More women need to take up the mantra: "How can I hear what you say when what you are keeps ringing in my ear?" If they did, fewer women would love and sleep with men who do not respect them, invade their personal space, deprive them of their personal rights, and abuse them. And fewer women would vote for politicians who do the same.
Sadly and inexplicably American women continue to vote for right wing conservative politicians who are active participants in the rampant GOP war on women and who pointedly refuse to support the best interest of women, especially smart, self-sufficient women who demand that their lives not be controlled by men.
In her 2012 Legislative Update, State Senator Nan Rich, Democrat, Florida reported the following attempts by the right wing majority leadership in the Florida legislature.
"There were at least seven anti-choice bills introduced this session. These bills attacked just about every aspect of women's reproductive health and privacy that you can imagine. It was the same wholesale attack on women's right that we fought last session and the session before. It's absurd--and particularly sad--that while hundreds of thousands of Floridians struggled with finding jobs and keeping their homes, with finding health care and keeping food on their families' tables--we had to rebuff another right wing drive to control our bodies and our lives."
In an Alternet post by Soraya Chemaly titled: 6 Absurdly Demeaning Conservative Attacks on Women, Ms Chemaly observes that "Republican politicians are rolling back women's reproductive rights based on the norms of animal husbandry." She further observes that "Farm animals don't act independently. They have sex for breeding, not for pleasure, and the choice of partners and conditions of the sex they have are controlled by their masters. They certainly don't try to disturb the natural order of things, namely male domination.
The war on women rages on in full frontal assault.
Republicans consistently introduce bill and support rhetoric that would force rape and incest victims to give birth to the rapist's child.
In Wisconsin rape victims are charged $1200 for rape kits. For no other crime in America is the victim of that crime charged for investigation of the crime scene.
In Kentucky, frustrated because her rapist plea bargained for a milder sentence, a young rape victim was threatened with jail by a judge who demanded that she not report the name of the boys who raped her and humiliated her by passing pictures of their criminal assault on her.
In Florida, one of the bills introduced in the 2012 legislature by the Republican leadership --SB 290--would have prevented Planned Parenthood from opening any new clinics because the bill would have required that any clinics where abortions are performed must be owned by physicians.
Republicans insist that they are not engaged in a war on women. But the laws they have attempted to pass and the demeaning outrageous comments they repeatedly make about women belie their assertion.
Republicans have chosen to run for president of the United States of America have participated in the culture of the suppression of women and the suppression of women's rights. Many are on record for supporting penalties for physicians who perform abortions. Almost all have said or implied that they wants to see Roe V. Wade overturned. Republican men have affirmed that they favor supporting a state constitutional amendment to define life as beginning at conception, thereby restricting women's rights to abortions and have pledged to expand the Bush-era policy of allowing physicians to deny women access to contraception.
This is not the kind of leadership women should want for themselves and their daughters any more than they would seek out a man who consistently says "You know I love you. Why do you do things to make me hit you?"
American women should fight to bring a stop to keep right wing conservatives from hitting them. They need to stop voting for right wing republicans so that they and their daughters don't wake up to an American nightmare that has no end.
