The Republican Party's War On Women [View all]

[pamela]

Last edited Thu Feb 9, 2012, 05:17 AM - Edit history (1)

I find myself shaking my head a lot lately as I read the latest headlines. Ron Paul talking about "honest rape." Texas passing a law that requires women seeking an abortion to have a sonogram. Catholic bishops and GOP leaders objecting to rules requiring health insurance coverage for birth control pills. A bunch of old, white guys doing what old, white guys have been doing for centuries: treating women as if they are second class citizens.

As I thought about all of this tonight, I realized something else. It's not just the obvious women's issues which are under attack by the GOP. Think about how many issues are framed by the GOP in language which demeans women. It's not as blatant as the language they use to demean gays and minorities but it's pervasive. The welfare "queen" stories, for example, or the "I saw a woman buying steak with food stamps" stories or the complaints about "women on welfare who keep having babies."

The GOP is sending out a message and that message is clear: women are sluts and liars and can't be trusted to make their own decisions.

Last night on CNN, someone (I don't remember who) was talking about voter turnout in the GOP primaries and mentioned that it was particularly down amongst women. They said it quickly and moved on to something else but I thought "what the fuck?" Why isn't that a bigger story? Can you imagine if this were the Democratic primaries and women were staying home? That would be the big story with talking heads analysing all the reasons why "women voters are turned off by the Democratic Party" or "Democratic women are rejecting Obama."

If turnout among women is down in the Republican primaries that means that even Republican women are starting to get turned off by the GOP's attack on women. I watched the election coverage today and waited for one person to bring up the fact that the GOP is having female problems. Instead, I heard about how a bunch of old, white guys are upset about women having access to birth control and how that might effect President Obama's re-election and how it probably helped Santorum last night.

In 2008, Barack Obama won 56% of the women's vote. That number climbs to 70% among unmarried women. The only demographic that McCain won that handily was, you guessed it...old, white guys. I think it's clear that all of these attacks on women aren't coincidental-it's strategy. We talk a lot about the red meat of racism that is thrown to the GOP base but how about the red meat of sexism? The media not only ignores that but is actually complicit in promoting it. One need look no further than the contraception story to confirm this. Every single poll shows that this issue would hurt the GOP more than President Obama but the media would have us believe the exact opposite.

I hope all of this backfires on the GOP big time. I hope ALL women are getting as pissed off about these attacks as I am and I hope they turn out to the polls in droves this November. When the Republicans say they want to take the country back, they are deadly serious. I worry that young women don't realise how disasterous this would be for them. I'm lucky in that I'm young enough to have come of age when birth control and reproductive choices were readily available but old enough to have witnessed what happened to a generation of women who didn't have my options. I, for one, promise to fight like hell to keep the GOP from taking the country back to that.