“Tokenism And Condescending Rhetoric”: The RNC’s Final Insult To Women
On Thursday, from both inside and outside the Republican National Convention, Republicans simultaneously tried to woo women voters while opposing essential women’s rights.
The RNC largely ignored social issues, but socially conservative organizations held many events outside of the RNC security perimeter. On Thursday afternoon, two such groups that are composed solely of women—Concerned Women for America and the Susan B. Anthony List—honored anti–abortion rights female politicians in a restaurant upstairs from the Hooters just past the RNC security gate.
The common theme of the various politicians’ remarks was that the truly feminist position is to oppose reproductive freedom. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called President Obama, “the most anti-woman, anti-life president in history.” In essence, the argument is that women are mothers and fetuses are babies, so legalized abortion leads to widespread infanticide, and that is disrespectful to women.
But those were just some of the provocative statements made. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) claimed that, “the president is doing everything in his power to radically expand abortions in this country.”
Another persistent theme was that society must protect the defenseless. But the interest in doing so only lasts until they exit the womb. “How we treat the most vulnerable among us is a reflection of who we are,” said Ayotte. She did not mean that we should feed the hungry or house the homeless, only that we should not allow abortions. Similarly, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, said that her newborn niece’s Down Syndrome has reified her commitment to opposing abortion. “It breaks my heart to think how many people would not have chosen to keep that precious angel,” said Bondi.
Bondi gave a speech with Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens at the RNC on the evils of healthcare reform that was widely panned for its awkward, flat delivery. After the event on Thursday I buttonholed Bondi and asked her how she responds to disability rights groups that all support healthcare reform. If she does not believe in preventing insurers from excluding people with prior conditions and expanding Medicaid, I wondered, how does she propose to provide healthcare for disabled people who may be less fortunate than her niece? The answer? She doesn’t. “Our insurance system isn’t perfect,” conceded Bondi. “But my niece has incredible insurance. I haven’t experienced [inadequate coverage] at all.” That, of course, is no answer at all.
In his acceptance speech on Thursday night, Romney followed up on the RNC’s week-long theme of appealing to women through tokenism and condescending rhetoric. Here is what he had to say about his mother and how her foray into electoral politics shaped his own behavior:
My mom and dad were true partners, a life lesson that shaped me by everyday example. When my mom ran for the Senate, my dad was there for her every step of the way. I can still hear her saying in her beautiful voice, “Why should women have any less say than men, about the great decisions facing our nation?”
I wish she could have been here at the convention and heard leaders like Governor Mary Fallin, Governor Nikki Haley, Governor Susana Martinez, Senator Kelly Ayotte and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
As governor of Massachusetts, I chose a woman lieutenant governor, a woman chief of staff, half of my cabinet and senior officials were women, and in business, I mentored and supported great women leaders who went on to run great companies.
That’s the tokenism. Everything Romney said about appointing women is good, but none of it is a substitute for policy. The number of women Romney appointed in Massachusetts would be a rounding error on the total workforce in the state. The question is whether Romney supports policies that would help all women obtain equal treatment in the workplace. His record on that is mixed at best. Although his campaign said he would not appeal the the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, they initially waffled on it. And he refuses to say whether he would support the Paycheck Fairness Act, a Democratic bill in Congress that would crack down on pay disparities between men and women. Compared to President Obama, Romney is simply not a leader on gender equality. Planning your pregnancies is also essential to women’s ability to manage their careers, and Romney’s policies would create obstacles to that as well. He opposes abortion rights and requiring hospitals and health insurance companies to provide access to contraception.
Romney’s efforts to substitute hiring women for supporting their legal equality is reminiscent of his misleading answer to a debate question on gay rights. He said he opposes discrimination and hired openly gay employees. Hiring gay employees means you do not practice discrimination, but it does not mean you actually oppose discrimination. To do so would require pledging to sign into a law bill that would protect them from being discriminated against by employers who are not inclined to be as kind as Romney. And that is something Romney opposes.
Then there was Romney’s grossly patronizing paean to stay-at-home mothers, in the person of his privileged wife. Recalling their early years of marriage, Romney said:
Those days were toughest on Ann, of course. She was heroic. Five boys, with our families a long way away. I had to travel a lot for my job then and I’d call and try to offer support. But every mom knows that doesn’t help get the homework done or the kids out the door to school.
I knew that her job as a mom was harder than mine. And I knew without question, that her job as a mom was a lot more important than mine. And as America saw Tuesday night, Ann would have succeeded at anything she wanted to.
As Matthew Yglesias pointed out in Slate, this makes no sense. If Ann’s job was harder and more important than Mitt’s, why is Mitt the one running for president? And if raising kids is more important than working in a job, why did Romney earlier tout his record of appointing women to high office?
His comments also raise a number of unpleasant questions. Are women who work outside of the home engaged in less important work than stay-at-home moms? If so, Romney is denigrating the majority of American mothers. And why does he create this false dichotomy of more and less important jobs? Families need money and they need childcare. Some, such as the Romneys, are fortunate to get enough of the former from one parent that the other can focus full-time on providing the latter. As is typical of the Romneys, they seem blissfully unaware of their own class privilege. And since Romney also blasted Obama for supposedly undermining the work requirements in welfare reform, he is contradicting himself. If the best thing for Ann to do was to stay at home with her children, why is that not the case for single mothers on welfare? If Mitt believes that Ann’s child-rearing was harder and more important than his job in private equity, then why does he not believe that unemployed single mothers are also engaged in harder, more important work than he? Why does he want them to abandon that work for, say, menial jobs in the service economy? And why is he running for president instead of finding the welfare recipient with the most children and nominating her?
Romney’s appeals to women make no sense because his positions are not good for women. Therefore, he, like Republican women, tries to spin policies that would limit women’s rights as being in their best interest. It’s an impressive feat of mental dexterity, but it’s a far less honest approach than making the more straightforward “traditional family values” argument that Republicans used to rely upon. They’ve realized that won’t work, but this probably won’t either.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, September 3, 2012
“Republican Values And Aspirations”: The GOP Wants To Make This Todd Akin’s World
For nearly 30 years, Republicans have supported an amendment that would outlaw abortion in all instances.
Yesterday morning, before the GOP completely turned its back on Todd Akin, I noted that—despite their harumphing—few Republicans disagreed with the substance of Akin’s remarks. In Congress and across the country, GOP lawmakers have supported a raft of bills designed to restrict or end abortion, as well as most forms of contraception. Look no further than the Republican platform, which—as CNN reports—will include radical and restrictive language on abortion:
”Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,“ the draft platform declares. ”We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”
Republicans have been quick to distance themselves from Akin. Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown—who is running a tough reelection campaign against Elizabeth Warren, a liberal icon—has called on him to resign from the race. Nevada Senator Dean Heller followed suit—“He should not be the standard bearer for the Republican party in Missouri”—and was joined by National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn. The Texas Senator advised Akin to “carefully consider what is best for him, his family, the Republican Party, and the values that he cares about and has fought for throughout his career in public service.”
Even Mitt Romney issued a harsher condemnation after a tepid initial response: “Rep. Akin’s comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong,” Romney told The National Review. “Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive.”
Of course, none of this changes the substance of the Republican Party’s stance on abortion. “Personhood” amendments have become popular with Republicans on the state level, and the human life amendment—which is functionally indistinguishable from “personhood”—has been a part of the GOP platform since 1984, with nearly identical language in each instance. Platforms don’t dictate the policy of elected officials, but they are a statement of the party’s values and aspirations.
What does the GOP aspire to? An America where abortion is outlawed in all instances: no exceptions for rape, no exceptions for incest, and no exceptions for medical emergency. The variety and availability of contraception would be sharply limited, and the rate of pregnancy significantly higher. The rate of abortion might go down, but the number of women killed as a result of illicit abortions would be guaranteed to increase. Todd Akin would be happy with this world; the human life amendment would keep women from “punishing” children and result in a world where even more were born as a result of rape.
I don’t actually believe that rank-and-file Republicans want a world where abortions are deadly and more women are forced to carry the children of their rapists. But that’s the world a human life amendment would create. Moreover, it’s not empty language—236 House Republicans voted for the Protect Life Act last October, which would have the same effect.
Todd Akin is in the mainstream of the Republican Party on this issue, and has been for a long time. His only mistake was honesty.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, August 21, 2012
“The Danger Of Laughing At Todd Akin”: The GOP Sustained Effort To Mainstream Radical Ideas
The Twittersphere went nuts yesterday after a video was posted of Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin expressing some jaw-dropping views on rape and abortion in an interview with local news:
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
The short-term consequences of such an incendiary remark are predictable: Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill will trumpet the remark to her own political advantage, donations will spike to her campaign and the party committees will offer the remark as one more proof point of the GOP’s war on women. But the impact of Akin’s effort to redefine the terms of this debate reaches beyond this one race. In the multidimensional chess that shapes public opinion, the game is less about individual elections and more about a sustained effort to mainstream radical ideas. In the case of denying women control over their lives, there’s evidence that the bad guys may be winning the long-game.
Akin was Paul Ryan’s co-sponsor on a House bill just last year banning the use of federal funds for abortion except in cases of “forcible rape.” This term seemed laughably redundant since all rape, by definition, is forced. But this redefinition of rape was deceptively sinister. Statutory rapists often use coercion but not physical force. If the measure had passed, a 13-year-old emotionally manipulated into having sex with an older friend or relative would no longer be able to use Medicaid to terminate a resulting pregnancy. Nor would her parents be able to use their tax-exempt health savings fund.
While the measure was defeated, conversation around it introduced skepticism about whether all rape is created equal and what distinctions should be recognized by law. Instead of making him politically toxic, Ryan’s support of the pioneering forcible rape measure likely made him a more attractive vice presidential candidate to a Romney campaign needing to energize the right-wing base.
And whether or not Akin loses this cycle, his comments have already escalated the stakes. In his world view, the rape victim’s body will be the ultimate judge of whether a crime has taken place. If she gets pregnant, by Akin’s standard, her reproductive organs consented to the pregnancy, so she must have consented to the sex. This bizarre standard of innocence is reminiscent of medieval Europe, where the men in authority held the similarly scientific view that women guilty of witchcraft floated in water while innocent women would drown. Being cleared of witchcraft was of course not much consolation to the drowned women, though they at least got to skip being burned at the stake.
Akin’s comments appear an awful lot like step one in the GOP’s favorite two-step tactic to redefine the world around us: first, more extreme figures voice opinions that would never fly from more politically palatable ones. The right-wing echo chamber picks up those opinions in the guise of news coverage. Then, the more politically acceptable candidates shift their rhetoric to acknowledge the newly accepted opinion as reality.
Consider our seemingly uncontrollable slide towards climate catastrophe: in 2006 and 2007, the link between human activity and climate change was almost incontestable. Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth was a breakout hit; and the former VP was rewarded for his leadership on the global issue with a Nobel Prize in 2007. In 2008, both McCain and Obama openly acknowledged the existence of the threat and the need for action. Scientists breathed a collective sigh of relief that the US might finally exert some leadership on this existential issue.
But when the Obama victory made the idea of a clean-energy economy a potential reality, the climate deniers kicked into high gear. Cash from the Koch brothers poured into bogus organizations to promote climate skepticism and cast doubt on the scientific consensus. Senator Inhofe called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” A 2009 Chamber of Commerce ad buy brutalized House Democrats who voted for the climate legislation. In the lead up to the climate summit of 2009, someone even hacked into a University server and published highly edited e-mails from climate scientists to make them appear to be fabricating their results. While the scientists were exonerated, the damage was done.
The resulting shift in public opinion was almost immediate. Between 2008 and 2010, the number of Americans who believed media accounts of climate change were exaggerated jumped from 35 percent to 48 percent. Among self-identified Republicans, it went to 66 percent. By last year’s Republican presidential primary, right-wing contenders made seemingly inane statements that flew in the face of scientific consensus, and even the ones like Romney who had previously acknowledged the threat were forced to recant to maintain their viability.
While the political dynamics around these two issues are different, there are striking similarities in the right-wing strategy of capitalizing on extreme statements to shift the spectrum of what’s possible. And the wary will take heed: in the span of four short years, we went from having two presidential candidates who openly advocated action to stop climate change to having no GOP candidates in 2012 who could or would affirm its existence and a Democratic president who seems to wish the issue would magically disappear. The consequences of inaction are already being felt.
The same process is underway to undermine women’s voices in our own destiny. Mitt Romney has already flip-flopped from a pro-choice Senate candidate and a governor who promised to be “a good voice” among Republicans on reproductive health to his new incarnation as Paul Ryan’s running mate and an anti-choice leader. While Ryan allows lesser candidates like Akin to carry the water on extreme views held by the right-wing patriarchy, his equally radical views become mainstreamed as his anti-woman credentials are embraced by the party leadership. If we don’t stop laughing and start drawing hard lines around scientific reality, how many Akin’s will it take before we see a President Romney ordering rape victims thrown into the water to see if they float?
By: Ilyse Hogue, The Nation, August 20, 2012
“Lady Legislating Skills”: Republicans, Test Your Knowledge Of Women
Republicans: Do your friends make fun of you for your shameful lack of awareness on women’s issues? Have to vote on a bill that will legislate uteruses but not quite sure you know what that word means? Well, look no further—this quiz will help hone your lady-legislating skills with expert knowledge from your peers. Remember to use a number-two pencil, and no looking at your neighbor’s paper.
1. What is rape?
a. A “forcible” assault. Minors, incest victims and date-rape victims need not apply.
b. A figment of women’s imagination.
c. “The violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”
d. Something that happens to drunk sluts.
2. What do we know about pregnancy that occurs after a rape?
a. It’s a God-given gift. Enjoy!
b. No such thing. The vagina employs bio-bouncers that will “shut that whole thing down.”
c. Impossible, because “the juices don’t flow.”
d. Trick question. There’s no such thing as rape. Duh.
3. How does emergency contraception work?
a. Melts snowflake babies.
b. Turns women into wanton harlots. Proceed with caution.
d. The cause of teen sex cults—distribute widely!
4. How does the birth control pill work?
a. You take one every time you have sex. The more pills you take, the sluttier you are.
c. Enacts a protective shield around the genital area that only holy water and/or Burt Reynolds can penetrate.
d. You put it between your knees when you run out of aspirin.
5. What words are appropriate to use when describing a woman’s “down there”?
a. Hoo-hah. (please pronounce as such)
b. “V.” (See: “trans-v,” Natalie Portman.)
c. *silence*
d. “Mine.”
For correct answers please stop talking to, sleeping with and voting for Republicans.
By: Jessica Valenti, The Nation, August 20, 2012
“Defensive Communications”: Does Mormonism Encourage LDS People To Lie?
Newsweek/Daily Beast reporter Jamie Reno published a provocative interview this week with Sue Emmett, a direct descendent of Brigham Young and a former LDS Church member, that plumbs controversial aspects of Mormon faith and culture, including the status of women in the faith and a tendency among some Mormons to manage the way they speak with non-Mormons about complicated aspects of our history and religious practice.
Flagging concern about how this highly managed communications style has impacted the Romney campaign and might shape a Romney presidency, Reno quotes a former LDS Church employee, who states, “Every Mormon grows up with the idea that it’s OK to lie if it’s for a higher cause.”
That doesn’t quite ring true to my own experience, though I do understand well the truth-swerving phenomenon Emmet and Reno describe. In fact, I cringe when I see the way it connects to Romney’s own tendency to avoid frank disclosure—this week, it’s tax returns—and the frequent charges that ambition and opportunism rather than consistent principle shape his policy stances.
Of course, it’s nothing shocking that an American minority group might develop its own way of talking to outsiders. But in some Mormon circles one does hear bitter accusations of “lying for the Lord,” and sometimes one does witness among Mormon people today the remnants of a deep-seated sense that telling a complete, straightforward story is not always good for LDS interests.
The most penetrating assessment of this Mormon cultural phenomenon comes from linguistic anthropologist Daymon Smith, who ties defensive communication mechanisms—telling outsiders one story in order to protect another version of the story for insiders—to Mormon polygamy and particularly to the decades in the late nineteenth century when federal prosecution of polygamy sent many Mormon men on the “underground.” (Read an excellent summary of his dissertation here.)
Double-speaking on polygamy continues. I myself wrestle with it whenever I’m obliged to talk about Mormon polygamy in public. Since 1890, LDS Church leaders and members have stated publicly and repeatedly that we do not practice polygamy, that the practice has officially ended. This is an earnest effort to distinguish contemporary members of the mainstream LDS Church from ultra-orthodox splinter groups of fundamentalist Mormons. And it is true that any Mormon who were to marry and cohabitate with a two living spouses today would be excommunicated.
But polygamy has not been eliminated from Mormon life. (I’ve discussed this topic at length here.)
The fact is that current Church policy does allow for a living man to be “sealed” (married for eternity) to more than one woman at a time. For example, a widower or divorced man who has elected to terminate his civil marriage but not his LDS temple marriage is permitted to marry another woman in an LDS temple with the assurance that both first and second marriages would be eternal. The same is not possible under current Church policies for living LDS women who have been widowed or civilly divorced.
This may seem like a technicality. But when combined with the fact that polygamy has never been renounced as a doctrinal principle by the Church and that it remains on the books in the Doctrine and Covenants, a book of LDS scripture, it fosters a belief among many mainstream LDS people that polygamous marriages will be a fact of the afterlife. Some mainstream Mormons dutifully anticipate polygamy in heaven. Others take an agnostic view. But many others quietly harbor feelings of grief, anger, and worry. I have experienced these feelings myself, and I hear them from other Mormons all the time. All the time Mormon men and women ask, “What kind of God would expect me to live in an eternal marriage that I would hate?” Not the God I believe in.
Polygamy remains a fact of mainstream Mormon thought and belief—whether as a doctrinal remnant or as a live article of faith, no one knows for sure. And the tensions created by the dissonance between the Church’s public denial of polygamy and the private continuance of the doctrine creates tensions that lead more than a few Mormons to leave the faith.
Given this complicated and conflicted situation, what should a Mormon say when she is asked whether we practice polygamy?
A few weeks ago, I sat in front of a radio microphone for the BBC program “The World”; with me on the program was a high-ranking public relations official for the LDS Church. Together, we did the same program twice: two back-to-back hours of the same hour about Mormonism, one time for the American audiences, and a second time for the whole world. During the first hour, taping for American audiences, when the inevitable polygamy question came, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to convey in a soundbite the terrible complexity of Mormonism’s relationship to polygamy: how while it is true that Mormons today no longer plurally cohabitate, polygamy has never been eradicated from our doctrine, our scriptures, and even from current policy, and that this causes many Mormon women and men a great deal of worry and resentment. My description sounded jumbled alongside the clear and familiar official message: no, we do not practice polygamy, not at all. I felt self-conscious and incoherent and nervous about publicly contradicting Church PR officials, but also determined not to obscure the more complicated and difficult truth. When we deny those truths, their private emotional costs multiply.
Then came the second hour of programming. Our audience in this second hour was not just BBC’s American listeners, but the world. I thought about the global reach of the BBC—the reach of the former British empire. When the question about polygamy came, I imagined listeners in Wales and Bangladesh and Kenya, listeners who had no concept of Mormonism, perhaps, beyond the most rudimentary and familiar stereotypes; including nineteenth-century Mormon polygamy. I squeezed my eyes shut. “No,” I said, “we no longer practice polygamy,” agreeing this time around with the LDS Church public-relations official. As I did, I registered an old, familiar, sinking feeling. I tried to tell myself it was the best I could do.
Was I lying for the Lord? Or was I a regular Mormon struggling to tell a complicated story to a world that often reduces us to stereotypes? What should I have said? Mitt Romney has said, “I can’t imagine anything more awful than polygamy”—even though polygamy remains a live element in Mormon doctrine and practice. Is that what he really believes? Is that what he felt he had to say? Is this the best we can do?
By: Joanna Brooks, Religion Dispatches, August 8, 2012
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