WHAT IS TOM SMITH TALKING ABOUT?!
Tom Smith, the Republican challenging Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) seat, suggested that having a child out of wedlock was analogous to rape during an interview with a reporter at a press club this afternoon, claiming that it would have a “similar” effect on a father:
MARK SCOLFORO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?
SMITH: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.
SCOLFORO: Similar how?
SMITH: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.
SCOLFORO: That’s similar to rape?
SMITH: No, no, no, but… put yourself in a father’s situation, yes. It is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.
So legitimate rape is no different than having consensual sex, getting pregnant, and not being married or marrying the father of that child.
And of course, the conversation should center around how the man feels. You see, fortunately for Tom Smith, his family member chose what Smith would have chosen for her. (Emphasis on the word “chose” as in “choice.”) It’s always about the man.Put yourself in the father’s situation or, as the case maybe, the rapist’s situation. Rapists have feelings too, doncha know!
Welp!
That’s it for me. I’m done, y’all. I’m going to a bar. Call me when we’re no longer having conversations that people had in the Middle Ages.
[via Think Progress]
[cross-posted at ABLC]
g
Hey, it’s just another means of conception!
rlrr
Will Romney ask him to drop out of the race? If not, we can assume Romney agrees with Tom Smith…
Litlebritdifrnt
Isn’t it lovely that these idiots use the term “choice” when they are doing their best to take choice for all women out of the equation.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Litlebritdifrnt: Yeah, and with the strong implication that his choice was really the one that mattered (as ABL mentions). She chose his way, so he didn’t have to do anything about it. I’d be curious to know what he’d have said and done if she didn’t.
jayjaybear
The irony, of course, being that Casey himself ain’t that great on abortion. He’s still better than any Republican, though.
beltane
If you look at it as a Republican would, any act of copulation that occurs outside the confines of a Christian marriage renders the woman impure. Therefore a rape baby is the same as an out-of-wedlock baby in that both are born to impure sluts.
Villago Delenda Est
C’mon, ABL. You know the deal.
The sluts need to be punished. Any woman who has sex, willingly or unwillingly, without the blessing of the invisible sky buddy, or at least the state, in the form of a contractual agreement with the man she has sex with, is a slut.
Who needs to be punished.
You know how this works.
On edit: I see that vile socia1ist/mooslim/atheist/heathen/metrosexual Beltane beat me to the gist of the comment, may he roast in aich-ee-double-hockey-sticks.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
All Tom Smith is saying is it’s just all sluty, slut, slut sex. And since a slut, is well a slut, it would be irresponsible to let a her chose.
Now an’t it nice Tom Smith considers his daughter a whore.
Calouste
Smith’s family member seems to be his daughter btw. When he says “put yourself in a father’s situation” he is referring to the father of the pregnant woman. I’m surprised he didn’t sue the boyfriend/one night stand of his daughter for property damage.
pseudonymous in nc
Because of what your little girl pledged to you at the Purity Ball? Dear me.
@beltane:
And makes the owner father a provider of impure goods.
Thoughtcrime
It means Republicans are the “legitimate” bastards.
schrodinger's cat
Yes it is exactly the same, if you are the Taliban. As some on BJ said, the GOP religious fundamentalists are just that Taliban with higher BMI.
beltane
@Calouste: Yes, at the very least he should have demanded a the young man furnish his daughter with a suitable dowry as she is now spoiled goods.
Rommie
The proximity of the Wingularity is causing Space Madness – they are speaking out loud their usually internal (or inner-circle only) voices.
schrodinger's cat
@pseudonymous in nc: What the heck is a purity ball? It sounds vaguely disgusting.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
Wait, isn’t the dowry the bribe the father of the bride provides to the groom to take the wench, at long last, off his hands?
SenyorDave
If these weren’t real people this would be funny. I feel sorry for this person’s family, especially his daughter. Imagine going through life having this shitbag as your dad.
bemused
These fundie men…it’s all about them and their feefees. It comes down to their views take total precedence over women having control over their own bodies and decision making. Selfish bastards.
Violet
Putting this guy’s idiocy aside, I’d like to point out that whoever this woman was, she HAD A CHOICE. She could choose to stay pregnant or she could go get a safe, legal abortion. That’s what ALL women deserve. The CHOICE.
rlrr
@schrodinger’s cat:
What the heck is a purity ball? It sounds vaguely disgusting.
It is, on a number of levels.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
No they don’t. These sluts need to be punished for their wanton ways! They’re seducing our innocent sons, these strumpets, these succubi, these harlots! Our sons are being deprived of their manly essence by these vampiric hussies!
Next, they’ll be questioning creationism and throwing moneychangers out of the temple!
bemused
@schrodinger’s cat:
You’ve never heard of purity balls? The ultra religious take father/daughter balls to another level. They are more than vaguely disgusting, they’re creepy.
Brachiator
Interesting juxtaposition:
The woman who wasn’t there.
@Villago Delenda Est:
Dowry is more complicated than this, and sometimes tragic (e.g., the dowry killings in India).
gorillagogo
I was just coming here to post a link to this neanderthal’s comments. I love his attempt to explain himself — from a father’s perspective, if little Susie gets knocked up before she’s married she might as well have been raped. What a great guy.
Sly
He didn’t have to what?
burnspbesq
@pseudonymous in nc:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodinger’s cat:
It is.
http://www.purityball.com/
I seriously caution people about clicking the link.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodinger’s cat:
It is.
http://www.purityball.com/
I seriously caution people about clicking the link.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Dowry killings in India, stem from the same idea, that a woman is a burden to her family.
AHH onna Droid
In the Middle Ages a girl in trouble could see the village wise woman for help. Also, too t the murder rate was much higher and girls walking the fields alone were in the habit of carrying knives. :)
During the period of the Protestant reformation, however, the gig was up and fanatics, much like today’s televangelists, roamed Eyrope executing the women as ‘witches’ after sham ‘trials’. (They even had stage tools like retracting pins so the ‘pinprick’ would not draw blood.) The first red scare if you will. Books published, speaking tours, even crossed the ocean by the early 17th.
(If you like neato archeology, the African magical objects turning up in 16th cent. Annapolis are fascinating.)
By the 18th century folk ballads are being published about girls being murdered or killing themselves over a rape or anunwanted pregnancy.
History is not a straight line. Check out the love songs in Carmina Burana.
Patricia Kayden
It’s interesting to find out what Repubs really feel about women in their unguarded, candid moments. Terrifying.
Culture of Truth
Imagine you’re a father. Now imagine you’re an idiot.
burnspbesq
@rlrr:
Re purity ball.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/purity-balls-local-tradition-or-national-trend.html
My junior prom was a lot more fun.
Violet
Is Casey’s camp taking advantage of this statement? Tying it to Akin, the GOP platform, aiming ads at women about this? If they’re not, they’re being stupid.
Seanly
Are they trying to throw the election?
rlrr
@burnspbesq:
Carrie’s prom was more fun.
Zifnab
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Creepy as fuck. Is there some kind of reverse Oedipus Complex that runs from father to daughter? Cause they’re all suffering from it.
All that said, it’s comforting to see Republicans continue to let their male members (pun!) take the lead on this discussion. I’m sure it might help them a little of a few female Senators got out in front of this. But 1 Timothy 2:12 being what it is and all…
PurpleGirl
@Sly: Lock her in the attic until the fetus was born.
burnspbesq
@Sly:
Convene the neighbors and stone the harlot to death.
PaulW
At what point is EVERY American woman going to be disgusted by this misogynistic patriarchal bullsh-t? I’m even wondering if Coulter and Malkin are on the same page as these morons…
Villago Delenda Est
@Zifnab:
It’s the “Electra Complex”, where the daughter has sexual feelings towards her father, and sees her mother as a competitor for her father’s sexual attention.
Nethead Jay
@schrodinger’s cat: Here’s a coupla links NY Times article Wikipedia. They are most certainly disgusting, nothing vague about it.
Another Halocene Human Hates Laptops
@Calouste: First question: is the boyfriend ho-whit-ah?
If yes, then keep baby. May attempt shotgun marriage or sign up with a Christian adoption outfit.
If no: Honey, get me a list of states with no waiting period for minor’s abortion. Oh, and we’re gonna need plane tickets!
scav
So some fathers can’t distinguish between daughters choosing to have a (one would hope) mutually pleasurable sexual relationship and a daughter being raped? Buy that man a tie and a coffee cup reading “World’s #1 Dad”. Pity the wife too if he can’t distinguish the acts in question.
JGabriel
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Seriously. These people should all be legislatively pro-choice — because they won’t get to act all morally superior in their personal pro-life choices if all the alternatives are illegal.
.
Lancelot Link
Rapists have feelings too, doncha know!
They also have child custody and visitation rights in many states.
bemused
@Nethead Jay:
It kills me that the purity balls are only for the girls…no mother-son purity balls. They’ve got it ass backwards. They should be just as concerned or more about their boys’ “purity”.
Zifnab
@Villago Delenda Est: The only Electra I’m familiar with is a C-list Marvel superhero. So that threw me for a loop.
Gin & Tonic
I *am* in “a father’s situation”, having two adult daughters. No, it is not “similar”, unless, I guess, you are a complete asshole.
Villago Delenda Est
@Zifnab:
Read all about it, effendi!
Legalize
Silly liberals. Everyone knows that a woman’s hoo-ha is the lawful property of her father up and until she is traded for valuable consideration to her husband.
Just ask the Taliban.
Zifnab
@bemused: What? No! Your son has to have sex. Lots of sex. Wild, crazy, bouncing-off-the-walls-at-the-frat-house sex. If he’s not having sex, he might be gay. That would be unforgivable.
The son gets to go out and have sex with the town slut. The town slut becomes the focal point of shame and derision within the community and serves as a reminder to all other girls that they must remain pure.
Then the father selects a beautiful, pure, white skinned virgin. They sacrifice the virgin to their virile young son in the ceremony of marriage, in hopes of receiving many more sons in the future. And the patriarchal family line progresses.
That’s how healthy societies operate. What kind of sicko doesn’t want the son to have sex?
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Dowry in India is technically illegal, prohbited since 1961. But it is not a woman as a burden thing; it is more connected to avaricious husbands and family members who sometimes demand more money, or refuse to return a woman to her family when the marriage fails, which would also require that the dowry be repaid. There is also this:
Dowry killings are a despicable display of contempt for a woman.
Purity Balls. Wasn’t that a sketch starring Alec Baldwin on SNL?
Litlebritdifrnt
Did you guys see this bullshit?
Politico link
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=2022AE98-A820-4874-AFB8-3D1E405B3086
rikyrah
would you let that mofo near your child ever again?
Knight of Nothing
@ABL (and BJ Front Pagers): a slight tangent, but please do not trump up today’s “Paul Ryan says rape is just another form of conception” meme currently making the rounds. This is a willful misrepresentation of what he said, and the outrage/lather machine on Gawker and Kos are kinda pissing me off.
While Ryan sucks in almost every way possible, the actual quote shows that he is just sticking to his (Catholic) beliefs about abortion. Give him credit for having the courage of his convictions in this instance, however misguided and wrong-headed they are.
Nethead Jay
@bemused: What, you want standards to be the same for boys and girls. Are you some sort of wild-eyed feminist?!
Also, what @Zifnab: said.
Calouste
@Knight of Nothing:
Nope.
Unsympathetic
The beauty is that Republicans can’t claim Christianity is the source of this anti-abortion doctrine.
To be exegetical:
Despite what hard-core Republicans want to assert, the New Testament covenant stated that our first commandment is to love people. Controlling other people isn’t love – it’s enslavement, which is the direct opposite of love. The only way control could even be construed as “love” is if the person you’re controlling is actually mentally incompetent, eg a ward of the state.
Right-to-life Christians actually do think that women are mentally incompetent. Your 2012 Republican Party!
bemused
@Zifnab:
Hell yeah.
Teen pregnancies, divorces, stds, pron watching are all higher in very conservative areas of the country but that’s because gays want to get married.
Chyron HR
@Knight of Nothing:
Oh, jeepers, let’s not be unfair to the “Obama wants to give THEM free welfare checks” campaign.
Nethead Jay
@Knight of Nothing: Your concern is noted. I saw Ryan’s answer this morning (european time) and thought, I hope this blows up in his face.
Chuck Butcher
These fuckers just can’t stop stepping on their dicks, can they?
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: A woman is definitely considered a burden in traditional Hindu society. According to Manusmriti, the Hindu Leviticus if you will. A woman is always a dependent, when she is a child, she is dependent on her father, in youth she is dependent on her husband and then on her son in her old age. Women were prohibited from owning property and dowry was considered as her nest egg if you will, something she could depend on if something bad were to happen, mostly in form of gold jewelry.
Just see how traditional Hindu society has treated widows, the skewed gender ratio of the Indian population all point to women being considered inferior.
The laws may have changed but society is much slower to change.
schrodinger's cat
@Knight of Nothing: I give him credit for being a misogynist to whom women are nothing more than walking wombs. Satisfied?
Unsympathetic
@Knight of Nothing:
I’m sick and tired of giving Republicans credit for anything.
100% of what R-Money says is a lie.
f- the f-ing f-ers.. There should be no quarter, ever. I’m sick and tired of supporting the party playing the abused wife — bump that, each and every thing that those pigs say should be thrown in their face from now past the election.
Republicans want to play the lying game? Democrats should go harder, not softer. If there can be only one, Republicans should get zero votes.
Citizen Alan
@schrodinger’s cat:
It is beyond disgusting. It’s exactly like junior-senior prom except that it’s 40-year-old fundamentalist Xtian men and their prepubescent daughters.
Chuck Butcher
Watching Michael Steele trying to dodge the dog whistling of the “free welfare” busllshit would be entertaining if the asshole hadn’t grown up as a target of it. Ordinarily watching a GOPer twist and turn in the wind is fun, but given the context of his race it is simply vomit inducing.
bago
I’ve known girls with eating disorders and body weight issues, but Herman P. Christ, that Dania ad is freaky! Geoff the robot skeleton robot comes off as more human than these models. It’s like an ambassador from North Korea went to Madison Avenue and said: “let’s make some money”.
Seriously, noodling around with them would be like getting intimate with a tinker toy.
Can I take you out to dinner? Not because I want to sleep with you, but you seriously need some dinner, woman! Eat some food!
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: Sure. Of course. If we take the moral high-ground and * never * engage in some illustrative hyperbole then the villagers and the wingnuts will treat us as though we are beyond reproach and never impugn our integrity or grasp of facts. That way, when we do point something out, it won’t be dismissed as a lie or an exaggeration because we’re always so honest.
And then you woke up …
and found out we have an election to win.
schrodinger's cat
@Chuck Butcher: I wonder what Jindal and Haley think of their party’s immigrant bashing?
Knight of Nothing
@schrodinger’s cat: Sounds about right! Catholics have some peculiar views on reproduction, no doubt about it.
@Unsympathetic: I don’t disagree with your overall point, and I’m not looking for civility, concessions, or anything of the sort – I want the democrats to fight harder against Romney/Ryan. But lying is lying. Let’s not do it.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Chuck Butcher: These fuckers just can’t stop stepping on their dicks, can they?
Inorite?
Remember the Far Side cartoon with the guy who had a sign on his wall saying “Pants first, THEN your shoes?” The Repubs need one of those that says “Repeal 19th Amendment first, THEN reveal your hateful ignorance about women.”
Sly
@Zifnab:
I’ll have to dig around for the source, but one of the things that initially shocked me about purity balls, and father-daughter virginity pledges in general, is that they are usually initiated by the wife/mother. Mostly for reasons of emotional blackmail; securing greater “parental involvement” from the father and, for the daughter, replacing the conception of a sexual relationship they regard as potentially dangerous (and of which their daughters are often too young to grasp – I’ve heard of girls as young as six involved in virginity pledges) with the parent-child relationship.
I.E. “Have sex before you’re married and you’re betraying your father.” This act has the chance to seriously damage a young woman’s ability to form a healthy sexual relationship later on, for reasons that do not require a doctorate in psychology to grasp.
Knight of Nothing
@danah gaz (fka gaz): if your goal is to troll republicans, then I suppose you should go for it. But if your goal is to work your side up into a lather, well, I for one am not biting. The gawker and kos headlines were bullshit, on par with the right’s plying of Obama’s “you didn’t build that.”
KG
@Litlebritdifrnt: I remember She Who Shall Not Be Named first came on the scene in 2008 and her teenage daughter got knocked up and she mentioned how the daughter “choose” to have the baby.
As for the issue as a whole, this is really nothing more than old world thinking, as so many have pointed out. They ain’t conservatives, they’re reactionaries.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
Can I start calling them Rape-ublicans yet?
KG
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m guessing it goes something like this: Fuck Them, I Got Mine!
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: good for you.
I don’t concede ground to reactionaries.
And I don’t give credit to misogynistic Rapist rights advocates.
I sleep just fine.
scav
@Knight of Nothing: I’ll give him credit for trying to have it both ways, the courage of his convictions except when necessary to say Romney is charge of all actual actions so his convictions aren’t worth the breath used to vocalize them. His convictions as VP candidate Flip give cover to Presidential candidate Flop. I’ll also give him credit for the strength of his Catholic convictions stopping well short of saying anything contra-GOP about the death penalty or war, while giving him a pass on not giving a whatsovuckingshit about poverty because even the Pope doesn’t share those concerns.
karen
You think they’ll endorse honor killing next?
Cerberus
@Knight of Nothing:
And the “Catholic” position much like most of the forced birther positions doesn’t view rape as anything to get concerned about because the whole forced birth position is RAPE. Is about RAPING a woman for 9 months by denying her consent and agency over her body because of what some other person thinks she should go through.
And that’s basically why the forced birthers go into so many contortions to hide what they really believe and talk about “rape exceptions” and so forth. Because people are willing to support a lot of sexist evil abiological things in the name of “TEH BABIEZ”, but when you spell it out like:
“Yes, we think rape ain’t no thing and every woman touched by our sperm should suffer 9 months for her sin”
It’s really hard to rationalize giving them credit as anything other than the inhuman hatred for women it is.
In short, Paul Ryan deserves every ounce of shit he’s getting for his real beliefs, “catholic theology” or not.
I mean, it’s not like “catholic theology” mattered all that much to him when he was off giving Ayn Rand necromantic cunnilingus or when it came time to vote on the caring for the impoverished or on the ending of the wars.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
This aspect of dowry is common to many cultures. The perversion of tradition, which also occurs in other cultures that have a dowry, is to refuse to allow the woman to have access to what is rightfully hers. All those aspects of tradition and culture which are supposed to provide the woman with some protection are ignored or rationalized away, and perverted in the case of dowry murder.
And yeah, the crap in Manusmriti about a father or husband being like a god to a woman is as stupid as the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible as making the male the head of the family and household, to be obeyed in all things.
Similarly, the claims of pro-life zealots that their views come delivered straight from a deity or are a part of some deep religious tradition are BS.
WereBear
This development has led to a HUGE demand for “Christian marriage counseling.” The poor deluded sods have spent years trying not to think about their urges, get married without having so much as held hands, and then are expected to make out like drunken bunnies because a preacher says the right words.
Does. Not. Work.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Cerberus: Ryan is pro-rapist.
In addition to the reasons you stated:
He advocates for forced birth, even in the case of rape. He knows that 31 states allow rapists custody rights, giving them free reign to continue to terrorize their victims. Pro-Rapist.
He advocates for redefining rape into something called “forcible rape”, which dilutes rape and makes many kinds of rape including date rape, and marital rape meaningless. Pro-rapist.
Violet
@Knight of Nothing: Oh, please. Here’s what Ryan said (unless you’re referring to something else, in which case please enlighten us because you didn’t bother to include a link to what you were talking about):
Link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/24/ryan-on-abortion-exceptions-rape-is-just-another-method-of-conception/
In Paul Ryan’s eyes, a woman or girl could be gang raped by fifty men, have sex within male-female marriage, be impregnated by her father after the purity ball or have IVF and they’d all be exactly the same if she got pregnant. Because all that matters to Paul Ryan is the end result–she’s pregnant.
Please explain to us how he doesn’t mean that rape is just the same in terms of the womb-vessel ending up containing a zygote? Because Paul Ryan sure doesn’t seem to see any difference. The method of conception is irrelevant to him. The only thing that matters is that zygote.
Ann Rynd
Now, I wonder what Sarah Palin would say to that man. He’s so pissed he raised a slut. He ‘d prefer she was raped. Then he wouldn’t have to defend her and be feeling himself like a cuckold.
Soonergrunt
@schrodinger’s cat: Behold:
Ajay
Bristol was raped…
Violet
@Ajay: So she claimed in her book.
Yutsano
@Knight of Nothing: His Catholic beliefs on abortion have no bearing on a secular nation. And fuck your concern. He meant exactly what he said. Let him explain it.
Xecky Gilchrist
People don’t often read past the first 20 or so comments, do they.
sagesource
@AHH onna Droid: Wrong. The witch panic, though it was intensified in some places by Catholic-Protestant competition, went back before the split in the church. The persecutions began in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the first book devoted to the “new” form of witchcraft written in 1435 (before that, the Church had considered belief in witches flying through the sky at night to be a heretical superstition). One reason the Inquisition turned to persecuting witches at that time was that it had exterminated the heretics of southern France and so had become surplus to requirements — it needed a new mission (the demonization of marijuana after the end of Prohibition is a rough parallel). The general motivation, apart from the reinforcement of priestly power, was economic: as Agrippa, the famous physician, wrote in 1531, “For it is not unusual that the inquisitor commutes physical into monetary penalties….the majority of the inquisitors of the Duchy of Milan were in this way mulcting the most noble ladies as well as poor but honest women, terrorized with fear, from which they received huge sums of money.” The accused included more women than men (about a two-thirds to one-third split) because it was easier to victimize women, especially unmarried or widowed ones, than men.
Knight of Nothing
Which makes more sense: a person who believes abortion is wrong, period, or a person who thinks abortion should be outlawed except in the instance of rape or incest? Neither one of these hypothetical people are giving any agency to women. The second person simply adds hypocrisy to his theft of a woman’s right to choose (basically, he is saying: “we can countenance the death of this fetus because it wasn’t Slutty McSlut’s fault she got knocked up!”). At least the first person is internally consistent. That’s all I’m trying to say.
I’m not even the first person to say this, but apparently I’m in the minority here. Oh well, not the first time.
Soonergrunt
@Yutsano: This.
James Carville wasn’t the first one to say it: “When your enemy is drowning, don’t help him. Throw the bastard an anvil.”
Litlebritdifrnt
He He He I love this tweet
A convention being held in a stadium that was built with 60+% of taxpayer dollars.
Ruckus
@Knight of Nothing:
Give him credit for what, being a complete fucking jackass?
His convictions are wrong. On every one. Just because he sticks to them doesn’t make them any better. Who else had convictions too, how much credit did they deserve? That list is quite long and has a sorry history, assholes who had convictions and stuck by them. Recent by country, Germany, Italy, USSR, Japan, North Korea, a little farther back, France, England, Spain, Vatican. The kind of convictions that young blue eyes have usually get people dead in large numbers but that’s OK when they don’t agree with the convictions.
Brachiator
@Knight of Nothing:
Why give credit to someone for sticking to stupid beliefs?
I saw Ryan speak the words in a clip on Maddow’s show. I came to the same conclusion about it as would any reasonable person. He clearly believes that a woman is obligated to continue a pregnancy, no matter how it occurs.
That pretty much makes rape just another form of conception.
It also makes the Republican Party pro rape. They obviously believe that rapists deserve to be able to have trophy babies. And since extreme Republicans would outlaw contraception (or to be “fair,” would leave this to the states and expect that states outlaw contraception), the Republican Party objectively believes that every woman should be a potential target for a rapist.
We can parse shit about Ryan’s words. This is the logical consequence of the Republican position on this issue.
MattMinus
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
Freepers with blue shirts…
hep kitty
Put on that party dress, drink and dance the night away, ABL, b/c it’s all good for our side!
Think of the party we’ll all have when the President is re-elected, we get the Congress back and keep the Senate and
CRUSH THESE BASTARDS
They think they’re crying now . . .
wrb
@sagesource:
I visited an torturers chambers within the town walls of a old town in Alsace. It was a dark high stone space. There were chains for hanging the victims over a fire-pit and many iron tools for crushing and pinching and slitting and heating. The stones felt soaked with blood and screams.
What most struck me though was part of the description. The town wasn’t big enough for a full-time torturer so it employed a circuit torturer. He was paid two coins if the client died before confessing and ten coins if they confessed before dying.
Anya
What’s considered a non-legitimate rape? Are we using their language now?
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Brachiator: “Why give credit to someone for sticking to stupid beliefs?”
Especially when he doesn’t.
He’s an Ayn Rand devotee, or was, before having his nose rubbed in it.
For those of you that haven’t suffered through Ayn’s ravings, or those of Anton LaVey, they share nearly identical philosophies. Which puts him in the same camp as Satanists, philosophically. I’m not the first person to draw this conclusion BTW, nor will I be the last. Need proof? Type these four words into google [ Ayn Rand Anton LaVey ]
He doesn’t stick by his beliefs. Depending on what rubber ruler you use, he’s a Catholic, an Atheist, and a Satanist.
Fucking hell. About the only positions he’s been consistent on are fucking over the poor, the sick, the old, and women.
not motorik
Please stop blogging so much.
Mnemosyne
@Violet:
This. In Paul Ryan’s eyes, a pregnant woman ceases to be a human being and becomes an incubator with legs. She loses any say over her own decisions and her own health and is required to sacrifice everything up to and including her very life to prevent that pregnancy from ending early. Even the death of the fetus doesn’t matter — the pregnancy is everything and it must continue no matter what.
I’m not quite sure how Knight of Nothing is spinning this into anything but a despicable thing for Ryan to say.
hep kitty
Tweety is reporting on convention and is still pissed. Wow, I gotta go watch that clip. Dayum.
gelfling545
@Xecky Gilchrist: We’d never have heard a word about it.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, is it just me, or is this jackass lamenting that he wasn’t socially permitted to throw his pregnant slut of a daughter out of his house like he could have 40 years ago?
kc
Please keep talking, white Republican men …
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@MattMinus: I’m not really sure what you’re saying – I suppose I can guess.
FTR, I don’t wear blue shirts – they clash with my eyes. I tend to prefer green.
Brachiator
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
Of course, he ignored Ayn Rand’s pro choice position.
Makes Ryan his own kind of flip flopper that he cherry picks the part of Rand that he likes, when he is not busy denying that he ever admired her work.
dance around in your bones
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Ok, so having not read past the first 20 comments yet (real life sometimes gets in the way) I would just like to say that unless and until men are able to get pregnant they should just shut the fuck up about what women should do with their bodies.
Totally, completely, shut the fuck up. Some of them have not a clue one about what it is like to be unintentionally pregnant and how it affects your body and your life.
They too often identify with the fetus only and lose sight of the already existing human being.
Shit for smack.
ETA: This is not directed at you, Xecky. Just a general frustration, with the whole debate, and from a femme who has never had an abortion but would NEVER deny another femme from making the choice for herself.
Gawd damn, this shit pisses me off.
(OK, maybe I read to comment 92 or so ;)
Elizabelle
Could we have an open thread? Many thanks.
ira_NY
What is it about the concept of “consent” Republicans do not understand? It is really mind boggling.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Brachiator: I think it’s safe to say that the man is a dishonest fucknozzle. He probably has daddy issues, and it’s doubtful that any lying about the man could ever be said to be worse than the actual truth of him.
That said, saying he considers rape to be a form of conception is not a lie no matter how you look at it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Xecky Gilchrist: You’re assuming they read the first 20. :)
AHH onna Droid
@sagesource: Sage, the 1400s are customarily styled the 15th century where I am from.
Knight of Nothing
By misrepresenting Ryan’s words, who will be convinced that abortion should be kept safe and legal? That’s the question that matters to me. When I see a headline like “Ryan Calls Rape Just Another Method Of Conception,” and then I read the actual quote, I feel cheated: he made no statement about rape, his statement was about his feelings on abortion. I will add here that anyone who thinks that rape is what gives a woman the right to choose doesn’t really believe in choice.
Now, as far as an election strategy, I have to concede I don’t know best. I’m on the losing side of elections as often as not. So maybe all those calling for blood over this particular quote are right. But I just don’t see this kind of misrepresentation as a good long-term strategy for motivating or persuading anyone.
Gadsden Flag Burner
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
Haha. Perfect.
The Other Chuck
@Brachiator: Ryan claims he now only followed Rand’s economic theory, not any of her philosophy.
Um … those books are nothing but hundreds of pages of philosophical screeds. In fact, there’s really not a lick of economics in them involving markets and supply and demand and numbers and stuff. Just a lot of “sweat of your own brow” stuff that’s all fucking *philosophy*.
Guy’s as weaselly as Mitt.
arguingwithsignposts
@dance around in your bones:
That is a very unnuanced take, and I’d suggest it’s one you might reconsider. Whether you like it or not, men and women are together in society, and so should all have a say in how society operates. And if you’ll check your calendar, it was 9 men who decided Roe v. Wade. Would you have had them shut up when overturning what was then the law of the land wrt abortion?
I get your point, but don’t go condemning people who might be on your side.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: It’s not a misrepresentation. He said those things. He may not have said those exact combination of words, but there is no honest way to interpret the following:
“I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life,” Ryan explained
as anything other than him considering rape to be another form of conception.
You know what was a misrepresentation?
What you said about him sticking by his beliefs. I can and have refuted that stupid arsed statement already. He lied about his religion, changed his public views on Ayn Rand, and is in direct odds with the Catholic church in terms of policy, despite being a Catholic.
So really, if anyone is “misrepresenting” Ryan here, it’s you.
Your concern is noted.
Now roll it into a tube and stick it up your arse, because outside of you, I can count the number of people who care about your concern trolling/hand wringing on zero hands.
JasonF
Why do I feel like I’m living in the prequel to the Handmaid’s Tale?
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@JasonF: Because you are.
Sane people would consider the book to be a warning.
Wingnuts treat it as an instruction manual.
Catsy
Regarding the Paul Ryan/Raw Story bit, I gotta do a little bit of devil’s-advocatin’ here. Just a little.
Raw Story’s headline is dishonest. It reads: “Ryan on abortion exceptions: Rape is just another ‘method of conception’”
But that’s not what Ryan said. Reformulating it this way profoundly changes the meaning of the statement, and does so in a way that makes it easy for opponents to–rightly, in this case–call the attack a lie. And the paraphrasing is completely unnecessary, because what Ryan actually did say was thoroughly repugnant as it was.
Ryan said: “I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.”
In Raw Story’s headline, the phrasing “rape is just another ‘method of conception'” implies that Ryan said it’s perfectly fine if a woman gets raped as long as she gets pregnant–that it’s just another legitimate way to produce a pregnancy.” The breezy phrase “just another”, which makes the quote sound so damning in the headline, isn’t even in the original quote.
Ryan’s actual point was that the method by which a woman becomes pregnant doesn’t alter the fact that she is pregnant, and that from a “pro-life” standpoint a life is a life, regardless of how it came to be. And this is actually logically consistent, unlike most anti-abortion positions–as well as callous, disgusting, misogynistic and unscientific.
I’m fine with fighting the right on their own terms, but it’s not necessary to cede moral ground by lying about what they say in order to make them look bad–what they actually say is appalling enough, and repels people just as effectively when we describe the right’s views factually. We gain nothing by distorting their words, and it costs us the credibility to call out their lies.
El Cid
@danah gaz (fka gaz): They taught me that any book which appears to liberals or just sane humans as some dystopian novel issuing a warning of a future to fear instead becomes an instruction manual to them.
Brachiator
@The Other Chuck:
As dopey as someone who might claim to read Karl Marx just for the one liners.
Yeah, a different Marx, but I couldn’t resist.
@Knight of Nothing:
You are tying yourself into knots to make no point.
But keep beating that horse, dead though it may be.
Rafer Janders
Or you could put yourself in the woman’s situation.
But I get that Republican minds can’t operate that way.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Catsy: “But that’s not what Ryan said. Reformulating it this way profoundly changes the meaning of the statement, and does so in a way that makes it easy for opponents to—rightly, in this case—call the attack a lie. And the paraphrasing is completely unnecessary, because what Ryan actually did say was thoroughly repugnant as it was.”
I don’t agree. There’s simply no way to interpret it that would preclude him meaning that rape is another method of conception.
Now, okay – I’ll play along. Including the word “just” does arguably lead to a grammatical issue wherein he’s arguing that rape is no big deal. Maybe they should have dropped the word “just”. In the end, I think it’s a non-issue, because well, personally I didn’t read it that way – the grammar is ambiguous – but even if I had – it still captures the spirit of what he was doing in making that statement. He was diluting rape.
Now, the point is – he was diluting rape – and also advocating for a rapists rights to a trophy baby. The point was not that rawstory mangled a headline. Perspective alert! What part of this actually matters? For some men, obviously, rawstory’s flub is the issue here. That says more about those men than it does about rawstory.
karen marie
@SenyorDave: I’m a little surprised he didn’t force her to put the baby up for adoption.
Brachiator
@Catsy:
Bullshit.
Ryan’s point is that a woman who is made pregnant by a rapist has some mystical obligation to continue that pregnancy without regard to her own wishes, and that the law should force her to continue the preganancy against her will.
A woman as an independent person capable of making her own decisions about her body ceases to exist at the moment of conception, no matter how that conception occurs.
But your evasion is consistent with Ryan’s obsessive focus on the pregnancy and its dismissal of a woman and her own individual right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
El Cid
It’s kind of odd to even use the phrase “method of conception” in connection with rape.
I mean, it’s the same “method of conception” in any scientific sense if we’re talking biology, no matter the violence or lack of in the situation, or coerciveness or consent.
There isn’t a variety of “methods of conception,” only one. [*]
So however one wants to categorize rape in the discussion of whether or not to use government coercion to prevent women from terminating some fertilized cells within their own bodies, it isn’t a “method of conception,” as it doesn’t impregnate in any biologically different manner.
This isn’t about a biological “method” of conception, it’s a discussion of power, and of control of humans who have a biological ability to bear human offspring, aka, women.
So, no matter what anyone does to you, however they do it, once those cells are fertilized inside of you, you are now the host, and those fertilized cells and its subsequent fetus are the protected and valued organism. Not you.
[* In this discussion — you could certainly more sensibly describe artificial insemination or other techniques as “methods of conception”, I guess, as these are physically different enough.]
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Brachiator: That, too. I really should have addressed that statement in my response to Catsy. Thanks for catching it.
dance around in your bones
@arguingwithsignposts:
You know, I’m NOT condemning people on our side, just suggesting that people (i.e. men) who are not able to get pregnant have no fucking idea what it feels like, or the life-long ramifications of carrying a pregnancy to term.
It really changes one’s perspective.
I will always be grateful for the men who decided Roe V. Wade – assuming it doesn’t get flushed down the shit-hole if Romney gets elected and appoints more numbnuts like Scalia and that mute (what’s his name? Oh yeah, Clarence Thomas).
I wish they could get pregnant from a casual encounter (or even a long-term relationship) and have to personally deal with the consequences. It tends to change a conservative’s mind, having to deal with something personally.
Heh.
karen marie
@PaulW: I read on the Twitter this morning that Coulter came out in favor of women’s right to vote being repealed. I opined that rumor has it that Coulter isn’t female, so it’s no skin off “her” nose.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
This.
It’s about control. Women cannot have agency in controlling their own fucking bodies. If they become pregnant, they become nothing more than a living incubator, and the circumstance of how they became pregnant is irrelevant.
This notion offends me. Strongly. It’s about denying women control over their own bodies.
eric
@Brachiator: It is worse than a mystical obligation. It is a man-made (literally) obligation that has no foundation in their purported holy text that talks of miscarriages in a way that clearly indicates that the value of the fetus is less than that of an ox. It is about controlling through politics what they cant control through biology.
Villago Delenda Est
@dance around in your bones:
It’s very easy for men to have a “abortions should be illegal” position, because they can’t have an abortion.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@dance around in your bones: I agree. Also, I’d add that men should maybe tally the many positions of unearned privilege they hold over women when reading statements like the one you made. Sometimes, it’s best to just smile, nod, and shut the fuck up, rather than choose to be offended by something because it is “divisive”. You can choose to interpret it that way, or you can choose to give that a pass and not presume to correct someone because they gave you a case of the butthurt.
It’s a man’s world. Women have to do this every day. Is it too much to ask that a guy just fucking show some deference every once in awhile, even if they read something like what you wrote and it hurt their widdle fee-fees?
I thought about saying this first, but I figured it was best to give you chance to respond, before I followed up. =)
best regards
El Cid
@dance around in your bones: Yeah, but mostly we’re talking levels of public assholishness that doesn’t take true embodiment to avoid — it doesn’t take knowing exactly what women go through in order to not be some completely insensitive fucking sexist pig asshole legislating and speaking mean stupid shit.
This isn’t some phenomenon so complicated that one has to be a woman in order to avoid speaking and acting and governing as a sexist pig — rather, it’s a situation involving things which with minimal logical thought and introspection most of this patriarchalist shit would be avoided.
It’s that they don’t even have to do the bare minimum.
eric
@Villago Delenda Est: It is also easy because they control what constitutes the interpretation of the world’s religious, canonical writings. Funny thing, that.
dance around in your bones
@Villago Delenda Est: No shit.
As I (and many other people have said) if you don’t want to have/don’t believe in abortion – don’t fucking have one.
Leave everybody else alone.
Villago Delenda Est
@eric:
What’s the old saw? If men could get pregnant, in the Catholic Church abortion would be a sacrament.
Brachiator
@eric:
I was using mystical in a very dismissive sense, but I take your point.
But I think that these goons are not really up on the details of, say, Old Testament laws. They pick and choose, and oversimplify so that they can enshrine what they think is the value of the fetus over everything else.
It’s just dopey.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@karen marie: she’s certainly not one of “my people”. We are blessed/cursed with a perspective on privilege, and that precludes being the type of raging authoritarian bigot that Anne Coulter is. Whatever her issues, that alone is enough for me to state with certainty that she’s not a host to a Y chromosome.
*actually in my case I don’t either, I’ve got a mutated X, but by all physical measures, I was born “male”, so I consider myself MtF
Opal Sky 42
This whole “look at it from a father’s viewpoint” thing is seriously squick making. I could see it if the father in question was a serial pedophile-character on “Crinimal Minds!” As a real-life, decent dad, uh, no. Not even slightly.
eric
@Brachiator: I know you were, but i was just seeking to add emphasis.
I suspect that what we are seeing is far down the winding road of the battle once between female fertility godess religions and the male war god religions. Man can use physicality to dominate woman and thus, male can dominate and control fertility by redefining in terms appropriate for the male god. Just read Abraham and Isaac and look at the gender roles in that effed up tale of belief and obedience.
/sermon off
WereBear
It’s narcissism (and Republicans are so good at that.)
Other “people” only exist in terms of what they can do for Tom Smith. This is MY wife and I was embarrassed by MY daughter and I’m looking forward to kissing up to that fellow over there for what he can do for ME.
Which must be connected to why they are so bad at empathy. That’s literally put our feet in another’s shoes; and Republicans are so bad at that, I find it hard to believe.
Catsy
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
For other men, though–and here I will cheerfully raise my hand as the owner of a Y chromo–Raw Story’s poorly-written headline isn’t the issue. It’s an issue and we are possessed of sufficient mental bandwidth to hold more than one in our heads at once.
You say it doesn’t matter. I don’t agree. I think that twisting words like Raw Story did in their headline harms our ability to communicate just how extreme and malignant the GOP is, because it gives wingnuts and faux-centrists a straw man to refute and ammunition to say “both sides do it”.
And you know what? I’m okay with that up to a point, if it accomplishes something. To give just one example: assuming Reid is bullshitting about Romney’s taxes, I’d still be completely okay with it because the goal is to force the truth to come out, not to misinform people–and it’s been more effective than not at forcing the Romney campaign to paint themselves into a corner on the subject.
But here it doesn’t accomplish anything, because what Ryan actually said and meant is disgusting enough on its own merits.
I’m not going off at equal length about the actual heinous crap that Ryan said and what shitbags he and his ilk are because I don’t have anything to say about them that hasn’t been said and said again twenty times across this thread. I don’t think you have to even read between the lines of what I’ve written to get at what I actually think about the way they’ve been minimizing rape and using it as a political wedge.
dance around in your bones
@danah gaz (fka gaz): I was trying to be polite in my reply.
When what I really wanted to say was muthafuka! YOU get pregnant some day and deal with it!
But, I was being polite. And I also know that there are many good men who grok it, without being la femme. I get that.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@dance around in your bones: Trust me I know that. I knew that when I read your initial post as well. I’ve said some very similarly “divisive” things, for similar reasons, and been jumped on by half of the swinging dicks in the thread, so I hear you. And I totally agree with you. Each time you responded in fact. You’re nicer than I would have been, so I guess that speaks to your character, as well. =) cheers
eric
@dance around in your bones: if men and women could have babies, only women would have babies. ;)
Catsy
@Brachiator:
What the fuck is this even supposed to mean, and what does it have to do with anything I wrote?
Tell you what, Sparky. How’s about you take a five minute time out, spend some of that time googling up a representative sample of my online political opinions over the last decade-plus (seriously: it’s not hard to find), and get back to me when you’re ready to have this discussion without the hysterically wrongheaded assumption that I’m shilling for Republicans.
El Cid
Let’s say you didn’t use the para-scientific language “method of conception,” and instead said the actual meaningful elements:
‘No matter what happened to this girl or woman, and under what circumstances whether pleasant or violent a man inserted his pen_is and released his sperm into her, once that results in a fertilized embryo, we must use government authority to prevent her from removing that embryo from her body. She must be legally barred from accessing scientifically and medically available methods of avoiding carrying that embryo to term.’
dance around in your bones
@El Cid:
I hear you, El Cid – really, all it takes is some basic empathy, a feeling that too many huma beans lack.
Especially conservative huma beans.
Fuck it – if I was the FSM, I’d make all those dudes pregnant for a day (well, maybe a few months – like NINE) just so they could get some kind of insight into what it is like).
I am not saying that all guys lack this kind of insight or empathy…in fact, many that I have known (including my own husband) have acquired great respect for women watching them go through the process of pregnancy and childbirth.
It’s pretty brutal (though satisfying after the fact, if in fact it was a wanted pregnancy).
I can’t imagine how horrific it would be if it was a forced/unwanted/product of a rape pregnancy. It’s beyond words.
Opal Sky 42
@Knight of Nothing: This cold-heartedf asshat gets no credit from me. His Catholicism isn’t very serious if he ignores everything Christ ever said about charity, caring for the poor and less well off, etc. Feh! NO credit for this sanctimonious jerk.
eric
@dance around in your bones: let’s be perfectly clear, it is beyond insane to make a young girl carry her father’s child to term. I make no exception for that effing rule.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Catsy: If anything, I feel I’m doing my part by providing the obligatory push-back. I don’t want to help the guy when he’s drowning, and I don’t want to let the wingnuts have any slack, or help them make it about rawstory.
In a better world, Rawstory would have swapped “just” for “yet”
In an ideal world they would have dropped the word altogether.
That said, in essence I agree on principle, but I refuse to cede ground in practice. I also don’t know that they were really trying to distort, or if they just used a poor choice of words.
And while I understand that it may be read as undercutting some credibility, or even detracting from the heinous nature of Ryan’s statement, I also am under no illusion as to the fact that those that wish to have their way will attempt to twist the story, cast aspersions and detract from his statement no matter what. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that liberals/progressives taking a “principled stand” against being misleading means exactly “fuck all” to our credibility as far as the knuckle draggers are concerned. They don’t care, so why should we? Is that ugly? Yeah. Is it nihilistic? At least a little.
To which I say “fuck it”. There’s plenty of time to shower after the election.
Yutsano
@Knight of Nothing: Oh my fucking gravy. You think that just because he doesn’t use the exact word “rape” that we’re misrepresenting his position? THAT WAS THE FUCKING QUESTION HE WAS ASKED. Do you think you can stop and think for a second before you answer a question??
SiubhanDuinne
@hep kitty:
Everything you said. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.
dance around in your bones
@danah gaz (fka gaz): Gracias, muchas gracias.
I just got into an ill-advised political ‘discussion’ with some family at a birthday party the other day, so I really appreciate this (relatively) anonymous forum to state my true feelings among like-minded people.
It’s such a relief, to know you’re not alone.
dance around in your bones
@eric:
Believe me, most men couldn’t handle it, I’m pretty sure ;)
eric
@dance around in your bones: most men cant handle cleaning a toilet or matching socks….
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@eric: misandrist!
/snark
hehehe… you’re so right. although my s/o can’t match her socks either.
SiubhanDuinne
@wrb:
:: shudder ::
El Cid
@dance around in your bones: That’s the thing, though — I don’t have to go through it to start to have some sort of grasp that it’s a situation of enormous seriousness and widespread impact; all I have to do is listen to those people (i.e., women, not to mention all the zillions of researchers on these issues) to have at least an idea of what sorts of things not to say and not to do.
I’m not cutting them the slack. These callous pig-men might indeed be mean and dumb enough to have to be forced through pregnancy to learn such a basic lesson, but that’s only because they’re just being mean and dumb. They shouldn’t have to go through such an experience directly in order to know how to approach some serious human issue, because there is an infinite variety of serious issues out there, and nobody lives the billion years they’d need to live directly through all of it.
Mnemosyne
@Catsy:
I truly, honestly do not understand the difference between these two sentences that you seem to see. To me, the headline says that Ryan believes that it doesn’t matter how the pregnancy occurs, the zygote has to be protected at all costs. And you’re saying, no, he’s not saying that, he’s saying that it doesn’t matter how the pregnancy occurs, the zygote has to be protected at all costs.
Where is the huge difference between those two statements that you’re seeing here that turns the Raw Story headline into a lie? Because I’m not seeing one at all.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@El Cid: hey guy! just stop, okay?
She already clarified herself *just for you* she said “I hear you, El Cid – really, all it takes is some basic empathy”
Do you want a gold star or something?
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Mnemosyne: In fairness I think he’s taking particular exception to the word “just”.
Personally, I don’t. Frankly, you and I agree. Just trying to answer the question you asked.
dance around in your bones
@El Cid:
Oh, El Cid, that’s because you are a decent and thoughtful and empathetic man/person.
I think it has been noted many times here (and elsewhere) that one of the things lacking in most conservatives is empathy, the putting yourself in another’s shoes unless it affects you or your family directly (apparently, even having this affect this dude’s family directly didn’t affect him since his kid chose his choice anyway – Ha! Funny how that one worked out!)
I thought the forcing pregnancy on some of these guys might install the empathy module. Who knows- I ain’t the FSM or the Empress of the World, much as I would like to be :)
El Cid
@danah gaz (fka gaz): I’m not in any way bitching at her. It’s pretty obvious I’m venting at the mean, dumb shits who get away with this crap.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@dance around in your bones: “I ain’t the FSM or the Empress of the World, much as I would like to be :)”
blech. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Who needs that kind of responsibility? =P
Roy G.
It is indeed unfortunate that Paul Ryan’s noble and impassioned positioned had to be taken off the altar and shown for what it really means, in practical terms. He has to own the consequences of his position – that’s not just for the female chattel.
This is where the notion of left-wing incivility came from: having to call out bullshit like this. The Republicans want to make airy grand sounding proclamations that have devastating real world consequences that they themselves will never have to face, plus, they are rewarded with money and power for taking these positions. Enough.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@El Cid: my apologies. It seems I read your first paragraph in an entirely different tone than that which it was presented. Again, mea culpa. Sometimes the nature of forums gets the better of me.
dance around in your bones
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
Because I could Rule The World, If I Could Only Get The Parts
{{{smile}}}
Roy G.
@dance around in your bones: As the saying goes: ‘Want to make abortion legal? Make it so the Man is the one who gets pregnant.’
dance around in your bones
Ok, so my last comment is in moderation for linking to The Waitresses.
Sociali.sm! First Amendment! Stifle yourself, Edith!
Knight of Nothing
@El Cid: well put.
@Yutsano: Are you just trying to shout me down, or are you trying to persuade me? Ryan did not say what Todd Aiken said; he didn’t make any moral statement about rape at all. If he had qualified himself further, and said, “rape is wrong in all instances, but if a woman conceives a child as a result of that rape, it is still wrong to abort that child,” would that be okay with you? Because it would not be okay with me. Rape or no rape, a woman’s right to choose must be defended.
The question “are you against abortion even in cases of rape or incest?” should offend everyone. It’s misleading, distracting, and it removes agency from women.
Maybe I’m not making the point very eloquently, but it’s the point I’ve been trying to make all along.
@danah gaz (fka gaz): heh heh! I love it. But I honestly wasn’t trying to concern troll here, I swear(though in hindsight, I should have realized it was coming). Mea culpa! My angle lately has been persuasion, and how to accomplish same. I come from a big Catholic family, and I know that some are on the fence about this election, about the anti-gay marriage amendment, etc. How best to nudge them over to this side? I think the Kos and Gawker headlines are misleading, and I don’t think they are helpful toward the end of persuasion.
Cheers!
Knight of Nothing
Rats, stuck in moderation again.
Mnemosyne
@Knight of Nothing:
Moderation hint: if you use the word for the nasty thing some fathers do to their daughters, it’s automatic moderation.
Knight of Nothing
@Mnemosyne: ah, thank you, Mnemosyne! Good to know.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: For nearly all intents and purposes, words do not persuade people. People are not persuaded by talking to them, they are persuaded when things happen to them. So if you want to persuade some empathy-lacking neanderthal or some aspergers suffering antisocial loony that forced birth is wrong, you’ll have to figure out a way to make them pregnant. Failing that, make their wives pregnant, and make it so they can’t afford it. (I’m not seriously suggesting this, it’s just illustrative of what it would take)
There is sort of an exception to this general, but nearly universal rule: You must influence an overall zeitgeist. That takes years, or often decades.
You don’t get there by parsing. You don’t get their by trying to adhere to some magic principled form of debate. You *can* get there (eventually) by controlling the messaging. And here, the messaging should be (in no uncertain terms) – that it’s as shameful to deny a woman’s right of autonomy over her own body as it is to call somebody “nigger“. Full stop. You don’t say – well they really didn’t *mean* to say that firehosing black men or siccing dogs on them was okay. You say FVCK YOU YOU RACIST BASTARD. It’s about shame. Years and years of combined shame, abuse and scorn heaped upon people who want to turn other people into second class citizens. That’s how. No concession. No retreat. No soft-pedaling.
arguingwithsignposts
@dance around in your bones:
As someone with three children from a former marriage, i am well aware of the lifelong consequences of an unintended pregnancy, and would send the GFY right back at you.
I’ll make a deal not to tell you how to walk in your fucking shoes if you don’t tell me how to walk in mine.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: I ran out of edit time. I used their where I should have used there once, and upon reading my post I should have said “it’s at least as shameful to deny…” because it’s arguably worse than calling someone the n-word. Not being black, I won’t attempt to articulate that point further.
The bottom line is that people aren’t persuaded by conversation, or debate. That’s an illusion. There are exceptions, but they prove the rule. Particularly the people that are morally bankrupt when it comes to the value of other human beings. These people do not understand anything other than social scorn and marginalization. They understand being ostracized. They understand being pariahs. That’s what you have to do to these people. You cannot hold their hand. They read that as weakness. You do not help them when they are being crucified. The *appropriate* response is to pick up a nail and join in.
dance around in your bones
@arguingwithsignposts:
Arguing, I wasn’t really directing that comment at YOU, more specifically at those men who try to create legislation to limit women’s choices or brand women who wish to control their own bodies as some kind of murderesses or sluts.
Believe me, I was not telling YOU how to walk in anyone’s shoes….I apologize if I gave that impression.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: as far as the anti-gay marriage amendment, the same thing applies. They are bigots, cowards, and possibly closet case homosexuals, with a deep seated obsession over sex and a profound need to control others. They are not worthy of respect, but scorn, for their very beliefs point to a single salient fact: They believe in their hearts that other people are lesser than they. Tell them that.
Admittedly, I’m not popular among these sorts. I don’t have any bigoted friends. Since my mother was an unrepentant bigot I told her she was worthy of my scorn, and contempt, explained why, and cut her out of my life, on mother’s day. Before I did so, I gave her a pink rosebush (she loves these) so that she’d have something to remember me by.
Cruel? hell yes. Undeservedly? hell no. I hope she thinks of me every time she prunes the thing.
sherlock hound
@Citizen Alan:
I noted one of the sponsors of that purity ball web was a ministry called “Hands of Love”. I can’ t believe I’m saying this out loud, but I immediately wondered if some poor 12-year old got to experience these “hands of love” in a very unacceptable custom.
Hypatia's Momma
“…16 states that provide SOME provisions for stripping rapedaddies of their custodial rights…”
Only 16 and only some of their “rights”.
karen marie
@danah gaz (fka gaz): No, it’s a nasty comment I shouldn’t make, not because it insults her but because it insults actual transgender people.
Knight of Nothing
@danah gaz (fka gaz): and yet, here we are, trying to persuade with words. What is the point of writing and of debate if not to persuade?
Regarding gay marriage, the deliberate strategy in here Minnesota is to engage in conversations with absolutely everyone. We’ve been doing it for months and months, one phone call at a time. I guess we’ll find out whether this strategy is effective or not come November.
Basically, I agree with you: experiences are really what change people. Words alone are not very effective at persuading anyone. That said, debates and conversations can be experiences, even if they are small ones. More to my point, however, is that words can be very effective at turning people off. So I think that choosing them carefully is important. Not to save anyone’s “feelings”, but simply to be more effective at winning elections and winning the wars of ideas.
I think you ought to review the history of civil rights. I don’t recall “shame, abuse and scorn” as being the main themes in these narratives.
Here’s why I think Kos and Gawker headlines are misleading: those headlines focus on Ryan’s position on pregnancies resulting from rape. The problem is, his view on pregnancy is the same in all instances; that was his point. But instead of debating him on the whole issue of choice, we now start the debate with a small sliver of the issue. To me, *that* is the concession, and it is one based upon a cherry-picking what he said.
My point, and it seems to have gone wildly astray, is simply (a) I think these headlines are misleading, and (b) being misleading is not an effective way to persuade anyone. But like I said, I seem to be in a tiny minority here. Cheers.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: “I think you ought to review the history of civil rights. I don’t recall “shame, abuse and scorn” as being the main themes in these narratives.”
This is bullshit, at least insomuch as it being the reason people stopped hurling epithets (and bullets) at black people – (just to remind you, MLK was shot in the head). The thing that stopped people from screaming the n-word was when it finally became socially unbearable to do so.
People are essentially vile. Bigots especially, so. The only way someone rises above that is work, and at least a third of the population of the globe has absolutely no interest in doing so. If you think MLK inspired these people to change their views, you are being naive. They never did, never will. At some point, they simply realized that the only way they could continue to function in society is to shut the hell up.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: “and yet, here we are”
yes. here we are. I have no reason to believe I’ll change your mind.
what’s the point, you ask, if not to persuade?
The point is intellectual and emotional masturbation. In the end, that’s all this really amounts to. It’s a pastime.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@karen marie: thanks for that. I appreciate the sentiment.
Pseudonym
@schrodinger’s cat: Wait ’til you hear where you’re supposed to put those purity balls…
Pseudonym
@danah gaz (fka gaz): Would it have been a big deal if Ryan had talked about the “circumstances of conception” rather than the “method of conception”?
I mean, in a sense I agree with him, the circumstances shouldn’t matter. I just think the government has no business interfering with the woman’s bodily autonomy regardless of the circumstances of conception. I think there isn’t much of a difference between forced pregnancy to birth and forced sexual intercourse, except that in the former case it would be a government claiming to represent me that is responsible for that action.
The issue I have with the headlines declaiming “rape just another ‘method of conception'” is that it makes it sound like he does’t have a problem with rape when the real issue is that he doesn’t have a problem with forced pregnancy including in cases of rape. It seems that other people who are more qualified to judge feel differently though, and so I’m not going to criticize their statements, just note my personal impression.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Pseudonym:
I consider that to be a distinction without a difference. The end result is the same. A woman gets pregnant at the hands of her attacker and is thus victimized for 9 months, and further terrorized when the asshole tries to fight for custody (get yours! legal in 31 states, BTW), and then possibly followed by a lifetime of raising a child you did not ask for and thus having to stare into the face of your attacker every time you send the little rape-trophy off to school – OR – turning it over to foster care to hone it with years of abuse and neglect so that it turns out just like daddy! yay!
Also, the only way Paul Ryan would consider rape to be a problem is that if it happened to him.
Knight of Nothing
@danah gaz (fka gaz): well, if you’re willing to swallow whole the history of the civil rights movement in order to make your point, I guess there’s nothing left to say.
“The point is intellectual and emotional masturbation.” Indeed.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing:
MLK assassinated.
Malcom X assassinated
Rev. Bruce Klunder backed over with a bulldozer and killed
Rev. James Reeb beaten to death
Lamar Smith assassinated
Abraham Lincoln assassinated
I’d keep typing, but my fingers would fall off before I even got halfway down the list. And even this is only covering black-rights activists
Not one of these people managed to stop racism. They managed to help make it a bit less socially acceptable, in exchange for their lives. And yet, we still have, and had powerful men like George Wallace, Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and Willard Mitt Romney to stoke the flames of white racial resentment. We’ve straightened the drapes, but the house is still on fire.
Knight of Nothing
@danah gaz (fka gaz): what made their deaths significant was the way they lived their lives, not vice versa. Points for the list, though.
Knight of Nothing
Also, if you think that MLK and Malcolm X accomplished nothing more substantial in their lives than “straightening the drapes,” well, what can one say to that? That is a truly cynical view.
We’ve gone far afield of the original topic. Time to be on my way. Thanks for the exchange.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Knight of Nothing: Also, if you think that MLK and Malcolm X accomplished nothing more substantial in their lives than “straightening the drapes,”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/michelle-alexander-more-black-men-in-prison-slaves-1850_n_1007368.html
African Americans make up 13.6 percent of the U.S. population according to census data, but black men reportedly make up 40.2 percent of all prison inmates.
Drapes straightened. House on fire. QED