Slut.

This week Rush Limbaugh called a woman a slut and demanded that she produce videos of her performing sexual acts, all because she went to Congress and supported the mandate that insurance providers cover birth control.  She's a slut because her politics don't jibe with those of Rush Limbaugh?  She's a slut because she supports the use of birth control?  No, she's been called a slut for no other reason than because she's a woman.

Limbaugh has yet to call one man who supports this mandate a slut.  He has not called the President a slut.  He waited for a woman, a woman with no political or financial power, to come forward and speak her mind and then attacked.  Please notice he would never have hit Hillary Clinton or Ann Coulter (ick), with this derogatory term, they have money and power.  He choose someone young and unknown to abuse.  He raped her verbally, demanding that she produce porn for him.  He did his best to demean her by implying she had multiple bed partners lined up around the block as if she lived to service men.  Limbaugh could not effectively use this attack on a man.  Men traditionally high five one another for promiscuous behavior.

The word slut is used exclusively for women just as,  the n-word, has been used to demean blacks and yet there has been no out cry to eliminate the word or to make it politically incorrect.  So today I sat down with DH and tried to think of some derogatory terms that have been exclusively used for men.  Geezer, dick and faggot (not a nice word, sorry, but it's to make a point not an attack), were all we could come up with this morning.  Maybe there are others, but let's face it I'm not going to work that hard.  We next came up with a list of exclusively female derogatory terms and frankly they just tumbled out: bitch, cunt, whore, hoe, slut.  Then there are the always popular PMS/on your period insults.  I find it interesting that society has so many derogatory words for women and yet the worst we could come up with for men is calling them gay.  Let's face it calling a guy a geezer or a dick isn't going to overly upset them or make them feel less than a man.

So Limbaugh has found it appropriate to attack a woman for expressing her political views.  This is nothing new on his part or for that matter the parts of many, many men.  Women were attacked for wanting the right to vote, for asking that the pill be made legal, for asking for the right to own property, for asking for the right to keep her wages, for asking for equal pay for equal work, for asking for the right to keep her children in a divorce, and today, for asking to have insurance companies to cover the cost of a prescription contraceptive.  It's amazing to me, men have not had to go and testify in front of congress in order to get their insurance companies to cover Viagra, and yet according to Limbaugh we are the sluts for daring to want coverage on a pill that is actually medically necessary for many women.  Go figure.

If you are a woman, no matter what side you are in this mandate thing, you should be outraged.  It should not be acceptable for a man to attack a woman in this manner for expressing an opinion.  I hope you join me in boycotting any company who sponsors this abusive, misogynist man and allows him to continue to speak to the public.