shockingly hateful tone, he also states several times throughout his comments that the cost of birth control pills is related to the frequency of sexual activity, which is just plain incorrect; women on the pill take it everyday, regardless of how often and how recently they’ve had sex. Some non-sexually active women take the pill for other health reasons, like menstrual issues.

Up until this point, conservatives had framed the most recent battles over contraception, abortion, and women’s health as ones of religious liberty, focusing on a mandate that requires religious employers to cover birth control for their employees (though many states already had such a mandate, and a compromise ensured that insurance carriers would offer it for free). Opponents had generally (though not entirely) steered clear of such high-level woman bashing.

Fluke testified before an unofficial Democratic Congressional committee, after being denied the opportunity to speak before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee by Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA). Issa said she was not qualified to speak on religious liberty.

The law student responded to Limbaugh with incredible restraint and understatement, saying the comments were “really inappropriate” and “outside the bounds of civil discourse.”

“..this is historically the kind of language that is used to silence women especially when women stand up and say that these are their reproductive health care needs and this is what they need,” Fluke said on Thursday, according to Politico.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and National Republican Senatorial Committee Vice Chairman Carly Fiorina both condemned Limbaugh’s statements.

After Limbaugh continued his tirade on Thursday, a spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi‘s office declined to speak further on the matter, saying, “We’ve made a statement regarding this kind of rhetoric and we’re not going to further dignify this continued disrespect for women with a comment.”

[via Politico]

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