“At the end of the week, I am the person that the women of America are to fear the most?”

Limbaugh’s call for the posting of videotapes of women who use birth control went beyond sticks and stones, though, says Kathi Miner, an assistant professor of psychology and women’s and gender studies at Texas A&M University, who described the notion as “a form of sexual violence.”

The president of Georgetown, a Catholic Jesuit institution, defended Fluke’s right to express her views without fear of attack. “This expression of conscience was in the tradition of the deepest values we share as a people,” John DeGioia wrote in a letter posted on the university’s website. “One need not agree with her substantive position to support her right to respectful free expression.”

And yet, DeGioia said, citing Limbaugh, some people who disagreed with Fluke’s position “responded with behavior that can only be described as misogynistic, vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the position of our student.”