Conservatives Have Always Had A Problem With Women

Boehner was so proud yesterday that he picked a girl to give one of the god-knows-how-many "official" Republican responses to the State of the Union message. He seems delusional enough to think that women voters will flock to the GOP because he named some obscure woman congressmember from rural northeast Washington who votes with the Republican patriarchs on everything. I guess he had no choice after Huckabee's idiotic statements betraying the fear conservative men have and have always had about the depravity of runaway lady libidos. Meanwhile, this morning President Obama was doing what he could without congressional cooperation to move the ball forward to end sexual assault on college campuses. So while Cathy McMorris Rodgers tries to figure out how to explain this ghastly voting record against women's equality if any reporters question her about it, Obama used his weekly address to explain how his latest step to protect women at college is to establish the White House Task Force on Protecting Students from Sexual Assault. Here, in part, is what he said:

This week, I called members of my Cabinet to the White House to deal with a challenge that affects so many families and communities-- the crime, the outrage, of sexual violence.

Sexual assault is an affront to our basic decency and humanity. And it’s about all of us-- the safety of those we love most: our moms, our wives, our daughters and our sons.

Because when a child starts to question their self-worth after being abused, and maybe starts withdrawing… or a young woman drops out of school after being attacked… or a mother struggles to hold down a job and support her kids after an assault… it’s not just these individuals and their families who suffer. Our communities-- our whole country-- is held back.

Over the past five years, we’ve stepped up our efforts stop these crimes. And this week, we took another important step to protect young women at college. An estimated 1 in 5 women is sexually assaulted at college-- and that’s totally unacceptable. So I’ve created the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. We’re going to help schools do a better job of preventing and responding to sexual assault on their campuses. Because college should be a place where our young people feel secure and confident, so they can go as far as their talents will take them.

And we’re going to keep working to stop sexual assaults wherever they occur. We’ll keep strengthening our criminal justice system, so police and prosecutors have the tools and training to prevent these crimes and bring perpetrators to justice. We’ll keep reaching out to survivors, to make sure they’re getting all the support they need to heal. We’re going to keep combating sexual assault in our armed forces, because when a member of our military is attacked by the very people he or she trusts and serves with, that’s an injustice that no one who volunteers to protect our nation should ever endure.

Some of this is a job for government. But really, it’s up to all of us. We’ve got to teach young people-- men and women-- to be brave enough to stand up and help put an end to these crimes. We’ve especially got to teach young men to show women the respect they deserve. I want every young man in America to know that real men don’t hurt women. And those of us who are fathers have a special obligation to make sure every young man out there understands that being a man means recognizing sexual violence and being outraged by it, and doing their part to stop it.

Perhaps most important, we need to keep saying to anyone out there who has ever been assaulted: you are not alone. We have your back. I’ve got your back.

I’m going to keep pushing for others to step up-- across my administration, in Congress, in state capitals, college campuses and military bases all across our country. This is a priority for me, not only as President and Commander-in-Chief, but as a husband and a father of two extraordinary girls. And I hope it’s a priority for you. Because here in the United States of America, every man and woman, every girl and boy, has the right to be safe and protected and to pursue their own piece of the American dream.

What a contrast to what we heard from the GOP this week between Huckabee's problem with women's libidos and Steve Pearce (R-NM) writing in his book that "the wife is to voluntarily submit" to her husband. Where to they come up with these ancient notions of male dominance? I'm finishing up a book I never expected to write about at DWT, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, a 2002 Pulitzer-Prize winner that has sold around 4 million copies. This one paragraph isn't what the book is about, but it stuck with me. The paragraph is ostensibly about an actual event that took place-- a week of riots in Detroit-- in the summer of 1967. I was struck by it for a reason I doubt Eugenides had in mind-- how our society treated women.

[A]s the police arrive, there are girls lined along the street, girls in miniskirts, thigh-highs, and halter tops. (The sea wrack Milton hoses from the sidewalk every morning includes the dead jellyfish of prophylactics and the occasional hermit crab of a lost high heel.) The girls stand at the curbs as cars cruise by. Key-lime Cadillacs, fire-red Toronados, wide- mouthed, trolling Lincolns, all in perfect shape. Chrome glints. Hubcaps shine. Not a single rust spot anywhere. (Which is something that always amazes Milton about black people, the contradiction between the perfection of their automobiles and the disrepair of their houses.) . . . But now the gleaming cars are slowing. Windows are rolling down and girls are bending to chat with the drivers. There are calls back and forth, the lifting of already minuscule skirts, and sometimes a flash of breast or an obscene gesture, the girls working it, laughing, high enough by 5 a.m. to be numb to the rawness between their legs and the residues of men no amount of perfume can get rid of. It isn’t easy to keep yourself clean on the street, and by this hour each of those young women smells in the places that count like a very ripe, soft French cheese . . . They’re numb, too, to thoughts of babies left at home, six- month-olds with bad colds lying in used cribs, sucking on pacifiers, and having a hard time breathing . . . numb to the lingering taste of semen in their mouths along with peppermint gum, most of these girls no more than eighteen, this curb on Twelfth Street their first real place of employment, the most the country has to offer in the way of a vocation. Where are they going to go from here? They’re numb to that, too, except for a couple who have dreams of singing backup or opening up a hair shop . . . But this is all part of what happened that night, what’s about to happen (the police are getting out of their cars now, they are breaking in the door of the blind pig) . . . as a window opens and someone yells, “It’s the fuzz! Out the back way!” At the curb the girls recognize the cops because they have to do them for free. But something is different tonight, something is happening . . . the girls don’t disappear as usual when the cops show up. They stand and watch as the clients of the blind pig are led out in handcuffs, and a few girls even begin to grumble . . . and now other doors are opening and cars are stopping and suddenly everyone is out on the street . . . people stream out of other blind pigs and from houses and from street corners and you can feel it in the air, the way the air has somehow been keeping score, and how at this moment in July of 1967 the tally of abuses has reached a point so that the imperative flies out from Watts and Newark to Twelfth Street in Detroit, as one girl shouts, “Get yo’ hands offa them, motherfucking pigs!” . . . and then there are other shouts, and pushing, and a bottle just misses a policeman and shatters a squad car window behind . . . and back on Seminole my father is sleeping on a gun that has just been recom-missioned, because the riots have begun . . .

Yes, where are they going to go from here?