Monthly Archives: October 2012

And of course, Mitt Romney supports feminism.
First, Kathleen Parker writes a column I start out agreeing with: We shouldn’t be taking time to debate issues such as birth control, abortion, and a woman’s right not to have a rapist’s baby. But in her view, it’s because these silly issues are just a sideshow. The real issues—well, I’m not sure what Parker thinks they are, but they’re not reproductive issues, and anyway it’s all Obama’s fault because contraception was never an issue until Obama forced churches to buy it for their employees: “women have had access to birth control for decades, and no one is trying to take it away.”
This, of course, is a lie. Right-to-lifers—or as Digby calls them, forced birthers—have been working to shut off access to birth control for years. Whether it’s allowing any employer to refuse to pay for a plan that covers birth control (but so far as I know, not entitling an employer to refuse Viagra to unmarried men or a Scientologist to refuse to cover antidepressants) or shutting down Planned Parenthood or proclaiming that only irresponsible sluts use birth control, it is definitely not a side issue.Echidne has more at the link, and No More Mr. Nice Blog has thoughts here.
In related links:
•John Scalzi suggests how Repubs look to the rapists. Digby makes the same point: If women have no control over when the get pregnant, they have no control over their lives.
•Slacktivist reminds us that evangelical opposition to abortion is relatively recent (I’d have been in my teens when they decided this was an issue).
•Slacktivist also reports the unsurprising news that getting HPV vaccine doesn’t turn girls into sex-crazed sluts.
Echidne has more dissection of Parker at the link.
Then we have a study claiming once again that men will only accomplish anything if women approach something as prostitution—a favor to give away in return for suitable amounts of cash or prestige. Therefore, if women give away the cow, men will just sit back and enjoy and society will fall! And besides, the very fact that men run the world and have for centuries proves that women aren’t qualified to accomplish anything, so letting women work instead of becoming whores—er, wives—is just wasteful because women suck. No, I’m not making this one up.
•Then we have libertarian Nick Gillespie showing once again that libertarians—who theoretically i could side with on social issues—can always be counted on to side with the most pro-business candidate (even though Obama is hardly anti-business), regardless of restrictions on people’s social lives.
•Slacktivist tackles the theology of Richard Mourdock’s assertion God plans rape pregnancies. A follow-up here and my post on this topic here. Hecate Demeter points out that in other crimes, the law is supposed to restore your situation—get back your property or pay for your loss. In Mourdock’s eyes (and he ain’t no outlier in Republican politics), once you’re raped you’re stuck with it. And I don’t somehow see him voting government funds to pay for your prenatal medical care either.
No wonder the GOP is split on whether to go with racism or misogyny as a political tactic.
•Just to be fair, let’s note that sexism isn’t unique to the right. And as many accounts of sexual harassment online have shown, it often has no political bias other than “get off my Internet you bitch!”
If the right-wing really got the rollback of feminism it wants, how many people would be cheering, I wonder?
And last but not least (I hope), my latest And column on the war on women Parker says doesn’t exist.

In light of my post earlier this week about religion, here’s an example of a pastor bearing false witness against Obama—and, of course, breaking the law by using his church for an open political endorsement.
•Someone smears an Obama campaign HQ with swastikas. An apparent white supremacist expresses his views at a Romney event.Conservative pundit Ann Althouse’s response: How dare liberals bring up such a disgusting thing(“They say the opportunity to go racial and they took it!”)! A star of a Sen. Scott Brown re-election ad has a lot of racial and gay issues (in another sleazy moment, Brown dismisses asbestos victims thanking his opponent for her help as paid actors).
It’s not that all Repub voters are racists, white supremacists or sexist toads. But from the point of view of the party, voters who are are perfectly welcome in the big tent: For the past 20 years, Republicans have been treating white supremacists, extreme theocrats and others as just one more special interest group whose votes should be courted. So it’s no surprise that when those groups speak out, they speak out pro-Republican.
And the more they speak out without anyone denouncing them, the more other people assume it’s kosher in the party to be a sexist, racist homophobe. And the more sexist, racist homophobes are drawn to Republicans, the more incentive the party has to cater to them. And so the Overton window (the range of what’s considered “acceptable” in public discussion) shifts further to the ugly. In that light, I guess I should be glad that some Republicans do object to saying stuff like this out loud. Even if it’s more about losing votes than principles, defending them only legitimizes the stance. Or simply denying that there’s any bigotry or anti-woman politics in the current Republican party.
•Speaking of which, GOP candidate Richard Mourdock stands by his claim that if a woman gets pregnant from rape, God wants that baby born. At Salon, Irin Carmon suggests another reason we’re hearing so much creepy talk like this: The Tea Party has brought in a surge of candidates fresh from the base and they haven’t learned to cloak their views for the mainstream audience.

Echidne of the Snakes looks at a new study analyzing how conventionally masculine or feminine the features of male and female politicians (respectively) are. The conclusion of the sutdy is that female Repubs conform most to the “typical” face of their gender.
The conclusion presented in various media outlets: Republican women are hotter! Which is not the same thing.
The fuss made over the study seems to suggest it plugs into a very Undead Sexist Cliche: Liberal women are ugly creatures because they don’t care about their looks, don’t shave their legs, don’t shave their armpits, don’t wear short skirts, wear sensible shoes, etc., etc. And if true, this is somehow a coup for the right-wing. Because, you know, if feminists don’t look hot, we can’t take them seriously. Or alternatively, they’re only feminists because they’re not hot: They’re independent because they’re too plain or ugly or man-hating to find a man to take care of them, which is all Real Women want.
Men rarely get this kind of crap (though it’s not unknown—Maureen Dowd has been mocking male Dem politicians for looking girly and unmasculine for years). And when they do, it’s often in the form of how their manly looks will mesmerize women voters.
Then we have Mitt Romney’s schizophrenic view that it’s noble and important to have a parent (i.e., a mother) stay home with the kids … but if a mother is on welfare “even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work.” and know the Dignity of Work.
Of course, with Romney this could be him pulling out of his butt whatever he feels will work at that point in time. But it also reflects a long-standing disconnect about women. As multiple people (family historian Stephanie Coontz among them) have pointed out, the image many people have of the 1950s as an age when women didn’t work ignores that many women relied heavily on women who did. Maids. Housekeepers. Cooks. Ditto the Victorian age when men and women were supposedly divided into separate spheres. The women who didn’t work were upper class; the women who did were lower class. By applying the same divisions (though probably unconsciously), Romney sees no difference between insisting his wife does indeed work and insisting that poor women who stay home with their kids do not.
I have an And column that also covers the topic.