Undead sexist cliche: There is no Republican war on women

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.