The following links are something of a grab-bag, but to my way of thinking, they are connected, in that they all comment on issues of women's rights that are front and center in many political and religious discussions these days--and which we continue to see societies negotiating long after many of us had imagined the question of whether women deserve full human status and the full range of human rights had long since been settled:
At Salon, Sally Kohn argues that Todd Akin's biggest failing in the eyes of his GOP confreres is that he has given their game away. He has given away the game of the entire GOP. He has trumpeted to the world what they all believe and want to impose on the entire nation, if they seize power this fall.
Kohn's summary:
The increasingly extremist Republican Party wants to make economic inequality worse and consolidate money and power in the hands of the elite (most of whom are wealthy, white men) while rolling back liberties for women, gay people and people of color. The increasingly extremist Republican Party believes that public programs that care for the poor and elderly, prevent corporations from polluting our air and water, and ensure equal opportunity in education are “shackling” big business — regardless of how much they help ordinary Americans. The increasingly extremist Republican Party doesn’t believe in the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change, but upward of two-thirds of Republicans do believe that President Obama was not born in the United States. Not only is the modern Republican Party fairly unconcerned with poor people and women and gay folks, but the modern Republican Party is unconcerned with basic facts. It is a purely ideological agenda, rationalized by whatever means necessary, including false “medicine” about women’s bodies and the atrocities of rape.
Also at Salon, Amanda Marcotte characterizes the GOP as it's now configured as "the party of quacks." Marcotte focuses on the "wonderland of lies and misinformation" emanating from the work of a doctor who is at the very heart of the GOP's current anti-abortion stance as articulated most recently in Rep. Akin's unfortunate remarks about "legitimate" rape. As she notes, standing behind Akin is Dr. Jack Wilkie, who has long claimed that "assault rape" can't really result in pregnancy, since a woman who is really assaulted becomes so exercised about what has happened to her that her womb is inhospitable to new life (!)*
Or, as Mr. Akin recently elegantly phrased it, "legitimate" rape causes the female body to "try to shut that whole thing down."
And for more outstanding reporting on Wilkie and his longstanding ties to the very center of the Republican party (and to the Catholic right wing), see Rachel Tabachnick at Talk to Action.
And finally, contrary to the dismissive approach some powerful Catholic centrist thinkers have taken to the Pussy Riot group following the women's conviction in Moscow recently, see Ray McGovern's persuasive and theologically well-informed analysis at Common Dreams of Pussy Riot's connection to the Virgin Mary. To Mary who was, McGovern reminds us, "a feminist through and through" who "implanted a vision of inclusive justice into the heart of Jesus."
McGovern concludes,
And so back to the witness of the three women of “Pussy Riot,” sentenced to two years of prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The facts strongly suggest that it was not “religious hatred,” but rather hatred of the undisguised, pandering role to which the Russian Orthodox Church has reverted in giving unqualified political support for President Vladimir Putin, as it did for the Tsars.
And he's very right, IMHO.
*Exclamation point mine.
The graphic is a photograph of an Afghani woman, Habiba, from Dennis O'Rourke's 2005 documentary, "Land Mines: A Documentary," discussed by Ruth Hessey at CameraWork.
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