Our completely incorrect biology lesson today comes not from Chateau Heartiste or The Spearhead or EvoPsychBullshitBeliever997 on Reddit but from an actual elected official with influence in the real world: Republican Congressman Todd Akin of Missouri, currently his party’s nominee for Senate.
In a recent interview with KTVI-TV, the Fox affiliate in St. Louis, he explained that the ladies just don’t get pregnant from rape — well, “legitimate rape” anyway. As he put it:
From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.
But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes, this whole “rape as birth control” thing is not actually, you know, true:
Akin’s claim is one that pops up occasionally in social conservative circles. A federal judge nominated by President Bush in the early 2000s had said similar things, as have state lawmakers in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. …
According to a 1996 study, approximately 32,000 pregnancies result from rape annually in the United States, and about 5 percent of rape victims are impregnated.
Talking Points Memo notes that this isn’t the first time Akin has suggested that
some types of rape are more worthy of protections than others. As a state legislator, Akin voted in 1991 for an anti-marital-rape law, but only after questioning whether it might be misused “in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,” according to … the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Akin: making up shit to deny rape victims their rights since 1991!
Currently, Akin has a big lead in the polls over his Democratic rival, sitting Sen. Claire McCaskill.
Here’s the relevant portion of Akin’s interview; you can find the whole thing at the Talking Points Memo link above.
Mary – you’re aware that this is not a fundamentalist Christian blog, yes? If so, and if you admit that people who do not practise your faith have the right to arrange our own affairs to suit us rather than following what you think your faith demands, then why do you keep coming here and making general declarative statements that ignore the fact that the majority of the people here do not believe in your brand of Christianity? By your own admission your faith-based beliefs are irrelevant to us.
…ask?
(Also, CC: everyone else. Consent is something we all need to ask for!)
@sunshinemary
What if someone gives you a Christmas present and then tells the police you stole it?
What if someone offers to help you clean the church and then claims that you forced them?
What if one of your neighbours asks you to go to their house to pick up something they forgot and bring it to them and them they say you were trespassing?
All of these scenarios are, while technically possible, incredibly unlikely, and I’m guessing you don’t lose too much sleep over them. But a woman saying yes and then claiming she said no? Totally plausible because women are all liars, right?
Go polish your graven idols.
Snowy, the Community of the Wrongly Accused documents false rape charges. It’s not as uncommon as you might think.
http://www.cotwa.info/
Being relatively new here I was not familiar with sunshinemary, so I followed her name to her blog.
Self hate the christian way.
I really wish she wouldn’t use the word Christian to mean her specific brand of Christian only. My grandmother is very Christian (Episcopalian), and she would be horrified to be associated with most of the stuff Mary says.
I don’t think it’s hateful to say that our narrative around rape has exceeded rational bounds. I have seen a definition of sexual assault (written by a pastor no less) that said even saying sexual things to someone online can be considered sexual assault.
@ Snowy,
I tried to post a link to the Community of the Wrongly Accused, but was prevented from doing so. False rape accusations have very serious consequences.
You still haven’t answered the question I posed at 10:16, Mary. You should really do so.
@CassandraSays, My mother (lutheran, and then presbyterian) too would be horrified and appalled.
Link please?
@sunshinemary
It’s just one nugget of wrong after another with you, isn’t it? So if one of the partners is travelling, or becomes physically unable to have sex due to an illness or stress, or they just don’t feel like it at the time, then that nullifies the marriage?
I though marriage was supposed to be this sacred bond between two people that was decreed by God, but a lack of sex and it all comes tumbling down, huh? Doesn’t seem like it’s all that it’s cracked up to be, if that’s the case.
I wonder if Sunshinemary can’t tell the difference between sexual assault and sexual harassment (though there is a continuum)–since saying sexual things over the internet could definitely be sexual harassment.
Maybe it was god who prevented you, if so I thank him.
I don’t think it’s sexual assault exactly, but it certainly can be considered sexual harassment. Are you saying it’s okay for people to just blurt out sexual things to strangers uninvited, whether it be on-line or off-line?
Dang, ninja’d.
and all christians must handle their relations the way my tiny sect says they should.
@ Claire:
Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, in his sermon entitled Disgrace and Grace, said that rape is “Any type of sexual behavior or contact where consent is not freely given or obtained and is accomplished through force, intimidation, violence, coercion, manipulation, threat, deception, or abuse of authority…And it manifests itself in three ways: “The ‘acts’ can be physical, verbal, or psychological.” In the age of bullying and the Internet, in the age of certain inappropriate speech and conduct, it just, it can be physical contact that connotes sexual assault, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. It also can be verbal and/or psychological.”
I found the passage and you’re misquoting.That is their definition of “sexual assault,” which is a broader term than rape. All rape is sexual assault, but not all sexual assault is rape. And yes, that sounds like a valid definition of sexual assault to me.
So you admit that not all Christians share your views. Well, that’s a first step.
Ditto!!
I am a Christian (non-denominational), and I find the stuff that Mary spews quite appalling. All it is to me is utter bullshit fashioned into a bulwark for the “righteousness” of male supremacy.
Aaaaaaaaaaand blockquote fail. The embedded blockquote is my response
Yeah that sounds like an excellent definition of sexual assault and harassment to me. You’d have to be willfully misreading to think that definition in that context was only of rape.
Oh wait.
self-righteousmary willfully misreading something? Say it ain’t so!!