I try to avoid talking politics on here despite the fact that it is a very big and important part of my life because I personally know that MANY people in this community hold WIDELY divergent views and any discussion of politics on the internet goes to shit beyond quickly.
However, I have been needing to say something for a few days, and it just came up again on the show I am watching and I can no longer contain myself. I will keep it as short and direct as I can or else I am confident I will start a hell storm. But the main thing I want to get across here is actually educational to men who might not understand how women's contraception works, because from what I have been hearing out of both male politicians and political commentators, men don't seem to have a fucking clue how it works!!!
Please also remember that I am a woman (duh), but more specifically a non-Catholic Georgetown University woman. I suppose I have said once before in passing that I graduated from Georgetown, but I certainly haven't posted it in words before. But yes, I went to Georgetown, which is now in the middle of this ABSURD debate we are having in this country over contraception, and I am not a Catholic, which is kinda crucial to the point of my story/post.
First of all, I took hormonal birth control from age 17-21 and had sex once, at age 20. I took the pill for PMDD. I have since stopped taking it, because issues of health insurance refusing to cover brand vs generic despite my doctor's request, had led to major health issues for me when the generic does not control the amount of hormone as tightly as brand, and then the generic was actually recalled from the market. So yeah, I fucking hate the American health insurance system (but that isn't a debate I am going to have here).
Georgetown U prides itself on having people of all and of no faith at their school. They make a really big fucking deal about it actually. And Georgetown has a public hospital. Gtown also has a student clinic, which is honestly the only place anywhere near campus for health care (students aren't allowed cars on campus and you don't want to walk too far in DC). I loved the clinic. It had great care. And Gtown has its own health insurance that it offers to its students. The clinic only takes Gtown health insurance. So basically you have to buy it. I had both Gtown health insurance (which doesn't cover the pill) and my parents (which thankfully did). Now, not only did it not cover the pill which I took as a virgin for 3 years, but I had to get it prescribed in Dallas by my home doctor, and the hospital pharmacy wouldn't fill it. So I had to go off campus to find a pharmacy to fill it. It cost me $60 a month. Every month.
So here is the women's health lesson. The reason all of this is coming up, is because Rush Limbaugh called the gtown student who stood up for women at this insitution, a slut. Used the word slut. He said she should post videos of her having sex on the internet if she wanted us to pay for it, and that her parents should be ashamed of her. He did this for three days. So it's not like it was taken out of context, or he misspoke. He did it for three days.
I have never been so angry in my entire life than when I watched that show of his.
His big points were three fold. First that it costs so much because these women must just be having so much sex. Second, that she was asking for public funding for her birth control. Both of those points are FACTUALLY INACCURATE!!! And third, that a woman that wants to have sex is a slut.
1. Unlike condoms which you buy without a prescription (the pill can kill you so yes it needs to be a prescription) and use per sexual encounter, the pill is taken once a day, everyday for a month REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH SEX YOU ARE HAVING OR NOT HAVING. If you have sex once or if you have sex 300 times, the cost is the EXACT SAME. And once you take the pill during the month, you can't stop, even if you don't have sex, or it will totally fuck you up hormonally.
2. She wants Georgetown University which is Catholic but prides itself on having non Catholic students and employees and psudeo makes you buy its health insurance which is paid for in large part by our own astronomically high tuition to pay for her Pill. NOT THE PUBLIC. No one said a DAMN THING about the public paying for anything! Health insurance should cover things that have to do with your health. Hormonal birth control is about a woman's health.
Now, I am going to just bullet point the rest of this or I will explode.
- A woman who wants to have sex should not be looked down on! She is not a slut for having a healthy sexual appetite! In our society a man is a stud and a woman is a virgin or a whore. THAT IS FUCKED UP!
- I don't care if the aspirin between the knees thing is just an old joke, it is INCREDIBLY OFFENSIVE. I am not easily offended, and I was floored by that comment, and the fact that people are justifying it, and keep saying it!!!
- I was raised in an abstinence only sex ed environment and it totally fucked me up. The idea that your virginity is a gift, and after that your are dirty and used. No one showed me a condom or told me how to use it. I learned that on my own
- Contraception is not about abortion. And if you Really are pro-life and not just anti-sex, then the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. DUH
- This whole thing is in many ways about chauvinism and misogyny. A woman deserves the right to control her own body and to decide when she gets pregnant. If a woman isn't on the pill, it is up to the man to do the whole condom thing. And yeah, most men are going to put it on bc hey, they're not looking to father a child, but at the same time, he could poke holes in it, or put it on wrong, or convince the girl that he can just pull out. And when you went through abstinence only sex ed, let me tell you, many girls, don't know better. Oh, yeah, and then there's rape. Taking away the pill is taking away women's power. And that IS what these men want.
- The biggest advance in women's liberty in the history of the world was the creation of the Pill. PERIOD.
- Anyone who says they are for small government and yet wants to regulate (or even judge for that fucking matter) my sex life is LYING. Or they just want the government to be so small that its like a tiny submarine that can go inside my vagina??? Yeah, exactly. FUCK THAT.
- IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENT'S PLACE TO EVER REGULATE A CONSENTING SEX LIFE OR MORALITY.
Exhale. So, Rush Limbaugh, as a Georgetown woman, who you said you would buy all the aspirin I needed to put between my knees, let me just say, please take those pills and choke on them you disgusting, misogynistic pig.
xoxo
Princess Kelley
