Anti-trans Republican Rep. Nancy Mace recently announced on the House floor that she’d been raped by four men, including her ex-fiancee. By charging this on the House floor, she was legally protected from any defamation lawsuit or similar responses, which she pointed out in her speech. She says she took this to the AG in her state, and he did nothing.
Much as I despise Mace, at this point I don’t rule out her story. If we’re going to believe women, that includes women I dislike. While the AG says he knows nothing of this, South Carolina state police say they’ve had an ongoing investigation since 2023. That said, I’m baffled by her setting up a rape-report hotline that isn’t: it’s just a voicemail for victims to leave messages, with no guarantee of confidentiality. As someone who used to volunteer for a crisis line, this is not the way to handle rape reports, and I don’t see what it gains her. I imagine we’ll learn more down the road.
Now, moving on to the Felon of the United States and his cabinet. Unsurprisingly the FOTUS who sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and used to brag about grabbing women by the p-word does not have a problem with staffing his cabinet with alleged abusers and abuse enablers: Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Linda McMahon, who allegedly helped her husband cover up abuse. The DOJ had a criminal probe going on the Vince McMahon allegations; unsurprisingly it’s been terminated. And McMahon’s Education Department is unsurprisingly going soft on allegations of sexual and racial discrimination in favor of investigating trans people and anti-white discrimination.
None this is shocking: Republicans didn’t give a crap about putting an accused rapist on the Supreme Court and multiple right-wingers said even if Kavanaugh were guilty it was no big deal. Others snarled angrily at the mere thought a prominent man should be punished for sexual assault.
It’s not that the rest of society is free of rape but Republicans and the religious right embrace it as a man’s right. Religious leaders rape, right-wing churches often cover it up. One standard defense is that this happens in other organizations, which is true — but if that’s the case, churches loses their claim to be our moral superiors (“The Southern Baptist Church, covering up rape just like the US military.”). Which would contradict their claims that making us a Christian state would fix anything (I’m sure it would be easier to bury the rape charges).
The military has responded to FOTUS’ anti-diversity decrees by freezing sexual-assault training. It’s an open-ended pause. I can’t see how that qualifies as anti-DEI — are they claiming that worrying about women getting assaulted is some kind of bigotry? Quite possibly they’re jumping at the chance: plenty of people think punishing sexual assault is an attack on men. Some college students have made the same argument: if all the sexual assault investigations involve male students, isn’t that proof of bias? No.
As I’ve mentioned before, lots of religious conservatives think consent is a bad standard — we shouldn’t even consider it in sexual relations. Which is saying that the problem with rape is “she had sex” (it’s okay for the guys, no matter how much conservatives pretend there’s no double standard) rather than “someone forced her to have sex.” Which is a pro-rapist standard. Perhaps it’s not surprising that sex ed in Orange County, Florida, has dropped all discussions of consent from the course.
As Simra Mariam says, “at some point society has made it okay for people to believe that “I don’t want to” or “not right now” isn’t enough of a reason. It is. It is more than enough of a reason. Simply having the gut feeling that tells you no is enough to justify every choice you will ever make for the rest of your life.”
It’s not surprising America twice elected the Felon, with his misogynist history, over a woman. But to paraphrase someone, it also makes it comprehensible that in Egypt they worshipped the dung beetle.
What Jessica Valenti says about abortion applies to the rest of the misogynist patriarchal system: “You don’t ask the guy with the boot on your neck to wear a softer shoe. You rip his fucking foot off.”
