I think we can all agree this is not a great year to be a Republican. Between losing their bid to unseat President Obama, the continual failures of Speaker Boehner and the antics of the Tea Party, it’s enough to leave Republican leadership shaking their heads and wondering what to do next.
So one has to wonder: why in the world are Republicans still being insensitive about women’s issues? An example: a few months ago, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) was at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast in suburban Atlanta when he was asked “why Democrats made abortion a central theme of the campaign.” For some strange reason, this conversation led to him saying:
“[In] Missouri, Todd Akin … was asked by a local news source about rape and he said, ‘Look, in a legitimate rape situation’ — and what he meant by legitimate rape was just look, someone can say, ‘I was raped’: A scared-to-death 15-year-old that becomes impregnated by her boyfriend and then has to tell her parents, that’s pretty tough and might on some occasion say, ‘Hey, I was raped.’ That’s what he meant when he said legitimate rape versus non-legitimate rape.”
This alone would be another example of victim-blaming that contributes to the United States’ rape culture, but just wait, it gets better! Gingrey, a co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, continued:
“I don’t find anything so horrible about that. But then he went on and said that in a situation of rape, of a legitimate rape, a woman’s body has a way of shutting down so the pregnancy would not occur. He’s partly right on that.”
Gingrey then went on to try to justify his remarks, stating that because he’s an OB-GYN, he knows what he’s talking about in regard to this situation.
I continually have to ask myself, why do so many old, out-of-touch men have such strong opinions on the definitions of rape? And it can hardly be argued that this and the Akin comments are isolated incidents of small-mindedness in the GOP because their legislative action falls right in step with these remarks.They opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Act. They refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, which would’ve expanded its ability to protect women across this nation So what we have is a party in which misogyny is not an isolated problem but systemic. And its members are suffering for it.
In the past election, President Obama had a striking 9-point advantage among women over Romney, according to Gallup, and women believed Obama would better look out for their interests than Romney. America’s political system works best when there is a balance between the two parties. However, the Republican Party has become so conservative in the last few years with the advent of the Tea Party that the average American can no longer identify with them. There is no longer balance in the political system, and the misogynistic comments of senior Republican officials is just more proof of that.
Fast-forward to present day. Gingrey’s comments have been cast to the side. The American public barely remembers. But don’t worry, you can trust and believe the ugly head of misogyny within the GOP will rear its head again unless we, the American people, demand better. Otherwise, the Grand Old Party is quickly reaching an immense cliff, and nothing lies at the bottom but obscurity.