Color-Coding Republican Comments on Rape - The GOP Rape Advisory Chart

Thanks to  Progressive Participatory Enaction for originally sharing this disturbing graphic.

Your Daily Dose of Dumb - Washington Post's George Will Thinks Being a Sexual Assault Victim Is Now A "Coveted Status"

Wow, and the GOP wonders why they get so few female voters, or voters with working brain matter, as far as that goes. This is just utterly absurd - George Will is now the poster boy for Stupid Rich White Men Who Don't Get It (or SRWHWDGI).

If you think, as I do, that George Will should apologize to the nation's female sexual assault survivors, send him an email and let him know what think: georgewill@washpost.com

Via Media Matters for America:

Wash. Post's George Will: Sexual Assault Victim Is Now A "Coveted Status"

June 8, 2014 ››› SOPHIA TESFAYE


Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist George Will derided efforts on college campuses to combat the sexual assault epidemic as a ploy to "make victimhood a coveted status that confers privilege."

In a June 7 syndicated op-ed which appeared in The Washington Post and the New York Post, Will dismissed "the supposed campus epidemic of rape, aka 'sexual assault,'" arguing that the definition of sexual assault was too broad because it could include "nonconsensual touching" and disputing the evidence that shows 1 in 5 women experience sexual assault on campuses in the U.S., implying that individuals were pretending to be victims because colleges have made victimhood a "coveted status" (emphasis added):

Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating.

They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous ("micro-aggressions," often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.

[...]

Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of "sexual assault" victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today's prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults.

The administration's crucial and contradictory statistics are validated the usual way, by official repetition; Joe Biden has been heard from. The statistics are: One in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, and only 12% of assaults are reported. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12% reporting rate is correct, the 20% assault rate is preposterous.

[...]

Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process. Threatening to withdraw federal funding, the department mandates adoption of a minimal "preponderance of the evidence" standard when adjudicating sexual assault charges between males and the female "survivors" -- note the language of prejudgment.Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape. Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies.

Will also criticized colleges and universities for attempting "to create victim-free campuses -- by making everyone hypersensitive, even delusional, about victimization."

Despite Will's dismissal of the statistics, a report on sexual violence by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed that "in a study of undergraduate women, 19% experienced attempted or completed sexual assault since entering college." Moreover, the dangerous stigmatization of sexual assault victims has kept many from reporting these crimes -- particularly because victims who do report can become the targets of vicious attacks. According to the FBI, people falsely report sexual assault only 3 percent of the time.

WOW, I think I am speechless. How did these obvious morons think this was a good idea, that it would bring in female votes. Morons is perhaps too soft a word, I guess.

This is the quite the object lesson in stereotypes around gender, and why the old, rich, white men just don't get it.

This comes from Politicus USA.

Michigan GOP’s ‘We Understand Women’ Photo-Op Goes Down In Flames

By: Keith Brekhus
Friday, June, 6th, 2014


Michigan House Republicans jumped on Twitter to demonstrate they “understand women” and quickly proved how clueless they really are. Three GOP House Reps were photographed holding fashion magazines. Michigan Representatives Victory, Glardon and Pettalia smugly help up copies of “Women’ magazines”, and Representative Pettalia quipped “Don’t say we don’t understand women.” The three men smugly held up copies of fashion magazine in their attempts to appeal to female voters. One has to be pretty deeply immersed in misogynistic patterns of thought to think that the secret to securing more women voters is as simple a holding up a copy of Glamour magazine in front of camera.

Republicans continue to have difficulty re-branding themselves as a female friendly party. In Michigan, even running a woman for U.S. Senate has done little for the GOP’s image, because that woman, Terri Lynn Land, infamously remarked that women do not want equal pay with men, because they prefer job flexibility to better salaries. Land’s ardent defense of GOP misogyny has put her at a significant disadvantage against Democrat Gary Peters who has consistently held a double-digit lead over Land with female voters throughout 2014.

The Michigan GOP’ latest stunt to attract women voters was deservedly ridiculed almost immediately. Four women members of Michigan’s Democratic House delegation, retorted with a tweet stating”Real women read bill not fashion mags…” The accompanying photo showed the four Reps scanning proposed legislation.

Of course the central issue is not whether or not women should or should not read fashion magazines, but where do the candidate stand on issues important to women. While not all women think alike, when one looks at issues like reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, and addressing domestic violence, it is pretty clear that the Republican Party fails to understand what matters to most women. While they can always find a steady pool of female candidates to run on the GOP platform, that pool is unrepresentative of the majority of women in the country. For that reason, Republican candidates run poorly with female voters, not only in Michigan but across the country. Having three male Republican lawmakers awkwardly holding up fashion magazines with self-satisfied smile on their face will not close that gender gap with voters. However, it may widen the gap as Republican once again prove how little they understand women.