They’re like moles in the lawn popping up in front and behind, these weird men with their weird ideas about sex, women’s physiology, pregnancy and rape. Early on –remember the mandatory vaginal probes?-- I thought it was so bizarre, nothing could come of it. But then something did.The probes became law in Virginia, which to its shame, at this writing, is still a toss-up state in the election. Then men in Michigan who haven’t even rudimentary sex education locked a congresswoman out of the house because she used the word vagina. They said it upset the decorum of the house. What was actually upset was their plan to legislate against vaginas without saying the word. It’s possible some of them don’t know what a vagina is.
Then there was Paul Ryan saying some rapes are “forcible” and some are not. Then Todd Akins saying that in a legitimate rape, the female body has a way of shutting down the possibility of pregnancy. Finally we have Richard Mourdock telling us that all life is a gift from (his) God so that even if conception takes place as a result of a rape, it’s a sin to abort the embryo. Except he wasn’t that clear. He sounded like he thought—as Paul Ryan has said—that rape was just another form of conception and as such, the whole business down there was a gift from (his) God. Maybe we should bless the rapist?
These guys are worried that women are getting away with something. They wouldn’t know a woman’s reproductive system from a plumbing diagram but they think women are getting away with faking rape, what, for the fun of it? That’s projection on their part. Stunningly absent from the language of Mourdock and Atkins is an understanding of even what it means to have a body, let alone what it means to be raped. Rape is a violation. Rape is an assault. And markedly absent is any empathy for women as human beings. They are talking about women as though we aren’t human. We don’t feel anything. That’s also projection.
They are the ones who show no feeling. I look at videos of these two men earnestly trying to explain how much they care about life, about the unborn, about women, about children, about our country, the constitution, peace, harmony, truth and goodness and love. I hear them recite how awful it is for a woman to be raped. I know men who talk like this in public. I’ve seen these paragons sob over injustice in the world and then go home and violate the minds of members of their own families while continuing to recite how they love with the love of Christ, whatever currency that has any more. There’s a frightening amount of disassociation going on.
I thought for a while that these are men who don’t have sisters, wives, or daughters. That’s not the case. Then I thought maybe they have never known anyone who has been violated, assaulted, raped. That’s the not the case either. Here’s what all these guys have in common: the conservative evangelical church, whether Catholic or Protestant. They live their lives in a belief-cult. I know about this because I was raised in a belief-cult. As a young adult, it was a shock to learn there are other ways of thinking, that people can disagree, that the existence of God is not provable, and what, if anything, you believe about God is a private matter. It took years to learn that people can disagree without anyone being violated.
But these evangelicals who have risen through the ranks in the last twenty years are brain-wired to a single paradigm: control or be controlled. The idea that everyone can be free and autonomous without anyone being violated has not given birth in their minds because they allow for no penetration.
Here’s the scariest part of all: There are women who live with the same paradigm. They support these ideas. Here’s what I have to say to them: Believe whatever you like, believe that life begins at the onset of menses if you want, believe that Mitt Romney is going to be better for the economy and that’s more important than this whole woman thing. Go ahead and vote for him if that’s what you believe. Then start measuring yourselves for the foot binding, the corset and the stays because it’s not going to matter whether the economy is roaring or sniveling, if you don’t have full human rights including the right to make your own decisions about your life and your body, you are completely screwed.
Another thing about moles: they don’t operate in the light because they can’t see. They scurry into their holes where they feel safe and everyone thinks the same way.