This is the year of the woman in the US Congress and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of some to make sure that the opposite happened.<\/p>\n
This is the year in which the Right Wing carried out the most anti-woman campaign ever since suffrage, or at least, so it would appear, along with a continued attack on non-hetero persons. A defining moment in this campaign occurred in February, when the Republican controlled House carried out a nearly comical hearing on women\u2019s reproductive rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \nThree Democrats walked out of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on religious liberty and the birth control rule on Thursday to protest Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) refusal to allow a progressive woman to testify in favor of the Obama administration’s contraception rule. The morning panel at the hearing consisted exclusively of men from conservative religious organizations.<\/p>\n “…where are the women?” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked Issa before walking out of the hearing after the first panel. “I look at this panel, and I don’t see one single individual representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventative health care services, including family planning. Where are the women?”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The progressive woman mentioned was Sandra Fluke, who was shortly to be denigrated by the intellectual leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh. On February 29th, Limbaugh called her a slut on the grounds that she wanted, according to him, the government to subsidize her sex life. Subsequent to this event, we saw Republicans running for their party\u2019s nomination and other Republicans running for various seats in Congress and state legislatures making a series of anti-woman and pro-rape comments. This was the culmination of events over the last two years, when dozens of anti-abortion and other anti-women\u2019s health laws have been proposed, many enacted<\/a>.<\/p>\n In February, Republican Congressman Ron Paul, while running for President, said of forced sexual intercourse, \u201cIf it\u2019s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.\u201d It is not clear why. In August, Republican Congressman Todd Akin claimed that in cases of \u201clegitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.\u201d But apparently, rape does sometimes lead to pregnancy; Republican candidate Richard Mourdock, Indiana, said in October that a pregnancy caused by rape is \u201csomething that God intended to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n In October, Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon, Connecticut, said of the problem of health insurance funding morning after pills, \u201cIt was really an issue about a Catholic church being forced to offer those pills if the person came in in an emergency rape\u201d indicating a confusion over the use of the terms \u201cemergency,\u201d \u201chospital,\u201d and \u201cchurch.\u201d And, in a case of confusion of cause, effect, intentionality and more generally the use of verbs, Wisconsin Republican state rep Roger Rivard stated in December 2011, \u201cIf you go down that road some girls, they rape so easy.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul Ryan, who came pretty close to becoming the man a heart beat away form the Presidency, along with the aforementioned Todd Akin and 214 other Republicans co-sponsored the \u201cNo Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act\u201d prohibiting abortions except in instance of an act of forcible rape or incest with a minor.<\/p>\n And so on.<\/p>\n The result of this all out \u201cWar on Women\u201d by the Republican party was that it totally backfired. Not only did the head of the ticket fail with the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but the following also happened<\/a>:<\/p>\n I, for one, welcome our new female overlords.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is the year of the woman in the US Congress and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of some to make sure that the opposite happened. This is the year in which the Right Wing carried out the most anti-woman campaign ever since suffrage, or at least, so it would appear, along with a continued … Continue reading I, for one, welcome our new female overlords<\/span> \n