Aspirin and Sluts - Girls aren’t allowed to have fun

Foster Freiss thinks that women should forget about birth control pills and “put an aspirin between their knees.” Rush Limbaugh thinks that any woman, who seeks to have her employee insurance pay for her reproductive healthcare is a “slut…it makes her a prostitute,” as he recently described Georgetown graduate student Sandra Fluke. Rush Limbaugh is a pig and doesn’t deserve any press time here, and Foster Freiss is a clueless idiot, but their bellicose outbursts do shed light on the conservative war against women.

Salt Cay donkeys say "sex is fun"

GOP candidates stutter along trying to avoid the issue. Romney hesitates primarily because he personally lacks any moral conviction on any subject, and Santorum because the father of eight doesn’t want to confess that he really doesn’t think women should have the right to any reproductive freedom. Gingrich, hypocrite extraordinaire, takes the sentiment even further and would make some forms of birth control, such as IUDs and morning after pills for rape victims, illegal. In a minimal sense, we owe a debt of gratitude to Limbaugh and those like him because through their honest, albeit sexist statements, the true feelings of conservatives who are less up front about their sentiments can be gleaned.

Conservatives claim their blatant sexism is based on their own interpretation of Biblical doctrine; however, in reality, the Bible has little to say on the subject of birth control, probably because it was written by men. Birth control back in the Bronze Age was almost the exclusive domain of women and included but was not limited to various methods of pregnancy avoidance, abortificants and infanticide. My reading of the Bible indicates that God approves of all of the above.

In several instances, God condones infanticide. In Genesis 22:1-2, He commands Abraham to “Take now  your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering…” Ultimately, in what is cited as an act of compassion (never mind the psychological torment), God stays the execution of Isaac, but of course the baby Isaac is a Hebrew. The offspring of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites are not so fortunate. In their instance, God commands that “you must not let anything that breathes remain alive (Deuteronomy 20:16).

In Numbers 5:11-29, God prescribes an elixir that not only conveniently aborts a fetus, but also renders a suspected wanton woman sterile. If a man only suspects that his wife has been unfaithful, he can take her to a priest who will brew a “water of bitterness” that “brings the curse...and make(s) your womb discharge (and) your uterus drop.”

On the other hand, God does suggest that humans “Be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), but nowhere does he say that people should be denied the ability to control their family size. To interpret the scripture as such would be to commit a non sequitur (does not follow) logical fallacy and thereby certainly could not represent the dictates of an infallible God.

Then there is the unfortunate case of Onan (Genesis 38). The young man was encumbered with his dead brother’s wife and ordered to give her children. But in a strange Bronze Age misunderstanding of biology, Onan’s new wife’s children would still be heirs to his brother. Onan would be expected to raise, support and care for these children (who in reality are his own), but they would live on to glorify his dead brother instead of the man who actually raised them. Onan crafted a clever methodology for avoiding this potentially sticky situation. “Since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so he would not give offspring to his brother” (Genesis 38:9). For some reason the Lord is affronted by Onan’s behavior and smites him. Conservative religious zealots make a lot of convoluted judgments regarding the interpretation of this passage, ranging from prohibitions against masturbation to homosexuality. In all probability, God is simply killing Onan for failing to fulfill his brotherly duty, rather than for spilling his seed. I prefer to give the boys a pass on this one. Go ahead, masturbate and spill your seed to your heart’s content. Any God who commands the utter annihilation of entire races of people certainly doesn’t care about a few sperm cells.

The bottom line is conservatives don’t think that women should be allowed to enjoy sex. How do we know this? We only have to look at how they treat women who own and enjoy their sexuality. Since Rush Limbaugh never went to graduate school, he probably doesn’t realize that Sandra Fluke most likely has little time for meaningless sexual liaisons with so many men she can’t keep track of them all. Instead, I would guess that like most modern, adult women, she enjoys mature, loving relationships with individual men on a monogamous basis, or perhaps she is taking contraceptives for her acne. Who cares? More power to her if she is swinging from the chandeliers and completing a graduate degree. Kudos.

Finally, the whole ridiculous conversation ignores half of the equation. Who are all these women on birth control having sex with? Probably not other women, because then they wouldn’t need birth control. They must be having sex with men who are equally complicit. What is the word for a male version of a slut or whore?  Oops, there isn’t one, which is telling in and of itself. The truth is that nobody should be slandered and humiliated (male or female) for responsibly enjoying sex with a willing adult partner. It is supposed to be fun, and we are designed to enjoy it. If God really wanted all women to be chaste and grit their teeth during the chore of sex, He would not have gifted them a clitoris and the ability to have multiple orgasms. I prefer to believe these attributes are some of the highlights of Nature’s intelligent design.

It is telling that the so-called religious right wants to prevent women from access to free birth control but is quite happy to condone health insurance coverage of Viagra. Perhaps those same men are, let’s say, a (very) little bit intimidated by sexually liberated women. Let the "religious" groups that are morally offended about birth control pills stop covering Viagra instead and prevent pregnancy that way. The rest of us should be allowed to bonk like rabbits and enjoy it too, the way Nature intended. To insist we do otherwise is an infringement on our moral liberty.