March 4, 2012: 16-Year-Old Girl Verbally Abused at School by Classmates Based on Limbaugh’s Vilification of Female Law Student

A woman on the liberal blog Daily Kos who identifies herself as “beantown mom” writes of the personal damage incurred by her daughter as a result of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s three-day verbal assault against Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke (see February 29, 2012, March 1, 2012, and March 2, 2012). Her daughter, who is 16, is on birth control pills due to menorrhagia and secondary dysmenorrhea. Apparently students at the school learned of her use of birth control pills after she was given them during a five-day field trip last week. Her mother found her at school the afternoon of March 2, crying and shaking. She told her mother that some of her classmates were now calling her “a slut, a whore, a b_tch who is screwing every guy in school,” and handed her mother a piece of paper. The paper read: “Little miss innocent, huh? Whatever slut—you take birth control pills so you can f*&# every guy in school! What a joke—u are nothin but a whore! Pretty bad when some guy on the radio who isn’t afraid to tell the truth has to break it down for everybody—if u on the Pill u are nothing but a skank _ss ho! My mom said girls on the pill are tramps who just wanna get laid and don’t care about nothin—is that how u are?” According to the mother, her daughter found the note in her locker before classes began that morning, and the apparent authors of the note—a group of girls she does not know well—began verbally abusing her in the cafeteria, calling her “birth control whore” and other labels. One reportedly said: “I told my mom you were on the pill and she said you were nothing but a little tramp. My mom said some guy she listens to on the radio was just talking about girls like you—he even said you were a slut!” The mother writes that her daughter asked her: “Am I a slut because I take a prescription birth control pill? I don’t take it because I am having sex, I take it to help my periods—am I a bad person, Mom?” The mother writes: “‘Am I a bad person?’ My 16-year-old daughter asked me if she was a bad person because she is on the pill! Who are we? What century do we live in? Who in the hell has the right to say these things? Who does Rush Limbaugh think he is? Why is he allowed to say these things and hurt people? Why have I spent the last two days trying to convince my 16-year-old that she is not a slut?” The mother writes that her daughter is an example of the effect Limbaugh’s words have on ordinary people. [Daily Kos, 3/4/2012]