Filipovic writes: "It's no accident GOP candidates can't stop talking about rape: the party view is women are mere vessels subject to men's will."
Missouri Senate Candidate Todd Akin. (photo: St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
The Real Republican Rape Platform
25 October 12
It's no accident GOP candidates can't stop talking about rape: the party view is women are mere vessels subject to men's will
ear GOP candidates and party members,
I'm going to give you some free campaign advice: stop talking about rape.
The latest Republican rape commentary comes from Romney-endorsed Indiana senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock, who tells us:
"I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
Cue outrage, then cue "apology" from Mourdock – not for his comments, but for "any interpretation other than what I intended". National Republican senatorial committee chairman John Cornyn voiced his support for Mourdock and added that he also believes "life is a gift from God."
I would hate for Mr Mourdock to think I'm misinterpreting him here, so let's be clear about what he said: he did not say that rape is a gift from God. He did say that an unwanted pregnancy is a post-rape goodie bag from the Lord. And that the Lord intended it to happen that way.
Perhaps God should rethink his delivery system. And perhaps Mourdock should rethink his interpretation of divine will.
What this umpteenth rape comment tells us isn't that the Republican party has a handful of unhinged members who sometimes flub their talking points. It reveals the real agendas and beliefs of the GOP as a whole.
These incidents aren't isolated, and they aren't rare. Sharron Angle, who ran for a US Senate seat out of Nevada, said she would tell a young girl wanting an abortion after being raped and impregnated by her father that "two wrongs don't make a right" and that she should make a "lemon situation into lemonade". Todd Akin said victims of "legitimate rape" don't get pregnant – an especially confusing talking point, if God is giving rape victims the gift of pregnancy. Maybe God only gives that gift to victims of illegitimate rape?
Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard asserted:
"Some girls rape easy."
Douglas Henry, a Tennessee state senator, told his colleagues:
"Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse."
Republican activist Phyllis Schlafly declared that marital rape doesn't exist, because when you get married you sign up to be sexually available to your husband at all times. And when asked a few years back about what kind of rape victim should be allowed to have an abortion, South Dakota Republican Bill Napoli answered:
"A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life."
Rape lemonade. Legitimate rape. The sodomized virgin exception. A rape gift from God.
Some Republicans, like Mitt Romney, have tried to distance themselves from their party's rhetorical obsession with sexual violation. What they're hoping we won't notice is the fact that their party is politically committed to sexual violation.
Opposition to abortion in all cases – rape, incest, even to save the pregnant woman's life or health – is written into the Republican party platform. Realizing they can't make abortion illegal overnight, conservatives instead rally around smaller initiatives like mandatory waiting periods, transvaginal ultrasounds and mandated lectures about "life" to make abortion as expensive, difficult and humiliating as possible.
Republicans bow to the demands of "pro-life" organizations, not a single one of which supports even birth control, and the GOP now routinely opposes any effort to make birth control or sexual education available and accessible. They propose laws that would require women to tell their employers what they're using birth control for, so that employers could determine which women don't deserve coverage (the slutty ones who use birth control to avoid unwanted pregnancy) and which women do (the OK ones who use it for other medical reasons).
Mainstream GOP leaders, including Mitt Romney, campaign with conservative activists who lament the fact that women today no longer fully submit to the authority of their husbands and fathers, mourn a better time when you could legally beat your wife, and celebrate the laws of places like Saudi Arabia where men are properly in charge. Senate Republicans, including Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan and "legitimate rape" Todd Akin, blocked the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. And Ryan and Akin joined forces again to propose "personhood" legislation in Washington, DC that would define a fertilized egg as a person from the moment sperm meets egg, outlawing abortion in all cases and many forms of contraception, and raising some serious questions about how, exactly, such a law would be enforced.
Underlying the Republican rape comments and actual Republican political goals are a few fundamental convictions: first, women are vessels for childbearing and care-taking; second, women cannot be trusted; and third, women are the property of men.
Mourdock's statement that conceiving from rape is a gift positions women as receptacles, not as autonomous human beings. This view of women as vessels – vessels for sex with their husbands, vessels for carrying a pregnancy, vessels for God's plan – is a necessary component of the kind of extreme anti-abortion legislation most Republican politicians support.
So is the idea that women are both fundamentally unintelligent and dishonest. Akin's "legitimate rape" comment and Rivard's contention that "some girls rape easy" rely on the idea that women routinely lie about rape and shouldn't be believed; blocking VAWA relied partly on similar logic put forward by men's rights activists, that women lie about being abused in order to secure citizenship and other benefits. Hostility to abortion rights similarly positions rightwing lawmakers as the best people to determine whether or not any particular woman should be legally compelled to carry a pregnancy to term.
Women, they seem to think, don't know their own bodies or their own lives, and cannot be trusted to determine for themselves whether continuing a pregnancy is a good idea.
Rape treats women as vessels, disregarding our autonomy and our right to control what happens to us physically and sexually. The Republican position is that women are not entitled to make fundamental decisions about our own bodies and our own sexual and reproductive health. When that position is written into the GOP platform and is a legislative priority, can we really be surprised when it's further reflected in Republican legislators' comments on rape?
These aren't a few errant remarks from insensitive politicians. They're at the heart of the Republican party's agenda.
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Comments
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Especially old angry white men, that want to establish their dominance over the females.
Any females having a picture taken with these 2 guys, is lacking in the IQ department,
Unfortunately, the dinosaurs still exist in a great number of the general population who will vote Republican, either BECAUSE of this idiocy or simply because they will vote Republican.
I am sickened at what is being done to women in America at the hands of lunatic men with power.
I will leave -- again -- if Romney/Ryan is elected. I cannot live in a country who believes that 51% of its population -- the women who gave then life -- are mere chattel. That is NO democracy!
Sickening.
N.
Oh yeah: STUPID!
So now rape is "god's will" (I use the lower case 'g' because I don't want to be irreverant in this idiotic reference). And pregnancy only occurs in "illegitimate rape."
So I wonder what these dunderheads have to say about murder, or war or 9/11 for that matter? More god's will? Whose god?
Whatever happended to "God" providing man with "free will" to screw up on his own?
I really can't stand any more of this crap.
Surely America can do better.
I trust NONE of this expensive charade! Not when a Supreme Court is allowed to make the call for voters, not when thousands of names are feloniously eliminated without any penalties extended to those who executed this travesty, and not when touch stone screens record what their computer soft-ware owners program.
U.S. Presidential elections have become the greatest show of hubris, deception, and burlesque of any known to humanity.
Well said, but you have to remember this the country that almost elected Dubya president twice. This may indeed be the best we can do. We need to re-think our educational policies.
Sharing power is the issue, and those who have considered it their birth right see the pie split into endlessly narrower pieces. Rather than identify with the full citizenry, they ape their way towards the last of the disseminated crumbs.
Factually 35% of eligible voters are not registered to vote IN THE BEST YEARS, LIKE 2008. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/page-gardner/the-real-crisis-35--of-am_b_1615318.html ) Among those who ARE registered, the highest voter turn out we've seen in generations was for the 08 election, when 56.8% of the eligible population voted. ( http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html ).
In 2010, a much lower turnout year, 37.8% voted (ibid)
So, in an AVERAGE election year, the decision is made by between 18 and 20% of thie total eligible voters, with a dissent of between 16 and 19%.
Think about it. This of course is why Democrats do better in high turn out elections, and why the GOP will do anything to suppress voters.
Regards.
I think that the polls are trying to make it look closer then it is too. I know that most of my republican friends cant stand Mitt Romney and will be sitting this election out. So I dont know where these voters are? Except in the minds of Fox news and some hacker at the voting machines?
That sequence of ideas is a difficult one to marry to the philosophy of 'Rugged Individualism' other Republicans and Ayn Rand Objectivist readers like so much.
But I guess that when you need votes you end up with strange, contradictory, bedfellows.
By the way.
Tell the Fluke girl that blocking the government from picking my pockets so she can get free condoms does not stop her from spending her own money to support her own choices.
Let's see Obama is a muslim. Obama apologizes for the U.S. Oh yeah, Democrats are soft--scuze me--must of been pre-taking out Bin Laden,
While we are talking about crotches meds, let's talk about no federal funding for Viagra by Medicare, Medicaid, VA or paying for it through employer supported insurance without the male having his member probed, having to explain to his boss that it isn't for pleasre but is medically necessary.
Grow up! You are the lunatic fringe that is destroying the country. Get some issues that don't involve the lady garden.
Yes, life is precious. So precious that we may overflow the planet. These religious people should be pushing contraception as a method of lessening the damage we are doing. They should be more concerned about children already here, e.g. education.
I'm not advocating abortion, abortion is something that should be used with careful consideration, but each woman can make that decision - she knows the consequences.
And Phyllis Shafly may one day learn this truth firsthand... I abhor women who reinforce creeds that further diminish women for their immediate personal gain. She is repugnant on all scales.
Shame on those who deny distaff humanity. All three major religions do it.
Historically, the reason that Augustine got away with his heresies was that he was a favorite of the Bishops that wanted only their powerful city-centered dioceses. Those who had inherited a monastic tradition were seen as challenging the authority of those rich Bishops. However, when Rome (the empire) fell, it was those monks that brought back literacy and brought back Christianity. But the teachings of Augustine became convenient in later centuries for those who wanted power, and people such as Calvin spread those ideas.
For more on the down side of Augustine: read a life of John Cassian, a monk that spread monasticism into France in the early 5th century. This is a very old argument.
You saw the result of 8 years of Bush-Cheney Republican agenda.
Romney- lying Ryan - are no different, they're agenda is no different - so the outcome will be the same.
How dumb can Republican voters be? Here's the Republican-tea bags putting out fears of guns, religious extremism, and women bashing to stir up the rightwing nut base - and at the same time the results of Republican-tea bag agenda --- steals the money right out the of the pockets of the Republican voters.
This is what they do... very little else.... except perhaps eat their poop pellets voraciously gulping them down
with whipped cream.....
Very few people have ever pushed abortion as a form of birth control - at this point birth control can be acquired much more easily than an abortion. Late term abortion is also not popular, Mannstein, but can be very necessary. If states make it a law that a woman cannot have a late abortion and must carry a dead child to term, the mother's life is very much in danger.
Please provide a reference for your statement.
YOU provide a link first.
The Bill that was defeated by the Congress which would have made late term abortions the law of the land clearly stated if the HEALTH of the mother is danger. Not if the LIFE of the mother is in danger. Fortunately the Bill was stopped in its tracks.
Do you not find it tragic that in this age of plenty with its high tech medical technology the most dangreous time and place for an infant is during the first nine months in the womb of its expectant mother? Might the lack of a social safety net that we are all fighting for have anything to do with that? Interestingly, the percentage of abortions per capita in Sweden is lower than in the US, the land of plenty.
Your fears of chastity belts becoming the norm are unfounded. What is in our future though is bumping off the next most vulnerable group in our society, namely the aged and the handicapped. Ryan's plan for health care will see to that as will the left wing nuts that have a ballot question in our state for physician assisted suicide.
The Russian Jewess Ayan Rand would be proud of where the US is headed were she alive today.
If a zygote is a baby, how can killing it be "self-defense" under any circumstances? If your ideas are "morality" based, they're completely inconsistent with any moral framework. If they're scientifically based, they're completely inconsistent with science.
Also, who's this "we" who are "all" fighting for the social safety net? The people who want to make abortion illegal are simultaneously fighting hard to strip away any last vestiges of the social safety net. Your comment there is inconsistent with reality.
If a baby in the birth cannal is a Zygote then you you are scientifically inconsistent with reality as you would have it.
If we succumb to your argument why not make male masturbation a crime since that frequent practive wastes genetic material necessary to fertilize an egg.
"The Bill that was defeated by the Congress which would have made late term abortions the law of the land clearly stated if the HEALTH of the mother is danger."
While you're at it, you're not naming the bill specifically. Therefore, "bill" is not capitalized.
See what happens when we start correcting others about grammar and spelling rather than just discussing the substance of the argument?
I'd rather support a "safety net" for unfortunates than one where the few make a fortune, thus, not needing a "net."
Chastity belts? That was just sarcacism.
Ayan Rand is basically a "poster child" of the right. However, most Dems share the same ideology as Repubs, but with diffent tactics.
You can't because that is not and has never been what is supported by those who refuse to judge others.
If you had, you would have known that it prohibits 3rd trimester abortions except when in endangers the life and health of the woman. It is also used when the baby, who is very much wanted, will live a brief and brutal life because of serious birth defects.
If you seriously wanted to protect the unborn, you would oppose wars. 45% of Falluga women are miscarrying because of all the shit we bombed them with. And many of the remaining babies are seriously malformed - often not viable.
I have indeed read Roe v Wade.
The court ruled that after life begins the fetus has the same rights under our constitution as the rest of us. What the court couls not agree on when life actually begins so that Roe V Wade became the law of the land.
Some left wing nuts and feminists want us to believe life does not start after the child lives the birth canal, hence they are pushing for late term abortion as being a basic human right, the life of the infant be damned.
I also oppose war as you can see from my responses in this blog. One reason I have a problem with Republicans although I have been called such by some commentators here.
Also so it's murder if still in the womb, but not murder when after the birth the child is left in a dumpster, or dies of illness because of no universal healthcare, or starves because the mother is unable to support the child. Then it's the mother fault for getting pregnant, for not using proper BIRTH CONTROL. Rather hypocritical wouldn't you say?
Most Dems DO PUSH for sex education and contraceptives as an effective means to reduce unwanted pregnancies.
What I love about wing nuts is their talent for mischaracteriza tion of everything.
T
Though theology may or not be entirely composed of BS, the organized religions have served a useful social purpose as a conduit for the philosophy of morals and ethics. I am sorry to see this worthy function rotting away.
Note that Liberty is always personified as a woman, often as a goddess. Until we understand why that is -- good starting-points are Barbara Mor's "The Great Cosmic Mother" and Robert Graves' "The White Goddess" -- we will not comprehend the totality of the Republicans' fanaticism.
Mor shows us the direct lineage from patriarchy to the (biologically impossible) male creator-god, thence from the religion of the tyrannical divine father to capitalism and finally capitalism's fulfillment in fascism, fundamentalism and fundamentalist theology with its "our fuhrer who art in heaven" notions of biblical, Sharia and Talmudic law.
Mor also shows us how Abrahamic theology is ultimately that of a death cult. It regards the apocalypse -- the end of everything -- as the only "redemption" of a world declared to be evil. Thus the Republican effort to suppress science, particularly the truths of terminal climate change and human sexuality.
Such hatred is focused on woman not just because she is the origin of human life, but because for our species' first 100,000 years, she was also our sole image of the deity: “In the beginning was the Mother, and she gave birth...”
Lorenblis, if you haven't previously done so, you might wish to read Merlin Stone's excellent non-fiction work "When God Was a Woman"
It is and archaeologicall y documented book which details the religion of the Goddess. Originally worshipped in various forms as Astarte, Isis, Ishtar, etc. She was the supreme deity in the Near and Middle East. Worshipped for fertility, revered as the wise creator and the one source of universal order and life. In cultures who worshipped her, women bought and sold property, traded in the marketplace, inherited title and property from mother to daughter. As contended (very persuasively) by Stone, Judaism was the patriarchal re-imaging of the Goddess as a wanton, depraved slut, as were her priestesses, worshippers and acolytes (i.e., the bible talks of the whore of Babylon, who was arguably a priestess performing a fertility ritual). Judaism and all Judeo-Christian religions were a method for men, who were already physically stronger, to wrest spiritual guidance and thus power, from women. From Genesis declaring that Eve seduced Adam into eating from the forbidden fruit, onward, Judeo-Christian religions have been based upon a belief that women are 'unclean' and lesser than men. The book, filled with historical references to the often violent overthrow of established Goddess/Mother religions is FASCINATING!
1. Pat Robertson telling a caller who thought his wife was getting too uppity that it's too bad he didn't live in Saudi Arabia where he could beat the hell out of her. Instead, unfortunately, he lived in dumb old America, where he "couldn't" - presumably because of those Godless liberals and their "political correctness".
2. Clayton Williams, the former Governor of Texas (Texas again? Interesting pattern). Texas was FORCED AGAINST ITS WILL to elect a FEMALE DEMOCRAT when it was revealed that its GOP governor made a recorded joke about rape while sitting around a campfire pretending he was a "cowboy".
He said rape victims "might as well just sit back and enjoy the ride".
Many republicans (I know a few who fit this description) are angry and bitter at all women after not telling them how manly they were when they were 16 years old. That lack of female worship at a young age has left such an indelible scar on many repug males that it's surprising there aren't more Gabrielle Giffords incidents.
It's another one of those badly kept "secrets" (like their overt racism) they all assume nobody knows about, because they don't realize how many of the people they spout off in front of in public places happen to be Democrats.
It's a defensive gesture, a/k/a a deflection device.
3. CNN was embarrassed by a WOMAN (who teaches at the U. of Texas) who "bypassed" their "editorial department" with her conveniently timed article about single women voting more liberal when they're ovulating - apparently, because they're more slutty at that time of the month and suddenly think abortion sounds pretty cool.
Get it? Apparently, "only sluts vote for Democrats".
It has been increasing exponentially and this year it is at a fever pitch. It is past time that we tolerate this. SPEAK OUT!!!!!! Not timidily but with the conviction that many of us know that this is simply not acceptable in our culture, in our faith, in our national moral code. Ask the Jews how it worked for them. And yes, now as then, our Christian churches were on the wrong side. That can be addressed at the same time. Our American heritage and value system demands more of us than we have been willing to do. It is up to us.
We know that methane (much worse than CO2) is being released from the Atlantic shelf, arctic land in Siberia and the other land masses, and also the land under the arctic ocean. Human-caused carbon dioxide started this; what pride will we have when we are starving?
A corporation is a person.
The world population was counted recently as 7 billion, but this obsolete now.
district, not their personal beliefs. If someone is running for office on their personal belief as a reason to vote for them, they are not going to represent the people, they are going to try to make their personal belief a law. This is not representation, it is a dictatorship.
Sure it is only one issue, and very personal. There are many rape victims who are probably waking up screaming (like myself) because these Republicans are bringing up very ugly memories, quite aside from abortion. In my case, I was happily married, but a stranger accosted me at gunpoint. Was it forcible because I didn't want him shooting the gun, and therefore I didn't struggle? At that time, I was stronger than most of the men I knew; it was lucky that he had a gun because otherwise I would have picked him up and thrown him out my window, and I would have been charged with murder. I might even be out of jail by now.
But, back to "more important" issues such as the environment, education, energy resources, health care, jobs and bank regulations, global warfare, global poverty and educational problems, global women's rights... Oh, the Republicans have addressed NONE of these issues.
The Republicans are discussing rape to intimidate women. It is implied that if women do not vote for them, then women will be raped by hoards of gun totin' hollerin' malnourished and uneducated white supremacists. Every time a Republican says "rape" it intimidates women.
Please learn how to spell the plural of woman. It would help in attempting to make your point.
Please learn that no one is impressed with spelling corrections. It makes it look like your point has no substance, so you've resorted to idle nitpicking.
"Please learn that no one is impressed with spelling corrections."
If that's the case is it any wonder that the US is way down on the list in spelling ang grammar compared to the rest of the world? That US colleges are required to provide remedial english writing courses for freshmen. That we spend more on primary and secondary education than European countries but score on student tests behind all of them? Little poor Finland scores highest in this regard. Where exactly the US stands I can't recollect just now but I believe we are somewhere behind Nigeria.
You may not value good spelling and grammar. I certainly do. I expect value for high real estate taxes, thank you very much. One more thing, very few Americans have mastered a second language compared to Europeans.
Your opinion that my argument is wrongful is inconsequential . Plenty of non partisan others would agree with my views on abortion both women and men but most importantly abortion survivors.
Yes rockieball there are some survivors.
Bless you for your insightful conclusion.
It surprises me that you didn't use the well worn anti semite smear tactic. Or am I getting ahead of you? In that case I'd be in good company with President Jimmy Carter, President Truman, Bishop Mandela, and any one else the self Chosen have smeared.
As for spelling and grammar might you prefer that found in Das Kapital by certain German Jew named Karl Marx?
Incidentally, being able to read and write ones mother tongue not to mention having command of a second foreign language is of course of no value among certain circles of our society. For them ignorance is bliss!
to care for ourselves and take care of the earth. When events happen, such as drought, flood, and other natural disasters, we must do whatever is required to recover from them. We do not say "it is God's will". If a woman becomes pregnant, it is because of the cycle, not because of God's will. Let's get out of the dark ages of thinking. There is a reason that we have a brain and free will and a conscience. Let women use theirs.
Please! Let's vote these out of office!
That's a choice? Self-immolation versus Obama?
Also note that there are not only women supporters of the GOP but prominent members as well, such as is Schlafly and Angle.
Those who place personal profit before truth, justice, and liberty for all will get their karmic desserts.
One can be prominent and not an idiot, or one can be prominent and an idiot, or one can not be prominent and not an idiot, or one can be both not prominent and also an idiot.
From your comment one gets the impression you fall into the last category.
Their Dogma is about to be run over by their Karma! They have their right to their opinions and their religions however, their God is no bigger than my God. Mine stays out of politics and so should theirs. Theocracy is just that, be it Islamic, Evangelical, or whatever.
This country was founded on religious freedom and freedom from religion. So go to worship all you want on Sunday but when you walk out of the your house of prayer you become a guest in reality. It is arrogant to believe you control it.
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”
― Sinclair Lewis
What women do with their health is between them and their beliefs. No one invited you into that conversation. So just butt the fuck out and pray for them if it makes you feel better.
I went by the Assembly Of God the other day and they were just getting his arms attached.
First they came for the Jews and no one objected, then they came for the Social Democrats and no one objected, then they came for the Jeohova Witness still no one objected, finally they came for the rest of us and who would object?
I will speak out against what I consider to be murder whether invited or not, your foul language not withstanding!
Is that also god's wonderful gift or what? Can you imagine a more wonderful gift than being censured all your life because some religious fool decided that you may not have any power to make your own reproductive choices? That you must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous religions misogyny for the rest of your life?
With gifts like that who needs the right to vote if you might vote against the religious fools who insist on deciding for you how much suffering you must bear because you are female who was violated by some man?
I can't agree more! Bravo!
Right now 31 states allow visitation and EVEN custody rights for rapists: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/08/31-states-grant-rapists-custody-and-visitation-rights/56118/
If a woman is forced to bear a rapist's child, is that individual entitled to seek parental rights including custody?
Whoa, that's food for thought.
I think we need to develop a special type of duct tape to put over men's mouths so they can't pontificate about women's bodies a la Akin.
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