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It has been said that Republicans have a problem with women. They don’t seem to understand us and keep doing things like trying to define “legitimate rape” or keep our lifeless bodies breathing against our stated wishes so we can incubate a fetus. They haven’t gotten on board with the whole equal pay for equal work thing and they still don’t get why paid maternity leave is, ya know, good.
But they WANT to get along with women and they keep talking about how to do it. This week, they had Mike Huckabee weigh in. I’m not sure why unless they think Jon Stewart is a woman and wanted to give him this little gift straight from Huck’s mouth (from the Washington Post):
“I think it’s time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a ‘war on women,'” Huckabee said during a speech at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Washington. “The fact is the Republicans don’t have a war on women, they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”
Huckabee said Democrats rely on women believing they are weaker than men and in need of government handouts, including the contraception mandate in Obamacare.
“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it,” Huckabee said. “Let’s take that discussion all across America.”
Uncle Sugar. Uncontrolled libido. Helpless without government cheese birth control.
OK, first of all, let’s all remind every lying liar who says Obamacare provides free birth control to all who ask that they are lying. It’s not true, it was never true, and until the day it becomes true, anyone saying so should be corrected loudly and emphatically. Because lying is wrong.
Second, let’s unpack this a bit. Mike Huckabee thinks women need to control their libidos. That they shouldn’t have as much sex as they want, that having a strong libido and desiring sex is somehow…I don’t know. Bad. Wrong. Unpatriotic. UnRepublican.
If you asked him about it, he’d probably say some religious mumbo jumbo about sex and marriage and Jesus and procreation and chastity. But I have a different theory. I think Mike Huckabee and his compatriots are scared shitless of women. I think they’re terrified that there are women out there who are having sex, enjoying sex, with men of their choosing. And I think they’re terrified that they would discover that none of those women would choose them. Moreover, the sexual autonomy is a symptom of greater autonomy that takes women out of their control and they have to admit that their day is past. They look in the mirror and beyond the Amurricun fervor and Jesus-lovin’ righteousness, they can see a shadow of a Prufrockian failure of a human being. A hint that merely being white and male isn’t enough to raise them from the mud we are all standing in. They realize, that some of us are looking at the stars and they hate it. They will reach down into the mud and fling any handful they can in the hopes of stopping us.
What these sad, scared fading old men will never understand is that women are more than their genitalia. We are not a bundle of clitoral nerves running amuck through the streets of this nation. We are thinking beings, fully sentient, with dreams and aspirations. We are striving not for free Depo Provera shots but for the freedom to do as we choose without being lectured by condescending white guys who can’t get their eyes off our vaginas.
So, to Mike Huckabee I offer Susan B. Anthony’s words: “Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.” That’s what it’s really about.
