Akin & 7 More Crazy Rape Statements, including Ryan's "there's rape and then there's forcible rape"
Aug 20, 2012 5:05 PM EDT
Rep. Todd Akin’s outburst about ‘legitimate rape’ isn’t defensible, but it does have some precedent. From Paul Ryan’s ‘forcible rape’ head-scratcher to a Yale frat’s ‘no means yes’ rally, more shocking examples of
male ignorance.
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‘If It’s Inevitable, Just Enjoy It’
Rape, like a rainy day, can be unavoidable...so perhaps some victims would do better to take it in stride. This particularly foul-weather analogy was made in 1990 by Clayton Williams, then Texas’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, in front of cowboys, campaign workers, and reporters during a cattle roundup on a foggy morning at his ranch in West Texas. Later that day he apologized “if anyone’s offended” by his extremely offensive joke before adding that a cattle roundup is “not a Republican women’s club” but “a tough world where you can get kicked in the testicles if you’re not careful.” Instead of worrying about taking a cow hoof to the crotch, perhaps Williams should just “relax and enjoy it.”
Women Who Are Raped ‘Secrete a Certain Secretion’
In light of Akin’s gaffe, this one sounds familiar. Stephen Freind, then a Pennsylvania legislator, came out with a real doozy in 1988 during a radio interview when he said that the odds of a woman getting pregnant from being raped are “one in millions and millions and millions,” simply because the experience causes a woman “to secrete a certain secretion” that generally kills sperm. Freind stood by his claim—even though scientists negated it, with one joking that he’d use the magical “secretion” Freind refers to as a contraceptive if he could “find out what it was.” Freind went on to lose a 1992 Senate race, his last venture into state politics.
There’s Rape, and Then There’s…‘Forcible Rape’
GOP veep candidate Paul Ryan should probably have consulted a dictionary before laying out the conditions for a No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which he cosponsored with Akin himself in 2011. The bill said taxpayer dollars could only go toward aborting pregnancies that resulted from “forcible rape”... apparently it’s important to distinguish between regular old rape and “forcible rape.” The meaning of the term was never clearly defined and ultimately removed from the bill.
Marital Rape Could Be a ‘Legal Weapon’
A memo to all the ring-wearing ladies: your husband, that man with whom you exchanged the most sacred vows of love, can’t force himself upon you when you don’t want to have sex, according to some wingnuts. In 1991, Akin ultimately voted in favor of an anti-marital-rape law, but only after raising the issue of whether or not it would be misused, for example, “in a really messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband.”
Just an Excuse for an Abortion?
Earlier this year, moments before Idaho’s state senate passed a mandatory ultrasound bill, Sen. Chuck Winder concluded his supporting arguments with these choice words of wisdom: “I would hope that when a woman goes into a physician, with a rape issue, that that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage, or was it truly caused by rape.”
more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/20/rep-todd-akin-7-more-crazy-rape-statements.html