My previous post, over-the-top as it was in some ways (yet heartfelt and, I think, not misdirected) spurred a few remarks about the so-called War On Women. There are people who claim this is a myth, a straw man argument, a distraction, that there is no war on women, only the mouthings of a few extremists with no real authority and, really, nothing has or will change.
I can agree to an extent that maybe War On Women is perhaps an overstatement, because—and it’s a fine distinction—I don’t really believe most of the politicians engaged in it care one way or the other. It has become a useful polemic for them to stir the ire of their base and garner votes for the things they do care about. It’s like race-baiting, which I think few of those who indulge it actually believe in but will nevertheless employ the language because they collect a constituency around it. It’s bait, in other words, to attract a following which they can then use for other things.
In this sense, claiming that it’s a “war” is perhaps inaccurate, an overstatement. It was, perhaps, more a war with women, a loud pyrotechnic show that kept our attention over here when it should have been over there. If true, then the hammering on contraceptive access and abortion and the blocking of various anti-rape and violence-against-women bills really meant something else. Battlefield tactics in a cause of a different nature. One might take some comfort in that.
Except for those who feel themselves being used as human shields and missiles in a cause disingenuous at its core and fraught with unintended consequences. It would not be the first time in history that the cynical use of a rhetorical position (to defeat an opponent, rally a populace, misdirect attention from other things) took on a life of its own and produced results no one wanted.
I think the Right has seen some of those unintended consequences in the last election.
How hard is this? Equality means we should not limit people based on their biological characteristics, which include race and gender, as well as physical capacity, health, mobility challenges, and so forth.
As for the rhetoric, I will leave you with this, which cuts to the chase rather better than anything I might say:
I hope they have learned their lesson. It is my profound wish that the mere thought of the Ladyparts will make them wince, whimper and shrink. Gentlemen (it is always men), keep your attention above the waist — no, above the chin. Anything unwelcome you put Down There is going to get bitten off, and you will be left clutching the bloody stump. Women’s bodies have ways of rejecting, you know.