the GOP & John Boehner want to fix the economy, but first, let's take away some womens rights! before i rock your world with how right i am about how fucking immoral and inherently misogynistic this bill is, it's important to note that i will be NOT be discussing the fiscal ramifications of this bill, but its effect on american's perception of what constitutes "rape", and more importantly, how it takes power away from women who've struggled on a daily basis to feel like they have any power at all.
one would hope that the concept of "rape" is resoundingly clear. in the modern american vernacular, it denotes a sexual act without consent of one of the parties. before our legal understanding of "rape", it entailed, as taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, "The act of taking something by force; esp. the seizure of property by violent means; robbery, plundering".
so obviously robbery doesn't equate "property rape" in our american legal understanding, but the point i'm trying to make is that rape is predicated on force. whether it be violent or emotionally abusive, it semantically HAS to entail an element of force. i know i use a lot of words, so here's something for you math-y science-y people:
sexual act + force (including force of influence, which is at play in statutory rape) = rape. once again for clarification,
sexual act + force = rape
.
mathematically, if you remove "force" from the above equation, rape does not exist. i'm going to argue that the same is true in real life; legislatively, and in respect to the american people's collective and individual conceptions of "rape". if our government continues to qualify the legal definition of "rape" with implicative and arbitrary adjectives like "forcible", our collective public opinion will warp some kinds of rape into lukewarm rapes, or "minor rapes", thereby lessening the severity of "rape".
the relationship between word or term and the semantic concept is incredibly complex; some more than others. if important people in our country continue to qualify "rape", and repackage the term on a continuum of severity, rape will cease to connote the intense, horrible act that it always, always is, whether John Boehner thinks its "forcible" or not. if we allow this bill to pass, we risk diluting and weakening the concept of "rape" in america.
congressional republicans, many of whom are anti-abortion, would be doing a couple heinous things with the passage of this bill. namely, they would only offer federal funding for abortions to women who find themselves pregnant as the result of "forcible rape", which doesn't include statutory or "date" rapes. Boehner is explicitly arguing that there are only some rapes worthy of abortions, and implicitly arguing that he (or his political party) gets to decide where exactly to draw the line. conveniently enough, Boehner and the authors of this piece of shit fail to define "forcible rape" in the bill, which is interesting considering that their fiscal plans are singularly contingent on knowing exactly what "forcible rape" is.
this is such a classic example of how our politicians rhetoric warps american's view of the world. by coining "forcible rape", Boehner is basically saying that there is such a thing as "real rape", because "forcible rape" sounds so much more violent and EVEN MORE WRONGER than regular, boring old rape. Jimmy cracked corn! Boehner is just so over boring rape.
strap yourselves in, because this is where the real fun begins. according to congressional republicans, date rape isn't included in "forcible rape". date rape does not qualify under John Boehner's (and the republicans) conception of real rape because, in their fucked up, misogynistic minds, the act of drugging someone so as to make them vulnerable enough to let them have sex with you isn't "forcible". now, ideally, any sane, rational person would agree that drugging someone without their consent is forcible, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THE WORLD "FORCIBLE" FUCKING MEANS.
it's important to identify that date rape doesn't always necessitate GHB. the definition also includes women who were sexually assaulted after losing consciousness/coherence as a result of their own decisions; i.e., they knowingly took a drug/drank a lot, and then were violated. this is an even more fun part, because it's where Boehner implicitly suggests we punish women for passing out at parties.
i am assuming that Boehner wants to separate date rape from "forcible rape" to preclude funded abortions for women became pregnant as a result of a rape that occurred in an instance in which Boehner thinks they should have known better, like a girl who passed out at a party. i mean like, it was like, totally their fault the rape happened because i mean, they are the ones that like chose to drink to begin with, and if a guy happens to walk by a woman's unconscious body, or she is too incoherent to consent, it's like totally her fault if he rapes her because she like knew what she was doing.
this essentially results in women losing government assistance for not anticipating or being able to prevent getting drugged, and for getting too drunk and passing out at parties.
of all the ways to Cut Back Government Spending, honestly. which congressional asshole do you think it was spinning in his big leather chair thinking "you know what is outrageous?? the fact that women can get funding for abortions if they were victims of rape. you only really get to deserve an abortion if it was like, really REALLY brutal."
ALL RAPE IS BRUTAL. the amount of actual physical damage varies. the completely arresting, isolating psychological ramifications are worse than bumps and bruises, and that part doesn't change. the whole point of the legality of abortion is that women have the right to choose, and how dare you dictate that the women who find themselves pregnant under the most despicable condition should be judged within the arena of "rape".
i'm getting too frustrated to articulate my thoughts. this whole situation is fucked.
