Where do I begin? Where do I begin?
Okay, so by now, I’m sure you’ve heard about Missouri Rep. Todd Akin’s “ill-conceived” comments about, well, conception. Do you think Akin knows the irony of using the phrase “ill-conceived”?
Friends, I think we should look at this not as a mean-spirited criticism of any woman who ever dares to consider the idea that her body is, in fact, her own. I think we should set aside the utter cruelty of throwing survivors of sexual violence under the bus. I mean, they were probably sluts anyway, right?
No, my dear friends, I think Akin has unwittingly let all of us in on the anti-choice movements deep, dark secret.
What’s that? You think you’ve guessed it? (Hint: It’s not what you think… hating women.)
No, this is a far more twisted secret. Anti-choicers believe that women’s reproductive system is MAGIC! As in… abracadabra… presto… chango… IT’S A BABY!
Eureka!
This really explains so much. Now we can stop calling this a War on Women. It’s a good old-fashioned witch hunt! (Cue: Angry mobs with pitch forks and torches.)
Oh, I’m sorry. Am I being a sarcastic bitch about a US Congressman’s insensitive, abusive, and ugly public comments about ALL women everywhere? Because, let’s be clear here, Akin is not “just” talking about those silly few women who maybe, well, probably, kindof got “legitimately” raped. (Because we all know that legitimate rape is the only way a woman should ever, ever, EVER remove the aspirin from between her legs — except for her husband, of course.) Akin wants to sell every single woman out to win votes.
Akin is a fear-monger and a bully. He wants to trade vagina power for votes.
Akin wants to spread the very worst kind of message about women: That we are nothing more than useless flesh-bags with no brains. We can’t even tell if we are raped or not. We certainly can’t be trusted with caring for or about our own bodies, in Akin’s view.
I know Akin is from the “Show me” state, but this takes that adage to a new low. Prove you were raped. Prove you are not dirty. Prove you are not a witch.
As the survivor of sexual violence, I take a very specific kind of offense to Akin’s remarks. If I had been impregnated as a teenager who was being molested — would that have counted as a “legitimate” reason to get an abortion to men like Akin? I’m going to stop there, while I can keep this civil.
But let’s take the mask off this attacker completely and show him in the light of day as a repugnant, small, embarrassingly uneducated human being. (I mean, seriously, you think the body magically knows to have a spontaneous abortion? FYI: Akin, that’s what a miscarriage is actually called! Spontaneous abortion. Look it up.)
People like Akin only want to attack sexual violence survivors because they are the chosen few who can still (sometimes) get exceptions to abortion bans. He and his ilk have decided that every woman is fair game. Every woman is a witch and deserves to be burned.
The reality is that exceptions or not, every woman is already a target of men like Akin. Rape exemptions are just a reflection of puritanical thinking about abortion, anyway. Every woman deserves the right to determine her bodily autonomy. Under every circumstance. Every day. Without fear. Without ignorant ideologues calling them sluts or witches or whatever else they can think of.
Are you pissed off, yet? Registered to vote?
The Sin City Siren 
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There’s another ‘magic’ in Akin’s thinking, the ‘maternal magic’ that ‘all women’ — since they are all the same, and all the products of their hormones and not of any individual experiences or ‘intelligence’ — not the same as ‘real intelligence’ that is the possession of men — automatically get filled with maternal love the moment the fetus becomes a real child and pops out of the womb. They would never see the child and be reminded of the most traumatic — I hope — moment of their life, never stare at the child and see if his or her’s features resemble that of the father, never — even if consciously trying their best to love the child — subconsiously hate the reminders the child embodies and the fears that she once felt.
All women, after all, once they are mothers, are filled with the magic of ‘unconditional mother’s-love.’ There has nevereverever been a case of a mother abandoning her child, or torturing him or her, or neglecting, or abusing a child physically or sexually — or turning a blind eye to a husband’s abuse. The ‘bible based baby beaters’ whose idea is to teach the child proper submission — to his parents as they ‘submit’ to God — with dowel rods and PVC tubing — they have the same maternal love and care for the child’s welfare. After all, all women are the same ‘wondrous, magical creatures’ that we men have been given for our enjoyment and to produce our sons — and the daughters to produce our grandsons.
And magical thinking always kills, eventually — I won’t violate Godwin by talking about the ultimate magical thinkers of the last century. But even the killing may cause less pain than is felt by the survivors.
(And no, I’m not one, I was lucky enough to have mothers — yes, two of them even back in the forties and fifties — that had a great skill at parenting. But, for some reason, I have spent all my life around people whose parents were destructive, deadly. One writer spent his whole life even destroying his own talent because of his mother, another is permanently disabled because — in her house — the only way she could get attention was by being sick, another was having Thanksgiving with me when he got news that his father had died, and didn’t understand my surprise that he didn’t see any reason for interrupting his meal to go to the rest of his family.)
But these couldn;’t have really happened, because being a parent is MAGIC. Right. And no mother would ever see the child of her rape and see the rape or the rapist and not the child.
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