DONATIONS NEEDED!!

The Women’s Student Action Coalition needs t-shirts to create the Clothesline Project this year. If you have any old or used t-shirts that you don’t wear anymore, please drop them off outside Dr. Piland’s office (Main 267) by March 31st, 2012. Thank you!

For years now, Rush Limbaugh has been at the front of the Republican lines. He has his own talk show, has published several books, and has been shoving conservative agenda down the throats of Americans for quite a while. He’s spoken out many times against feminism, whether it’s by referring to us as “feminazis”, or deducing that “Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.” Plain and simple, he’s an outspoken misogynist. Howsoever, recently, he got himself caught up in a bit of a scandal. As you’re probably aware, the government has been dealing with the very broad issue of contraception. Republican leaders held a forum on the issue, during which there were no women speaking. When Democrats hosted a meeting later on, they included Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, who gave a testimonial about women who need birth control for medical reasons. She specifically talked about how some women who attend Catholic universities have to spend close to $3000 out of pocket on birth control, and that’s on top of their school health insurance. However, Rush Limbaugh didn’t exactly hear that. Instead, he went on the attack mode; “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. So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.”  (Source: Krystal Ball of the Huffington Post). Obviously, Rush missed the overall point of Ms. Fluke’s statement. She was talking about women who medically use birth control, and yet, he simply used it as a jumping point to further put the female gender and our sexual actions on the chopping block. Nobody deserves to be called a slut simply because they demands equal access to a form of health care. Nobody should be publically humiliated because they speak out on the behalf of an entire group of people. To show his support of Sandra, President Obama gave her a phone call, and thanked her for “”helping to amplify the voices of women across the country,”. Truly, that’s all she was doing. She wasn’t requesting to be paid for her sexual endeavors, nor was she inviting Rush Limbaugh to make disgusting comments about her body and what she chooses to do with it.

There’s been so much public turmoil about the issue that many have called upon Rush’s advertisers to pull their ads from his show and website as a result of his sexist words. Today alone, three of Rush’s biggest advertisers, AutoZone, Sleep Train, and Quicken Loan did just that. This is a huge victory for the issue, but there are still plenty of his fiscal supports who need to hear from us. If you yourself would like to get involved, the hash tags on twitter are going out as #BoycottRush and #StandwithSandra. Or, here’s the link to an online petition: http://leftaction.com/action/boycott-rush