GOP Doubling Down

[TheMastersNemesis]

The GOP is doubling down on the war on women. They seem to be ready to pass more and more onerous laws. I do believe that women and men of conscience will be faced with going to the streets and confronting republicans personally. What bothers me is that they are smug and giddy about trashing women's rights. And somehow we are going to have to wipe that smug right off their little faces.

In the end it looks like women and men of conscience are going to have to develop a new and personal militancy against the GOP.
What is so amazing is how the RW now plans to form organizations to attack women incessantly now using religion as a cover for their despicable deeds.

[freshwest]

1. What I'd like to see is more men standing up for women's rights. After all, they are not only...

Invading the bedrooms and bodies of women, but the men who share responsibility for all the things that women are getting the blame for. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.

So where the hell are the men?

Do they intend to be celibate except when they are planning to have children?

If they aren't going to be celibate, are they going to see their partners through their pregnancies and the rearing of their children?

Most woman in a sexually active, committed relationship can get pregnant and bear one child a year and it can add up. If the GOP wants women to be willing to have sex all the time and accept the consequences, this is what they are.

Do men feel that they can support, say, a family of a dozen or more in a long term marriage? How are they going to do that? In such cases the woman would need recovery time and likely be a full-time housewife and mother, as the cost of childcare would be prohibitive.

So, would men stand behind their women or stand aside, allowing contraception to be outlawed? Will they take care of all unwanted children so their wife or girlfriend won't be at the abortion clinic?

If this continues, the guys better get used to those cold showers. Women do know how to say NO, and the reasons for it.

[Canuckistanian]

4. That's an excellent point

The Repubs are not just violating women's rights, they inserting themselves into the bedrooms of MEN as well. And interfering with plans made by BOTH partners.

This whole thing just mystifies me. Are there ZERO Republican men who object to this course of action? Not even to say "Hey man, I think this MIGHT be going a little too far"?

[freshwest]

6. Thanks for expressing it that way, I was coming back to my reply to edit if for that.

Aren't men offended that the GOP is now going to regimenting their personal lives, as well?

And that the law will command their own sex lives, their behavior in their own beds?

Where is the money for these men to take care of their families and maintain a lifestyle befitting something more than the people they mock as breeders and welfare queens?

Because those circumstances are not the product of racial inferiority, but poverty. People used to be berated for having more children than they could afford to care for. Can men afford this?

In the past, men not only supported the right of their partners to contraception and abortion, but demanded it (or at least demanded the women take care of it and still keep up with the sexual aspects of their relationships) to keep their quality of life from going down to a point they were unable to provide for them.

Is anyone thinking ahead about what this means?
Or do they expect to break the laws for their own families, or think these onerous laws will only fall on women they consider unworthy?

[Canuckistanian]

10. Excellent points again...

I had never considered the racial/poverty angle, but I think it's a big part now. The authors of this obviously co-ordinated attack aren't dummies.
They have a plan, and it seems to hinge on demographics.

[freshwest]

11. Cheap labor, even slave labor, is the end result of unregulated capitalism.

They lose nothing by creating chaos in the lives of the people, and everything to gain. Virtually every single thing they promote, from the lesser to the greater evils, fits that business model.

[Canuckistanian]

15. Yup. "Cheap Labor Conservatives"

http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/16

[freshwest]

17. Umm, nice website.

[AndyTiedye]

2. They are Planning to Steal the Election, so It Won't Matter What the Rest of us Think

They control enough states to do it too. I hope we can find some way to stop them.

[longship]

3. and they're not even holding a pair

They double down with a shit hand.

I agree that action demands counter-action. The country --- no, the world --- needs to know that the US public (not just the women) will not stand for this insidious march back to Middle Ages thinking.

We have precious little time to organize something really big, something which will show those theocrats that the public will not tolerate their repressive politics.

This is not a Christian country.. And anybody who says it is, has abrogated their right to speak for the USA.

Action Now.

[freshwest]

9. I personally don't know any Christians who don't support abortion and birth control.

They use it and expect it will always be available. So it's a lot to go up the religious aspect, although I agree with the 'not a Christian country' theme, and they grew up in a secular society and don't want to be confined by the rules of any church, period. If we stand and scream about religion, we will get forced into a narrow box and not get anything done.

I agree, something needs to be done and done quickly. As much as I love Occupy, they have not addressed this issue as far as I can see. The old time Democrats have seen abortion and contraception as a litmus issue in appointing judges and in all the legislation and riders in many states and at the federal level.

But they are overwhelmed by the generation the RW bred to enforce their views. These are not just old men doing this, it is the young men who want to have this control over their partners.

At this time, they are playing both sides of the fences and figure they can eat their cake (sex on demand from their partners) and eat it too (have their partner deal with breaking these laws or suffering the humiliation of being raped by the state for failing to stay childless).

This has always been the case in many respects. It's been considered to a woman's problem, and part of that is due to the differences in the ability to reproduce. The woman has a certain number of years that she can bear; the man has no limit.

Many men refuse to get vasectomies, thinking, well, if this marriage, girlfriend, significant other, friend with benefits doesn't work out, I can still find the woman I deserve and have kids later.

I wonder how many men will choose celibacy, absolute celibacy or a vasectomy to escape these laws if this trend continues.

I recall generally, in one of Shakespeare's plays, a young man was sentenced to death for getting a woman with child outside wedlock. Her fate was to have the child, be banished to a work house, nunnery or something similar, and her bastard child be given to an orphanage and end up indentured or in a work house as well.

This may sound extreme, but it's happened before and I think the GOP would love that.

[longship]

12. Thoughtful response

Speaking of nunneries, I recommend Dava Sobel's incredible Galileo's Daughter which documents his correspondences between him and his daughter, Virginia, a cloistered nun. It's necessarily a one sided conversation because none of Galileo's letters have survived. So the entire book is like listening to one side of a phone conversation. It's a compelling read if you're into it.

[freshwest]

13. Thanks, but this is more than a matter of history. We don't need to go back to that.

[longship]

16. Pardon me!

I didn't mean to intrude.

[freshwest]

19. Yes, you are excused! LOL!

[longship]

20. Thank you, your eminence.

[freshwest]

21. Good night, sweet prince. Or princess, as the case may be.

[rustydog]

5. I read a story where a woman in Morocco, I believe, committed suicide

rather than obey a judges edict that she marry her rapist.

Is it too far-fetched to believe one of these backward-thinking republicans wouldn't sponsor such a bill?

[freshwest]

7. They've been pushing this here for years... Under their right to life movement.

You get raped, you're going to 'accept this gift,' or so Sanctorum says. Really, that is the religious right's philosophy. Just like the Taliban.

The right have been calling for women on welfare to be forced to marry someone, anyone, to get them off the dole. That's what this single motherhood makes criminals push is about.

What if the rapist or just the father, can't be found, or isn't going to support the woman and the child? Then the same thing happens.

And if a man is held legally responsible and can't make enough money to support a child, they want him in jail, and the woman will be on the dole again if she can't find a job.

These people are destroying democracy with this stuff and they think it's God's will. Dangerous.

[ErikJ]

8. "Religion is regarded ......................by the rulers as useful". Seneca

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Seneca (ca. 4 BC –AD 65)

[liberalhistorian]

14. Every time I think I've heard it all lately in regards

to their blatant all-out attack on women, another legislator says or does something else that just causes my jaw to not just drop but run across the room and out the door. Today it was reading about a WI GOP state legislator who said that abused women shouldn't be able to get a divorce, that they need to "work on finding and getting back what made them marry in the first place" and that divorce shouldn't be the answer, especially if they have kids 'cause it's always better for kids to be with married parents. And I am NOT making that yurunda up, unfortunately. I guess he thinks it's better even when the kids have to watch daddy beating the shit out of mommy for not cooking his dinner right? Perhaps he thinks it will teach her a lesson? He didn't have to say it, but the underlying current was "what is she doing to cause it and she needs to be a better wife" or some such yurunda. I'm still trying to put my brain back in my head after reading that one.

[freshwest]

18. Oh, that one's been out there for years. That's why some of the evangelical churches have classes to

Show the women how to keep that man happy in bed so he'll play nice. The toll on the sanity of the wife and kids doesn't matter.

In a way, they have a point, but it should be kept in discussion around their own dinner table, or their church, or whatever.

Not in Congress. These clowns are not our moral leaders, they are Koch Brothers/ALEC lackeys.