I just got it. I just got why the Republicans in Congress have made this the Year of the Attack on Women.
Women are scary creatures to men. Whether you’re in jr. high school or a dance club in Hollywood, a man has to walk up to a woman to ask her to dance. All the while he’s wondering how he’ll hide his embarrassment if she says no.
During sex, a man has to enter a woman. As soon as he is inside that magic portal, she is in full control. And at the moment of ejaculation, he delivers all he is to her. For that one instant, he is wide open, helpless, vulnerable, under her total control. Republicans don’t like to be wide open, helpless, vulnerable, under total control to anyone, especially a woman. In fact, they are threatened by this. Although they might allow themselves to be under the control of a very wealthy woman who funds their campaign. Feeling threatened has its price, after all.
This is what is fueling the wave upon wave of Republican-sponsored bills trying to wrest control of women’s bodies away from women. How best to remove the threat that women present to Republican men than to take control of the very bodies that control them? So, Republican men have decided THEY want to be in control purse strings when it comes for paying for women’s birth control. THEY want to be in control of approving or denying abortions. When a woman has to come to a Republican man to beg for the right of control over her body, it kind of makes up for her refusing to dance with him back in jr. high.
Another reason why Republican men fear women is that 41% of them identify themselves as Democrats. So Republican men look out over the political landscape and see that almost half of those scary vaginas are Democratic vaginas. Now the panic attacks start to set in.
Of course, none of this explains why some Republican women support the efforts of Republican men to take control of their bodies away. Well, why do some women continue to live with the men who physically abuse them and refuse to press charges against them? I can’t explain that either but it just may be a Republican thing. Some would say it’s a religious issue, but with the present Republican Party politics and religion have been intertwined and inextricably linked together.
This past week, only one woman Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, voted against the defeated Blunt Amendment, a bill that would have given employers a way out of covering any health care they disagreed with on “moral” or “religious” grounds in their health plans. By the way, Sen. Snowe is saying “adios” to the Senate this year perhaps because she is only interested in controlling her own body and not other women’s.
Three Republican Senators in Democratic clothing voted for the amendment. This is all I shall say about them.
If all this assaulting on women’s rights wasn’t enough to get women up and angry this year, providence delivered to the Democrats boys for the recruiting posters: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Russ Limbaugh. Romney merely supported the Blunt Amendment. Santorum says the devil is hiding inside a women’s vagina and that’s why a good Catholic President is our only defense against the dark side. But Rush Limbaugh…Limbaugh took the fight against women to where no man has gone before. He parked his hulking expanse behind his microphone and during his radio show, with both hands firmly on his huge cigar, verbally beat up a woman. A young, single woman. A young, single woman who’s a law student. And probably a Democrat.
After Limbaugh opened up his mouth, the heavens filled with the wrath and outrage of American women opened up and poured down upon him. What Limbaugh forgot is that women talk to each other. A lot. Women talk to each other and they make plans. They make plans to do things together. Plans like…changing party affiliations to vote Democratic in a national general election. Plans like…going down to the polls together to vote Democratic or throwing a party to fill out their absentee ballots together.
What is the sound of American women standing up in unison against the Republican men who would have these women kneeling before them? It’s the sound of the Republican men’s knees slapping together in fear. A woman lying in bed in front of you can be scary enough. But standing up in defiance? Republican men’s entire legs are knocking against each other now.
According to the Chinese calendar, this is the Year of the Dragon. Uh uh, unless the he dragon is a she dragon. And the Year of the Attack On Women may be over. For this new year is very much shaping up to be the Year Of The Woman Voter when women flex their muscles in the voting booth, and it may be the Republicans who will be draggin’ their asses out of Congress.