63 Comments

TheGOP fear and hatred of women knows no bounds. They are no different from the Taliban. Sexual psychopaths, all of them!

Expand full comment

And Amy.

Expand full comment

Yes, Amy, the professed Handmaiden.

Expand full comment

History has proven time and again that humanity hates regimentation, social dictate and smug old men telling us what we can or cannot do. Woman in America know exactly what's going on here. Old white men announcing they will decide the fate of woman. This will not work. the rebellion will come. Remember, you can slow the historical pendulum but you can't stop it.

Expand full comment

Don’t forget, however, that millions of women also are in favor of punitive pregnancy.

Expand full comment

The old “I had to suffer, so why shouldn’t you?” attitude, seems to me.

Expand full comment

My theory, for whatever it’s worth, is that there is a direct correlation between sexual disfunction and rabid opposition to abortion. People of both sexes, whose own sexual lives range from unhappy to disastrous, bitterly resent and envy women they perceive as having sex”just for fun” — just because they enjoy it. And if a woman wants an abortion, they quickly conclude that she MUST have had sex for fun and not for the marital duty of procreation. Therefore she’s a sinful slut who has to be punished by being forced to bear an unwanted child. Hence their devotion to enforcing punitive pregnancy.

Expand full comment

Considering the majority of evangelicals are anti-abortion, you might have a point-sex is only considered for procreation and not fun. Any woman who has sex for pleasure is a slut to them, and should be punished by any means possible. The real problem of that mindset is that a lot of women who get abortions are married women with children already born.

Thus their logic fails them again. It's just about their version of God against everyone else's-thus punishment.

Expand full comment

Survivors of rape and incest need to be punished too, apparently. Also women carrying babies with grave fetal abnormalities, and women whose fetus dies in utero. Punish the entire family because someone must have offended God to deserve such misfortune. Like Jesus never said, ever.

Expand full comment

I imagine that’s what they have in mind. Is there a masculine counterpart to the term “slut?” We don’t call men libertines these days, do we?

Expand full comment

"dogs"? "the kinda guy who'd fuck a snake"? some friends of mine use "sex addict," but that term feels kind of unisex. for myself, I really LOVE "libertine," and would be in favor of bringing it back...it's got a 17th-century vibe and, because it's so old-fashioned, people would probably think the people using it were really smart.

Expand full comment

Tee hee!

Expand full comment

Old white men start wars when not hating women.

Expand full comment

My disgust and anger are right there with yours, Lucian. Despicable, self-righteous misogynists. How dare they.

Expand full comment

Thank you for this.

On the web one can still find the poster that shows various Republicans (running for office) who were quoted saying various things about rape which shows how utterly craven and clueless they are and always will be.

It was shocking in 2012, but it appears that the Republican party hasn't learned-in fact, they've said the quiet part aloud recently.

Mary Miller, a Republican representative stated last week: "President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday."

Never mind the POC who are affected by this ruling-they don't count. Never mind that rape is a crime, and women who are raped are victims of a crime.

The Republican party does not care. They endorse birth by force, by crime and in some cases on life support while carrying the fetus to term and then shutting down the life support machinery.

We won't talk about the overwhelming number of Republicans who have been convicted of sexual crimes, because they're the ones in charge, you see. They get to commit crimes and get away with it because their side is righteous, and even the Vatican has taken it.

I just say they're scared to death of women and their ability to not do as they're ordered. So they endorse rape wholeheartedly because that's what people in power are able to do.

I say we vote them all the fuck out of office once and for all. That'll show them that their wicked little penis brains aren't worth anything in reality.

Expand full comment

Then there was Asa Hutchinson yesterday morning on the news shows who didn't seem to know the difference between the morning after pill and birth control. Pathetic. They have no idea what they are talking about.

Expand full comment

FYI Asa is being mentioned in some GOP circles as a "moderate" alternative to Trumpism. Just shows you how desperate the GOP has become. Dumb and dumber.

Expand full comment

there are people who could argue (unconvincingly, but it can be argued) that banning abortion is NOT an especially religious issue. when you're talking regular birth control, there is absolutely no argument about the fact that it represents the Church invading the policies of the State as well as just good, old-fashioned state-sanctioned misogyny.

Expand full comment

These old creeps should feel lucky we only want equality and not payback.

Expand full comment

I know that they realize that if we really wanted payback, there'd be bloodshed. Too many women have suffered at the hands of men to ever want just equality.

Expand full comment

pretty much right about all of it. thanks, Mary.

Expand full comment

Thank you, Lucian, for your fierce, formidable and unyielding support.

Expand full comment

Can there be justice when justices wantonly lie in confirmation hearings? Susan Collins is so naive. Joe Biden has to live with the legacy of enabling lying Clarence and shutting down Anita Hill (who is a profile in courage for speaking out). Rapists rarely admit their crimes. You called it exactly. Now we the people, the distinct majority who believe in equal justice under law, to make our voices and votes heard-unequivocally. Our mothers fought for their rights as full citizens and we need to channel that legacy and reclaim our rights.

Expand full comment

more and more, I don't think Susan Collins is naive. she's a party hack all the way, and her "reasonableness" turns out to be based on, like, ONE article published when she was either running for the first time or had just been elected (I don't remember the precise details, or even exactly where I read it, but it was in the last year or so). her pro-choice talk is, like a lot of cheap talk, really bargain-basement and she uses it for cover. the first time she believed a line of horseshit spewed by a SCOTUS nominee, it was naive. all the times after that, I don't see how anyone could claim that she wasn't just LYING.

Expand full comment

She needs to be aggressively challenged. We have to fight on every front

Expand full comment

It’s not about women’s rights, pregnancy or even abortion. It’s about power. The unilateral power grab that’s been unleashed is the new battleground. I come from the old ways, the old moral and ethical arguments but the old ways are now irrelevant. We need new aggressive progressive leadership.

Expand full comment

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"...let's all join in the fury and make these midterms really count.

Expand full comment

They do it because they can, women be damned.

Expand full comment

If we don't vote we're as stupid as they are.

Expand full comment

Keep calling it by name, Lucian. It is what it is.

Expand full comment

By far the best thing I have read on this decision. You are completely right, dammit.

Expand full comment

Thanks, Lucian, for getting this issue out there. Being a dutiful uncle, brother, son, husband, and/or father of a daughter does not qualify a man as an honorary woman. The testosterone sloshing about in there just seems to dull certain senses.

A woman who has ever been battered can tell you considerably more about how flawed men get and keep Thomas/Alito-level power. I've never read Susan Brownmiller on rape, but believe the contrasting physical strength of men v women is basic to her seminal book's premise. As I see it, toxic masculinity has guided the Republican party entirely if subconsciously since Goldwater—it's behind the power GOP men throw around and heightens the heels of the women in chic red suits who wield it second-hand.

Expand full comment

Arrogance is so the right word to use, it's like they are power drunk. After the draft was leaked I naively thought they'd see how angry people were and reconsider their final vote, but no, they dug their heels in a little more like saying you can't intimidate us. Wasn't their decision based on the right to abortion wasn't in the constitution? Well lots of things are not in the constitution and in the founding father's day women were not considered with any seriousness politically. No such thing as a founding mothers existed. Yet no man on this earth would exist without a mother. If they are so concerned about the sanctity of life why did they just allow New aYork state residents to carry a concealed weapon without a licence? As far as when life begins technically it begins with the living cell of the egg and the living cell of a single sperm out of millions that die with only one continuing to live if conception happens but even then the embryo is a tiny almost invisible cluster of cells spltting and dividing much as cancer does, then at around 8 weeks becomes a fetus as the cells begin to organise themselves to according to their unique dna migrate to form all the various organs including the brain but even then can hardly be called a human being until 12 weeks when everything's in place including extremities. . The Catholic Church for 1,860 years held that it was not the killing of a human being to abort a fetus before “quickening,” which was decreed by Pope Gregory XIV in 1591 to be the 166th day after conception (somewhere in the 6th month). There was a very good reason for this doctrine. Catholic theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Jerome and others knew that many pregnancies ended with natural abortions, commonly known as miscarriages, usually in the first four months. Indeed, it has been estimated that more than 25% of confirmed pregnancies end in natural abortions; the number of embryos not attaching to the uterus and being lost are probably a hundred times more frequent. It was believed that God determined whether a woman would miscarry (as well as when she became pregnant in the first place)..

Expand full comment

You are absolutely correct, and state it beautifully. Thank you.

Expand full comment

And Trump is breathing a little easier knowing that get out of jail card just turned gold.

Expand full comment