Even when their own strategist specifically tells them to do so, Republicans just can’t seem to stop talking about rape. Rape rape rape. They looooove rape. You don’t even need a woman’s consent to MAKE MOAR BABIESZ. It’s a Freudian power-fantasy and the manifest destiny of their superior white sperm, all rolled into one.
Which is why it should come as no surprise that Paul Ryan’s latest version of his seminal “cell clusters and more valuable than the slutty sluts harboring them” bill contains deliberately-ambiguous language that would actually serve to protect the rights of rapists at the expense of the rights of women.
Section 2(2) of the proposed legislation states, “Congress affirms that the Congress of each State, the District of Columbia, and all United States territories have the authority to protect the lives of all human beings residing in its [sic] respective jurisdictions.” Which means if a woman tried to access her legal right to privacy and autonomy in her health care decisions, the man who raped and impregnated her against her will could force her into a courtroom and sue her because the magic fetus he created with his omnipotent male god-sperm is a life.
I’m not sure I can even bring myself to write about the unmitigated horrors of that kind of situation.
This acceptance and legitimization of rape absolutely must stop. Rape is not a “method of conception” or an unintentional “gift from God;” rape is an abomination and a vile reflection of the hellish depths to which our society is sinking. Rapists do not have equal rights; they are criminals.
Do you know how many times the word “woman” is mentioned in Ryan’s Sanctity of Human Life bill? Zero. Exactly zero times. Not that this is shocking, since Republicans have publicly declared via their refusal to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that not all women are people. Women are not guaranteed a “sanctity of human life,” they are only guaranteed their proper place beneath a man and breeding.
None of this Republican crusade to “protect babies” has anything to do with protecting actual, innocent human life. If Republicans had a Jesus-like concern for innocent lives, they would expand protections under VAWA, they would expand social services for underprivileged children, they would increase social support for women so bringing a child into the world wouldn’t be such a financially daunting task, they would cut military spending and increase school meal programs – not the other way around.
They don’t want to protect “babies” – they want to protect the sanctity of their own sperm. Sadly, I’m not kidding. They want legislated recognition that human life spews forth from their uncut dicks, and that they therefor are superior to women in all ways, just as their convoluted interpretation of the bible dictates. Their life-sabre penises are the wand of God, spreading their sacred seed far and wide. By any means necessary.
Sanctifying the result of rape as an act of God negates the very humanity of the woman upon which the crime was perpetrated.
But unfortunately for Republicans, it’s 2013, and the tide in this country seems to be slowly but surely turning. I hope these vainglorious attempts to sanctify fatherhood at the expense of a woman’s very humanity are the last dying gasps of a spiteful breed of misogynists facing the reality that “white male” is no longer an unparalleled virtue. The defeat of nearly every idiot Republican who said something stupid about rape in the 2012 election seems to indicate that humanity in this country is not faltering and falling prostrate at the altar of regressivism and hatred.
Until then, though, we must continue to speak out against these insidious hatemongers and identify their disingenuous rhetorical bullshit for what it is: blatant and deadly misogyny.