The Akin Anti-Choice crowd are even weirder than ever

[MrScorpio]

Akin’s Female Supporters Reveal Anti-Choice Gender Ideology

By Amanda Marcotte
Monday, October 8, 2012 10:31 EDT

Via the comment threat at Feministe, I found this excellent blog post analyzing the “women for Todd Akin” organizers. As you can imagine, female supporters of Akin are by and large religion-addled fans of the patriarchy. Why women support the oppression of women is an interesting phenomenon, no doubt worthy of many books, but as becomes clear from this, the main reason is that they’re often willing to accept second class citizen status in exchange for an opportunity to hurt other women. In fact, I’d say for a lot of them, they feel that second class citizenship is inevitable, in their lifetimes at least, so they’re going to get the best of both worlds by accepting the gains feminism has won for them* and they get to punish and oppress other women.

Of course, the question is, “Why do they want to punish and oppress other women?”, and reading this post replete with quotes from Akin supporters, the answer becomes clear: S-E-X. The perception that other women—liberal women, younger women—are out there having fun naked times while they have to wash the dishes for the immobile football-watching lump on the couch comes across loud and clear, even if it’s often disguised as “concern” for these other women, who are told they are ruining their chances for having an immobile lump of their own to clean up after. All jokes aside, what’s interesting is how much the anti-choice ideology, at least coming from female anti-choicers, is rooted in the rock solid belief that sex is inherently degrading to women. Because of this, they tend to link up legalized abortion with other claims that women are oppressed by male sexuality, and that this oppression is a new thing. I’m not sure how sincere these beliefs are, but the argument does carry with it the assumption that the purpose of patriarchy is to keep men from oppressing women with their lust. Some examples:

Asked how she reconciles these beliefs [Akin's belief that the government doesn't have a right to interfere in healthcare] with Akin’s belief that the government should have a say in what women choose to do with their bodies, she said: “There is a real war on women today because of pornography and abuse. I don’t think anyone is trying to tell women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies.”

This is the kind of comment that makes literally no sense to people who believe that women are autonomous creatures with minds of their own, because of course Akin’s preferred forced childbirth policies are about telling women what they can and can’t do with their bodies. But I speak fluent anti-choice-ese, so I can translate. Basically, anti-choicers are convinced that no woman would choose non-procreative sex on her own. They assume every woman who is making the choice to have sex without procreation is being manipulated. That’s why they seem to think the human trafficking problem is worse than it actually is, because in a sense, they see all women who have sex outside of the in-marriage-for-procreation framework as being abused and, in a sense, trafficked. They see banning abortion as a way to protect women from men “abusing” us by having sex for fun with us instead of for procreation.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/08/akins-female-supporters-reveal-anti-choice-gender-ideology/

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. I had a conversation once with a married woman who was leaning GOP. I mentioned abortion and

she immediately made some kind of comment about how women "will always have the choices she has". I didn't get it, didn't pursue it further. Something about being married makes women feel more more secure - secure enough to vote in laws that hurt other women.

[jackbenimble]

2. Troubling isn't it?

Of course this isn't restricted to Missouri. And then there are those people who like a friend of mine is voting for akin because not because she agrees with what he said, but because she honestly thinks he just made a mistake and he is a really good guy. This is a woman with a masters degree who had one child out of wedlock and got married only when child #2 was about to be born. A woman who is doing very well due to her hard work and the tuition payments/grants she received from the government. She is a die hard republican and can't even see she is supporting the very people who wouldn't have given her the chance to be anything more than she was when she was a single mom struggling to make ends meet and often failing to do so.

[niyad]

3. many years ago, I read an article about anti-choice, anti-women's rights women, who, it was stated,

suffered from "crabs in the bucket" mentality. Sadly, such seems to be more and more the case.

Crab mentality

Crab mentality, sometimes referred to as crabs in the bucket, describes a way of thinking best described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you ." The metaphor refers to a pot of crabs. Individually, the crabs could easily escape from the pot, but instead, they grab at each other in a useless "king of the hill" competition which prevents any from escaping and ensures their collective demise.[1][2] The analogy in human behavior is that members of a group will attempt to "pull down" (negate or diminish the importance of) any member who achieves success beyond the others, out of envy,[3] conspiracy or competitive feelings.

This term is broadly associated with short-sighted, non-constructive thinking rather than a unified, long-term, constructive mentality. It is also often used colloquially in reference to individuals or communities attempting to "escape" a so-called "underprivileged life", but kept from doing so by others attempting to ride upon their coat-tails or those who simply resent their success.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

[meow2u3]

4. It seems as if conservative women hate liberal women because they're jealous

They're not getting what they want from their husbands, so they go all out to make liberal women's lives miserable because "if I can't have it, no one else will."

[niyad]

5. pretty much--or to keep from looking at the choices they have made