When House Republican and Senatorial candidate Todd Akin did what he could to boost the Dem's chances of retaining control of the Senate and the presidency by saying that from "what I understand from doctors, that [women getting pregnant from actually being raped] is really rare, if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," he was also kind enough to help illuminate the following. What many theocons, lots, but not all of them male, really think about women. How they are fixated on the Bible as the source of true truth. How they are correspondingly exquisitely ignorant when it comes to the results of modern science and biology. How this serves their purposes when it comes to banning all abortions and why they think that's a great idea. How there most certainly is a war against women by elements of the right. And how many theocons are primitive psychopathic sexual perverts.
Some of the jaw dropping, aghast, and outraged reaction, has tended to focus on how Akin appeared to imply that some rape was "legitimate." Actually he did not do so. Think about it. Theocons are opposed to all sex outside marriage, especially by women. Rape of any form is therefore ungodly and illegit. Akin was using the term legitimate to mean an actual rape that is validly claimed because it was truly and fully against the will of the woman. This is important because the mistake risks diverting us reasonably decent folk from what the brilliantly depraved comment is telling us what many theocons really think.
What Akin was implying is that women who get pregnant outside of marriage are sluts. While Akin did not use the word -- even he realized it is hard to get into the Senate if you do that -- other popular conservatives happily say it. Most famously Rush Limbaugh who has repeatedly pushed hard at using the slut word against a wonderful young woman -- Sandra Fluke -- who dared publicly disagree with his twisted world-view. And of course Rush has a large audience who delights in agreeing that liberal women are sluts. That this view of sexually active women is pervasive among hard right males was seen on the Book TV appearance of pioneer pro-choice activist Merle Hoffman (click here). An angry male audience member gladly called unmarried females who have abortions "sluts."
Here in the 21st century many cultures of many religions are still run in a traditionalist manner that is intrinsically sexually perverse. In hypertraditional patriarchal societies it is absolutely unacceptable for a woman to have any unmarried sex for any reason whether she wanted to or not because all honorable males only want to begin wedded sex with a virgin. It follows that any nonvirgin female is gravely damaged goods. The theory is that any woman who is raped is at fault because she in some way allured the man into raping her -- that's a reason why women are enshrouded to a greater or total extent in some hypertraditionalist cultures -- or did not fight back hard enough and was vaginally penetrable because she really wanted it. Better to die resisting than be raped. One reason that a percentage of American theocons believe in this perversion is because it's right there in Bible. "If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered" he must marry the girl (Deuteronomy 28). Note how the Holy Book slyly implies she really wanted it with the line about if "they are discovered." This is in accord with the fear that many women are by nature sneaky seductresses who cannot help enticing men into sexual sin, i.e. sluts. The deeper premise is that women are the slave property of men. First of her father, then of her husband -- that's the other reason why women are enshrouded in some hypertraditionalist societies, can't have other guys checking out the property. Since the rapist has ruined the father's chattel, and because no other man will want her, the rapist is stuck with her. The Biblical god could have done the right thing and instructed that the man who rapes a women is to be severely punished while the woman who is raped should be treated with respect and sympathy and be entirely suitable for marriage and so on, but that opportunity to improve societies was lost.
That the Bible was written by sexual perverts is made all more obvious when it says that if "a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death -- the girl because she was in town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife (Deuteronomy 22). Again note the emphasis on the woman not doing all she can to avoid the encounter, followed by a vicious orgiastic punishment that gives the "moralists" their perverse pleasure.
Or how about this one. "When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her" (Deuteronomy 21). Now that's just plain rape and forced marriage in which women are property in a godly slave society. (Many, even some liberals, try to pass the dark side of the Bible off as the beliefs of ignorant tribal peoples, but this does not change the fact that their sex policies were as depraved as the slavery they practiced.)
There is Deuteronomy 20 where a woman whose hubby dies must not marry outside the family but should hitch up with her late husband's brother, but you have gotten the point.
What the Bible does not mention is abortion. It's not in there. Not a word.
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