Rush to get women back under the male boot

Although it's obviously clear, as Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke testified, that birth control pills are crucial ingredients of women's health care, their widespread availability has also been an important aspect of the struggle for women's liberation from male domination. According to Nancy L. Cohen (Delirium: How the Sexual Counterrevolution is Polarizing America):

Enovid, the first birth control Pill, went on the market in 1960. Unlike any other previously available form of contraception, the Pill was both reliable and controlled by a woman herself, requiring neither the consent nor the knowledge of her sexual partner. .... The Pill made possible the sexual revolution of the 1960s. .... ...with the impetus the sexual revolution gave to a new feminism and a movement for gay liberation, it became one of the major catalysts of America's ongoing political delirium.

It's the challenge to male domination that not only provoked Rush Limbaugh's conniption last week but also the recent outbursts of a number of male religious honchos. (see photo of Issa birth-control hearing) There have been many aspects to male domination over the ages but control of the reproductive process has always been key. And when birth control shifted into women's hands, genuine equality between the genders became a real possibility. Women could for the first time really decide whether and when they would get pregnant. In other words, they finally could control their own lives - both at work and at home. Women's Liberation, not religious freedom, is at the center of the current brouhaha over birth control. The very language Limbaugh used in his diatribes - "slut" & "prostitute" - has historically been used to label any woman who stands up for women's rights to get her back under the male boot.