Right Wingers Go Wild Against Women Around the Country

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/17/right-wingers-go-wild-against-women-around-the-country.html

Right Wingers Go Wild Against Women Around the Country
Feb 17, 2012 3:54 PM EST

From Virginia to Oklahoma and beyond, the id of the contemporary right is on a rampage against American women. Michael Tomasky apologizes for his gender.


Women of America, I hereby apologize for the members of my sex from whom we’ve been hearing so much recently. What in the world is going on with these men? For a bunch of people who purport to be advancing allegedly “moral” positions, they are in fact the amoralists of our democracy. Their positions on contraception and sex, their “jokes” about aspirin between the knees, and now this utterly depraved Virginia ultrasound legislation that is apparently about to become law—we have now moved well beyond the realm of politics and into the dark and unchecked id of the contemporary right.

We’ve seen this on many other fronts from conservatives in recent years. Nutty as they’ve become, though, it’s one thing to dig in your heels on taxes and budgetary matters and stimulus bills and assistance to underwater homeowners. Their positions on all those matters are intransigent, extreme, and in most cases out of step with majority opinion in this country. And their positions on all those matters are driven in no small part by hatred of Barack Obama. But as extreme as they are on those matters and others, debates over them still feel on some level like normal (normal having been radically redefined these past couple of years) arguments about politics.

But these last two weeks have been off the charts. Yes, the original Obama administration regulation on contraceptive services was a topic for legitimate debate. We had that debate. The administration changed its position. Some people were happy. Others weren’t. Usually that would have been the end of it, especially when opponents saw the polls that Americans of virtually every stripe, including 57 percent of Catholic voters, supported the Obama compromise position. Opponents with functioning egos and super-egos would at this point have skulked away—free, obviously, to rouse as much rabble as they could in this free society in an attempt to change minds, but aware that they’d lost for now under the generally agreed-upon rules of democracy.

snip//

This isn’t politics. It’s not even theology—they lost that card with the Rubio and Blunt bills, which go far beyond religion precisely defined. And it’s most certainly not morality. It’s quite the opposite of morality. It’s a consequence of a mindset that equates compromise with capitulation, that insists on purity, that attempts to abuse the tools of democracy to secure anti-democratic outcomes, and that is driven by rage against modernity. And it’s hardly an accident that all these forces come together to assume their foulest shape against women. I’ve been thinking lately about what our society might be like if the situation were somehow reversed: if the penis were a similar battleground, and if it was mostly blue-haired women deciding how men could and could not use theirs. I have a hunch that many of these same men would suddenly see the case for bodily autonomy and the exercise of individual conscience.

The Republicans are obviously hurting themselves. No, they didn’t waltz into a trap laid by Obama. Believe me, this White House isn’t that good. They waltzed into their own trap—a trap set by their own collective hysterical mind. It will hurt them at the polls nationally, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to inflict a lot of damage on a lot of people along the way.

[niyad]

1. k and r

[LetTimmySmoke]

2. I'm not apologizing for my gender.

The contraception war is something that is being carried out by a cabal of right wingers, whose views do not represent the views of all or even most men.

A general gender war between men and women is just what the right is trying to provoke.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. I Would Not Count On The Polls

One cannot be too sure about the polls when they have already disenfranchised 5 million voters nationwide. With the phony machines, intimidation, billions of dollars from the 1% etc, ect, they can stop many voters who would vote against them.

You cannot underestimate the GOP. They want a coup so badly that they will do anything to get it. GOP Secreatry of States are probably already setting the voting machines where progressive districts do not have enough for the vote. And they will challenge every voter who is not a Republican and slow things down in November.

They do not see their stance on contraception and anti womens' programs as a trap. They see it as an opportunity to divide and conquer once more. There have hundreds of bills nationwide to end womens' rights. And they are content to play these parliamentary games behind closed doors because they are winning.

Unless there is a severe and open push back against these misogynist terrorists it will get much much worst. Just look at all the legislation pending at every level of government.

They are executing family planning nationwide as we speak.

[RKP5637]

5. Frankly, they are terrorists and un-American. n/t

[AndyTiedye]

7. That is the Only Reasonable Explanation for the Way They Are Campaigning

[PADemD]

4. The Equal Rights Amendment needs to be revisited.

[hedda_foil]

6. They must have had this whole anti- contraception plan ready to go

That's as frightening (or more) as the whole wild eyed attack itself. ERIC or a related organization must have had the state legislation in the bag and ready to roll out instantly. And that makes the Handmaid's Tale proposition far closer to reality than I would have believed just a week ago.

[Iris]

8. With them, it's always boiling just beneath the surface.

They are always ready to drag out their weapons against women. In a way, it's amazing they haven't already accomplished a society like the Handmaid's Tale.

[tblue37]

9. Considering that the word “hysteria” comes from a root word meaning “uterus,”

and considering that these bizarre Republican policy choices take the female uterus as their battleground, I find this sentence strangely apropos:

“They waltzed into their own trap—a trap set by their own collective hysterical mind.”*
__________________

*L. hystericus "of the womb," from Gk. hysterikos "of the womb

[bhikkhu]

10. I hope most women will remember -

these are the same kind of people who railed against women's suffrage a hundred years back.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, but I hope in November most women will remember that they can vote freely against patriarchal domination, yet again.