Rob Regan and Republican Rape Culture

 

Michigan GOP candidate says he tells daughters to “lie back and enjoy it” if rape is inevitablehttps://t.co/AhK0hgKzb8

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 8, 2022

My dad also gave me advice about rape, without ever mentioning rape. He told me to aim the heel of my hand at the tip of someone's nose and follow through until I hit skull. I was never taught to lie back, let alone "enjoy" submission in the face of injustice. I was understood to be a human being, capable of understanding right from wrong, not a machine made to obey other people because they were supposed to be stronger than me. He didn't have to tell me when I would need to know that. He just figured it was something a girl should know.

Republicans have made some amazing statements about rape. It ranges from rape being God's plan to something a woman should just shrug off. Assuming the victim wanted it and then had second thoughts, instead of, well, lying back and enjoying it. The assumption is that the victim is in the wrong or was selected for a reason. The calculus of rationalization, the diminishing of the rapist's role, the assumption that, in some way, being sexually used is what women are for, infuses the argument. Not choice. Not positively being able to say no and having that denial of consent be respected. 

But anything to do with sexuality and gender has this same perfusion of choicelessness in the bizarre landscape of Republican policy. If one becomes pregnant, why have a choice about a foregone thing? Lie back and accept the blessed fruit, the medical bills, the lifetime attachment, the physical changes to your body, the responsibility for another life or lives.  If you are denied role models of queer or trans people living their lives, maybe you will just obey what other people think your sexuality or gender expression should be. (And this is not how anything works, ever. Because contrary to the ignorant stereotypes, we were born this way, and even if it doesn't always get better, people have been out there making it get better for ages. And no, this has not ever been about grooming, which is disgusting and how the fuck dare someone try that old shit after all this time?) 

Republicans talk about freedom, but then pass laws to tell people they can't travel to seek reproductive care for themselves. That young people who know their preferred gender expression can't obtain gender-affirming care. Texas has chosen to treat such care as abusive, instead of life-saving. Despite the known studies that say otherwise.

Bodies belong to human beings when it comes to wearing masks in social situations, apparently, or when it comes to choosing not to have perfectly safe vaccination protocols for potentially deadly communicative diseases, but once sexuality and gender become involved, suddenly we're on the "submit" train. Lie back and be in the closet. Lie back and make babies you do not want or have the wherewithal to bear and raise. Lie back and enjoy the feeling of your choice to say no bleed away. 

Rob the Knob committed the unoriginal sin of saying out loud what Republican rape culture has been doing for a long while. Why else is Eric Greitens out here? How is Donald Trump still a thing? Scott Desjarlais is still in the House of Representatives. The GOP clucks about sexual misconduct, but then elevates and defends actual predators. But they pass laws to punish regular people trying to live their lives for simply being who they are, or trying to help people dealing with unwanted or unviable pregnancies.

You know what we can not do? Lie back. And I recommend actually taking the heel of your hand...