Regarding Sandra

Given so much media attention this last week on Rush Limbaugh and his savage attack against Sandra Fluke, we thought it might be helpful to take a look at who and what Rush was attacking. Ms. Fluke is a student at Georgetown University, a private Jesuit-run institution. She was denied the opportunity to testify before a Republican congressional panel on the subject of women’s contraception and health — a panel consisting solely of men.

She instead was brought back to testify on Feb. 23 at a hearing on women’s reproductive health and contraception before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, thus drawing Limbaugh’s fire. The transcript of her testimony follows. — Fe

“My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today. We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.

I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens. We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women.

Simultaneously, the recently announced adjustment addresses any potential conflict with the religious identity of Catholic or Jesuit institutions. When I look around my campus, I see the faces of the women affected by this lack of contraceptive coverage. And especially in the last week, I have heard more and more of their stories. On a daily basis, I hear yet from another woman from Georgetown or from another school or who works for a religiously-affiliated employer, and they tell me that they have suffered financially and emotionally and medically because of this lack of coverage.

And so, I’m here today to share their voices, and I want to thank you for allowing them – not me – to be heard. Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggle financially as a result of this policy.

One told us about how embarrassed and just powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter and learned for the first time that contraception was not covered on her insurance and she had to turn and walk away because she couldn’t afford that prescription. Women like her have no choice but to go without contraception. Just last week, a married female student told me that she had to stop using contraception because she and her husband just couldn’t fit it into their budget anymore. Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice.

And some might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Women’s health clinics provide a vital medical service, but as the Guttmacher Institute has definitely documented, these clinics are unable to meet the crushing demand for these services. Clinics are closing, and women are being forced to go without the medical care they need.

How can Congress consider the [Rep. Jeff] Fortenberry (R-Neb.), [Sen. Marco] Rubio (R-Fla.) and [Sen. Roy] Blunt (R-Mo.) legislation to allow even more employers and institutions to refuse contraception coverage and then respond that the non-profit clinics should step up to take care of the resulting medical crisis, particularly when so many legislators are attempting to de-fund those very same clinics? These denials of contraceptive coverage impact real people. In the worst cases, women who need these medications for other medical conditions suffer very dire consequences.

A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy. Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs. When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescriptions and whether they were lying about their symptoms. For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her. After months paying over $100 out-of-pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it.

I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room. She’d been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, ‘It was so painful I’d woke up thinking I’ve been shot.’

Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result. On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.

Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32 years old. As she put it, ‘If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grand babies simply because the insurance policy that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.’

Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age – increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis – she may never be able to conceive a child.

Some may say that my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were. One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis. Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it. Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.

I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously. Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.

One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handles all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.

As one other student put it: ‘This policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.’ These are not feelings that male fellow students experience and they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder. In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school? We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success. We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of ‘cura personalis‘ – to care for the whole person – by meeting all of our medical needs. We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.

We expected that when 94% of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for – completely unsubsidized by the university. We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere. And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health.

And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone thinks it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women. Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for the access to the health care we need.

The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and the universities appreciate the modifications to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that that is something we can all agree upon.”

36 thoughts on “Regarding Sandra”

  1. as a pre-teen in the early 80s i remember reading a cosmo article on which coke works best for douching, accordingly it was cherry coke, which i thought then was fucking ridiculous. but it was cosmo, what did i expect?

  2. “My point is that isn’t it a *bit* odd that we now locate our civil rights in access to manufactured hormones, which profit immense and very poisonous business entities. Curious.”

    Speaking of those “poisonous busiess entities;” their silence on this contraception issue is telling. Why isn’t Big Pharma lobbying like mad against the anti-contraception faction? Big Pharma makes a lot of money off those contraceptives; as a profit driven entity their silence is deafening and suspicious. That silence tells me this whole contraception issue is a smokescreen for other back-room deals (such as the bill that just passed in the senate which makes protesting a federal offense: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/09/1072755/-Making-protesting-a-felony). We have got to stop being so easily distracted!

  3. oh, and here’s eric on the subject of douching with soda:

    “Oh it’s TOTAL bullshit.”

    and here is a link to an article eric wrote (one of my favorites) on sex ed — please note its title:

    http://planetwaves.net/pagetwo/daily-astrology/pass-the-7-up-or-why-we-need-real-sex-education/

    here is an especially relevant excerpt from that article:

    “She [Eric’s Mom] was at the time an ESL teacher — English as a second language — teaching English to people from Haiti and Puerto Rico. At the time, during the supposedly wild and irresponsible 1970s, educational programs funded by New York City included basic information about birth control and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

    “When she told me the stories of grown women in her class (i.e., even older than her) thinking a 7-Up douche after sex could prevent pregnancy (apparently a rumor in the times before Snopes <http://snopes.com/> ), I got it on the spot that you just had to teach this stuff. My brother and I got a kick out of the story, too. We had 7-Up in the refrigerator. It now had an erotic connotation.”

  4. hi — given that we’re in the realm of discussing the incredibly important topic of preventing unwanted pregnancy and women’s health, i’m thinking at this point we need to be really careful about posting links and fact-checking with really reliable sources before we start recommending things like douching with cola.

    we have to remember that PW gets a LOT of readers who never comment (so we have no idea where they’re coming from as far as sex education), and PW does in part function as a sex ed resource. it’s one thing to describe your personal experience. and i think it’s one thing to ask, “hey, has anyone heard any info on douching with cola?” — but quite another thing to say, “i hear this works, but i don’t have any facts/stats…”

    we have *so* many decades of misinformation about women’s bodies and health, we’re not even near out of the woods yet.

    thanks!

  5. Yes! to women being independent and autonomous and then interdependent etc!

    Good info here
    http://www.amazon.com/Wise-Woman-Herbal-Childbearing-Series/dp/0961462000/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331213989&sr=1-3 and incidentally in the menopause book if you hope to be an old Mum successfully

    If you live near a sauna/steamroom then a serious sauna 2 or 3 times a week may help decrease fertility. And I’ve heard a cocacola douche after sex is effective (tho don’t know any stats). I know a couple of women who do the temperature method and with success – but you have to be consistent. Neither of them find it a chore: its become a habit. I was nearly always circumspect – didn’t want to use artificial stuff, tho I had a diaphragm for a while which worked fine. I only used it when necessary widely before ovulation and for those few days after to be sure. Tho I think you can probably ovulate at any time. THere are some guys/opportunities your body just says let’s override all the cycles to ovulation right now: straightaway! But you normally know those times.

    Keeping the option for abortion seems very important. Even if the prolifers ‘have all the arguments’. Better off the streets, available to all. Another way of being able to say yes/no at need.

  6. BC pills, IUDs, abortion, cycle awareness, basal body temperature. All have to do with reproduction or not, sexual activity or not. All require a certain awareness of one’s own body, which is the point. Other than fake glamor and uber-skinny bodies promoted by advertising and corporations to sell and control, we do not have an open way to address women’s health, especially reproductive health. I agree that it isn’t necessarily “better living through chemistry”, including hormones. (BTW, what’s with these hormone replacement centers popping up to feed hormones to female and male alike? Would that we would pay better attention to what it is we are putting in our bodies chemically in food etc that is wreaking hormonal havoc. As an aside, I suspect that soy added to everything is a major factor in that havoc for both sexes.) But we don’t talk about any of this. Ergo, time to listen to Eric’s podcast.

    Love Maria’s reworking of “limbaugh”. And, we can still use the other suggested definition for “curing limbaugh”, as in “rush-ed limpbaw”: an erection as a result blood rushing to the limp penis as a result of Viagra or other “ED” medication paid for by the insurance company

    Several great threads here. Thanks all, and thanks for the links on Anonymous.

    JannKinz

  7. Mystes:

    Politically, its about sex and contraception–in any form. The pill is not just a chemical, it’s also a cultural icon that jumpstarted the feminist movement of the last Uranus Pluto aspect in the 60s. Might as well add the diaphragm, IUD and the condom as well.

  8. Hey Fe and Carrie… Of course ‘no one has my cycle’… *I* didn’t have my cycle until after my first child was born. I just kept forcing my cycle with herbs when I was younger and it seemed I might have spooked up some zygote. Everyone has her own. Learn it. Own it. Manage it.

    My point is that isn’t it a *bit* odd that we now locate our civil rights in access to manufactured hormones, which profit immense and very poisonous business entities. Curious.

    Or more bluntly: Snap out of it.

    M

  9. They are not letting up at Daily Kos:

    Eight [Rhetorical] Questions for Conservatives on Their Sexual Obsessions+*

    by cassandracarolinaFollow

    I continue to marvel at the Conservatives’ obsession with anything sexual, whether their own activities and proclivities, or those of the rest of us.

    In a time when we’re besieged by problems such as unemployment, poverty, climate change, looming potential for war with Iran, millions of wounded veterans from past and current war, foreclosures, rising medical costs, trade imbalances, currency risks, fossil fuel dependence, growing gaps between rich and poor, obesity and diseases running rampant, and utter gridlock in Washington, they’re steadfastly focused on the real problem: sex.

    Since I’m at a loss to figure out why this obsession controls every moment of their lives, I offer the following ten questions with the hope that someone else can shed some light on this mystery.

    The term “you” used below refers to some mythical Conservative who’d actually answer these questions. In other words, a mythical creature.

    1. You seem to believe that there’s some value in signing pledges to remain faithful, eschew pornography, and defend “traditional” marriage (the sort that ends in divorce about half the time). If you’re the sort of person who would contemplate extramarital activity, you’re probably the sort of person for whom signing a pledge is simply a publicity stunt. Why the obsession with pledges?

    2. Further, you believe that “traditional” marriage is somehow threatened by same-sex marriage. Forgive me, but if your traditional marriage is that fragile, wouldn’t it be threatened by proximity to single people?

    3. Temptation seems to bother you a lot, and you seem to be projecting your character weaknesses on the rest of us. Pardon me, but some of us are happy with our ability to resist (or to embrace) our temptations. Unless we’re looking to involve you in them, please explain why this would be any of your concern.

    4. You speak frequently of the importance of family values, and hold the family in high esteem as the most important unit of society, without which all manner of evils will take over our world. Yet you believe that you have the right to dictate what goes on between husband and wife in the privacy of their family when it comes to sex, contraception, and procreation. How does this not violate the sanctity of families?

    5. While most of you were “of woman born” (excluding those of you spawned by other evil means), your views on the role of women in society seem insulting at best, criminal at worst. The idea that readily available contraception allowed women to usurp power that has been (and should continue to be, in your benighted view) held by men ignores centuries of biological and social evolution. Further, it ignores the needs and desires of women and men who cannot reproduce or choose not to reproduce. Please explain how your mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, and female staff members fit into your draconian views, or whether they have some special exemption.

    6. You are quite obsessed with the unborn from the moment of conception (or before), yet once born, the previously unborn face great tribulation as their mothers are denied prenatal care, and basic pediatric and parental wellness care. Regardless of the circumstances of their conception (rape, incest), their fate in the womb, or their fate beyond the womb, you declare that all life is sacred. Please explain your vocal support for extending our current war in Afghanistan and beginning another in Iran in this context.

    7. Contraception is an important part of the lives of American men and women, including many who belong to mainstream religions such as Catholicism, in which an estimated 98% of women have used contraception during their reproductive years. While you steadfastly resist the scientific logic of climate change, I hope that you would you agree that many of our planet’s future problems will be directly related to overpopulation and limited resources. Responsible family planning is a necessary element in making the Earth livable for future generations. Further, since you view abortion with such dismay, would it not be logical to prevent abortion through safe and available contraceptive methods?

    8. On the subject of abortion, for those of you male Conservatives, please disclose any instance in which you have paid for an abortion for your spouse, girlfriend, mistress, or staff member, or pressured them to have an abortion. Or you could just sign another pledge. Send me your contact information, and I’ll get that pledge out to you right away.

  10. Carrie and Amanda:

    There is a case for both sides of the argument to present itself. For women to own their sexuality and their health as, Brendan puts it, their agency. The most forceful argument presented is that of health, physical, sexual and emotional. Our autonomy over our anatomy. The couching behind health was, as we all know, about tempering the morality harness and the shame. The question becomes “how will a woman’s personhood become codified into law” in that Sibley scenario? I don’t frankly know.

    Perhaps there is something about the 14th Amendment which addresses race and citizenship and is the basis of America’s civil rights that we could be looking at. In a country where a corporation is a person and a woman’s personhood is questioned, we need to gut check our system with some body blows. A little Lysistrata, anyone?

    In the meantime, I have joined a new group of bloggers at Daily Kos called ‘Sluts”, meaning any or all of us concerned about contraceptive freedom. Women with health issues and women and men who like sex are encouraged to contribute.

  11. I was NEVER regular until perimenopause. I would bleed for 8 weeks or 11 weeks and get anemic. Then I would go 7 months without a period (and I was not having sex yet). I was put on the pill to stop all that bleeding because it was making me anemic. Having said that, I agree with Amanda; women like to fuck and we should not need to defend that to ANYONE. So making the argument that contraception is mostly for health reasons doesn’t blow open that can of worms wherein males are threatened by female sexuality, orgasmic ability, and blood-line surety. We NEED to open up that can and get everyone talking and dealing with the stuff in it.

  12. fe — well, i can’t say i’m terribly encouraged by the info about the US Sibley chart. oy.

    but i don’t think you can change a worldview by adopting its attitudes and language as your own. it doesn’t work, as far as i can tell. because you’re already igniting the associations that have been established. it’s a tricky one.

  13. yep, i manage to control my body’s overenthusiasm for making cysts through diet and exercise, but i couldn’t manage that until i had semi-regular income and hours–not an option in the kind of work i did in the first half of my life. plus, some pcos cases are worse than others, so how am i to say if another woman needs hormones for it?

    love the limbaugh definition–would love to “savage” that one, i.e., see it go viral ala “santorum,” with just a bit of adjustment to make it more universal…let’s see…

    limbaugh: a potential sex partner so flabby, inflexible, and/or sluggish that his or her genitals have for all intents and purposes atrophied.

    In sentences:
    I thought he would be kind of cuddly, but when I got him home, he was such a limbaugh I had to make a getaway.
    My girlfriend does nothing but sit on the couch and watch Fox news–she’s turning into a limbaugh.

    I actually feel a little sorry for Rusty. There’s got to be enormous pain under all that. I wrote poems for him and a few of the other conservative talk show guys, because I do feel bad for them. Here’s one:

    Falafel
    For Bill O’Reilly

    Ever been by a falafel stand
    After the bars close
    And you’ve been dancing
    And you’re hungry
    For all that special sauce dripping
    Over the warm mounds
    Nestled in the soft pita.

    Look there, off the street
    Behind a glass wall, sits
    An overgrown Catholic boy
    Stuffed into his suit,
    His face engorged, florid.
    A laugh, a shout
    Tips him off to our pleasure outside,
    Interrupts his dreams of Spice, Exotica–
    He reaches to the glass tabletop
    And picks up his phone.

  14. mystela:

    Not everyone has your cycle, or is aware enough to handle it like we did (I did the same thing as you, after taking myself off BC because it was too disruptive of my cycle — they used far too much hormone then for our good!).

    There are instances where the pill is necessary, as Sandra Fluke testified. It is as much access to information as anything else. You and I weren’t starting from zero, though unfortunately, there are a lot of women who are.

  15. Darlins… I figured out when I was ovulating when I was 25 years old. I was a fraternal-twin-mammy: twice a month at 7 and 13 days. Cervical mucous, faint temperature rise, pinging in the ovaries. So… twice a month I stopped having sex for about 72 hours. That left me 24 days to have quite enough fun.

    From 19 to 24 I used layers and layers of b/c including the pill, and still made zygotes more often than I intended. From 25 to 39 I had pretty much perfect control over the issue. Perimenopause was another story (resulting in my last child when I suddenly jumped to a 21 day cycle), but I wanted to get pregnant sometime around 40, so we went with the accelerated sched.

    Simply put: there is no reason –with a thermometer, a little bit awareness and a small patch of Rue in the backyard– to worry about unwanted pregnancy. This tempest is about yet another pharmaceutical, and friends, if we are worried about men controlling fertility, why are we handing them all of our money for the privilege of doing what awareness can achieve?
    ***
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  16. JannKinz – love it!

    Maybe it should be “rush-ed limpbaw” ?

    I can take no credit for “Limp-baugh” or any other spelling as such: I’ve seen it elsewhere (Daily Kos for the most part), so to that unknown soul, thank you!

  17. Just thinking: Why not start the Yes Women? And start flooding our local OpEds with pieces stating Yes! To Full Control of Women’s Bodies! And write pieces that back the euphemisms except using the Real Words as if from a daughter of the patriarchy who holds firm to the ideals of the fear-mongers’ fears based on women’s inability to make clear and wise decisions for themselves (this has been written about women in books published in the 1600-1800’s). Let’s go for it girls. Give ’em what they are asking for and then some.

  18. A war on words – absolutely needed. Enough with the spin from those who are doing the sociopathic mischief. They need to be called out on the euphemisms and distractions from what the real agenda seems to be. With Mars Rx in aspect with the Full Moon plus Mercury conjunct Uranus and square Pluto – is this another side to the astrology Amanda described yesterday regarding the retired generals against war?

    Brendan: Oooo! Love the “Limpbaugh”. Would a “rush limpbaw” be an erection as a result blood rushing to the limp penis as a result of Viagra or other “ED” medication paid for by the insurance company?

    JannKinz

    PS: As an aside, there was more news this morning of US arrests of Anonymous hackers, including informants. Haven’t heard much about that, but it seems to be part of a “worldwide sting.”

  19. Thank you, Fe, for this post of Ms. Fluke: In Her Own Words. Powerful. May her (our) Tribe increase.

    Today I want to pull out the word “dominion” used a couple times in this thread, and throw in a couple more with similar connotation: sovereignty and agency.

    We sort of know what power and rights mean when referring to women’s quest for….what(?) over our bodies. The word agency has come to me–as in does a woman right to reproductive choice include her being the sole agent in directing the fate and actions of her own body? It is an old word used in legal papers mainly now, but it is exact and direct when it empowers a particular person as the one with the right to enact whatever it is that is being addressed.

    The next word is sovereignty. Not in the global or national sense of king or queen-ship, but in the individual sense–which is also an out dated sense at this time but is definitely in its root meaning of power, authority to one’s self and those who are affected by one’s self.

    Women’s reproductive agency, sovereignty, dominion. What ever word s are used (but the words have their own power and must be chosen with that in mind.) The time has come to call out more and more the absurdity and the nefarious intent of another human being with no fellow feeling (a male) to be making decisions concerning the physical body of ANYONE ELSE–stripping agency, sovereignty, power, rulership, dominion from its rightful place, form the one who will be affected my the choices made for them and not by them.

    The question right here might really be—is some one saying that women’s reproductive sovereignty is NOT a woman’s right. Let’s just say that out loud and clear then.

    Are there women who would say out loud: “Yes, I willingly and happily give up my birthright of agency, sovereignty, and dominion over my body to the agency of men I do not and will never know in deference to their agenda for themselves and me and all women.”

    This issue of women’s reproductive rights to me is deeper than our ovaries: it has to do with are women still considered under case law and common law as chattel, as property? have we not yet evolved as a species to accept women’s reproductive rights to assume and include women’s agency in being the sole –deter minor of what happens to her body and what her body needs to serve her life goals and choices. Is Woman the Sovereign of her body and life? Or not?

    I am in a word fight today. Let us make them use the words they are truly speaking to women. Let us ask them, : is this not what you are saying? Let us ask the women in agreement with them to use those words in order tho hear themselves and perhaps through hearing get better sight.

  20. Zerosity – I’m thinking they shouldn’t be synonyms, rather we need to spread the love…

    Limbaugh: (def.) when an obese, unintelligent man cannot find his penis, let alone have an erection. Also satirically and comically written as “Limp-baugh” in common use.

  21. It is no exaggeration that an ovarian cyst feels like you’ve been shot. Thank you for posting this.

  22. When asked about the “war on women” at yesterday’s press conference, President Obama responded by stating that women will vote their own minds, but sidestepped the issue of the question by stating that women aren’t single issue voters, but will vote for what is best for their families, for them to make the mortgage payment, Dems have more to offer, etc – canned campaign comments.

    But…in spite of the canned response, at least the President didn’t say that “war on women” isn’t happening – as the ‘Pubs would probably do much as they did in response to Rushball’s comments. Personally, I’d like to think that he’s getting an earful from Michelle and others, and that he is secretly snickering at the hell the ‘Pubs are unleashing on themselves – kinda sitting back and waiting to see.

    Brendan: Love your wish list for Anonymous. I’m sure we could all add a few wishes to it. While we’re at it, why not have a campaign for a new definition of “Limbaugh” as was done for Santorum? Oh, wait, maybe the two are synonyms.

    Sandra Fluke – front and center to lead the charge. “Fluke is no fluke.”

    JannKinz

  23. Amanda, as much as you are right about taking ownership of not just our bodies and sexuality, but also the regard for it–meaning realizing and appreciating the value of celebrating our sexuality–we’re still behind and prudish about admitting that. I read in one of the comments on Nancy Sommers blog that the US Sibley chart show it’s Venus is at mid-point of Saturn and Neptune at a degree that indicates sexual repression as part of it’s society. We are in a repressed country that currently, because of the Uranus transit, is getting it’s sexually repressive values questioned. That repression will always be there. We will over time test and stretch it’s limits. I say with Pluto involved squaring Uranus, now is as good a time as any to break down this deep and abiding fear of female sexuality. Women need to bust it open.

  24. and now back to serious mode:

    while i am just as pissed off at everyone else by rush’s comment, i hope everyone reads this article, because i think it makes a very very important point: that both the left and the right are up in arms about “sluts” — and it indicates a culture-wide discomfort with the idea — no, the reality — that women like to fuck. and some women like a lot of sex with a lot of people. and that is not only something not to be ashamed of, it is also *not* a lesser reason for a woman to go on the pill. liking lots of sex is not an inferior motive for wanting to go on birth control compared to health reasons. so lets stop acting like it is.

    http://www.yasminnair.net/content/defense-sluts

    here’s a couple excerpts:

    Can we please remember that it’s also perfectly fine that women need access to birth control because they really do like having lots of sex and being, generally, you know, sluts? For fuck’s sake, we fought for the Pill and access to contraception because we once thought that boundless sex without consequences—whether with one person or with many, at the same time or sequentially, either way—is a pretty good thing.1

    This business of a lawsuit [Fluke has considered suing Limbaugh] worries me because it seems to further erase the reality of what birth control means for many—sex, and lots of it, thank you—and fosters the idea that sluts don’t deserve our support, or the Pill.

    Women like Fluke are persuaded to emphasise health and negate sex as a primary reason for contraception, and so-called feminists are ramping up the demand for the same by insisting that they don’t fuck and if they do, it would never be wantonly or like “sluts.” Rather than insist that Fluke is not a slut, feminists ought to state, loudly and clearly, that contraception should be provided regardless of a woman’s sex life. The fight for contraception is currently based on arguments about women’s health or, as Fluke delicately puts it, the prevention of pregnancy. It’s time we began acknowledging that women need contraception because they like to fuck. Perhaps if we were more willing to talk about ourselves as sexual beings, right-wing hypocrites would have much less ammunition against us. After all, if a slut is not afraid of openly being one, who can possibly shame her into silence?

  25. ok, please forgive me for skewing the tone a little toward humor on a serious thread, but i just have to post this song about rush limbaugh that has always cracked me up:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY__KcyIcEk

    unfortunately, i could not find a better version (or one from, say, 2000 instead of the mid-1990s), so please forgive the questionable sound and performance quality (the band, moxy fruvous, always kicked ass live — but i started seeing their shows a couple years after this recording, when they were that might tighter. oh, and if you close your eyes, you can convince yourself early-90s fashions were better…

    what’s a little depressing though, is that after 18 years, rush is still spewing his bile all over the radio waves — and so many people are lapping it up.

    ugh.

  26. Thank you Fe, for publishing this here. Women’s bodies are the low hanging fruit; how soon after until the less financially powerful men are also denied? Feel it comin — the king will have the maiden first in the wedding bed.

  27. I must admit I saw something of this nature coming last year when they permitted the ‘consumption’ of horse meat, followed shortly after by the release of War Horse (where 10 million horses were slaughtered for the cause).
    The Horse is the symbol of feminine power.

  28. Fe:
    Thank you for publishing Sandra Fluke’s statement here on Planet Waves. Her words stand very well on their own and your further service of spreading her words is a heroic effort to overcome the twisted minds and hearts of those who seek to slander Ms. Fluke in order to advance the agenda of tyranny. Every human being on Earth has a stake in this issue of dominion over one’s own body.

  29. If she doesn’t run for office, we have lost a true leader. I had not heard her testimony, nor read it until now, and boy, I am appalled at the right’s reaction to it. Dominion indeed.

    I would like Anonymous to hack Rush’s computers and see what is on them (I’m thinking about the whole Santo Domingo thing). I would like them to cause all of Santorum’s properties to go into default and be repo’ed, and his bank accounts and investments to be zero. I would like Issa’s arson and car theft cases to finally stick during the election, showing him to be the true sleaze ball he is. I think I’m being nice about this, but if they want worse, I say we oblige them.

  30. Sandra’s words regarding expectations of the school also ring true for the women in Eric’s dioxin interviews, posted today. (And of course, for all others affected by the dioxin debacle in New Paltz.)

    JannKinz

  31. Ms. Fluke said it without saying it. Demanding dominion over our bodies poses a threat.
    Men like Darrell Issa, Rush Limbaugh, and Rick Santorum are so threatened by women’s vaginas that our very reference to them in terms of our health draws vicious attack.

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