Women Born Transsexual

What else is new.  The Republican Party went over to the Dark Side after Eisenhower.  Both the Republicans and the “Christians” basically embrace Nazi Family values including racism, homophobia and misogyny.  Other Nazi values include extreme nationalism and militarism along with a worshiping of troops as Warriors.

The have peddled fear while pursuing violent aggressive politics both at home and internationally.

The choice this election is clear.  You can support Obama and the Democrats or let the Nazis win.

From Raw Story:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/21/akin-rape-theory-rooted-in-nazi-death-camp-experiments/

By David Edwards
Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The theory behind Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) assertion earlier this week that women who are victims of “legitimate” rape would not get pregnant appears to be based on 1972 research that cites experiments done in Nazi concentration camps, a Missouri newspaper reported on Monday.

During an interview with KTVI over the weekend, Akin had claimed that women were not likely to get pregnant because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

This reasoning, based on 1972 article by a University of Minnesota Medical School assistant professor, has been used for decades by anti-abortion activists to argue that no exceptions to abortion bans are necessary, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In the article titled “The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician’s Perspective,” Dr. Fred Mecklenburg concluded that it “is extremely rare” for a rape to result in pregnancy.

Mecklenburg cited a number of factors for his theory, including that not all rapes resulted in “completed act of intercourse” and that it was “improbable” that a rape would occur within “the 1-2 days of the month in which the woman would be fertile.”

But it was Mecklenburg’s presumption that a traumatized rape victim “will not ovulate even if she is ‘scheduled’ to” that appeared to be the basis of Akin’s recent remarks.

To support his conclusion, Mecklenburg cited studies that were allegedly done at extermination camps in Nazi Germany.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/21/akin-rape-theory-rooted-in-nazi-death-camp-experiments/

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/20/russian-police-hunt-pussy-riot

Following sentencing of three women from the all-female group, authorities confirm ‘search operations are being conducted’

Reuters in Moscow
guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 August 2012

Russian police are searching for more members of Pussy Riot, a spokeswoman said, signalling further pressure on the punk rock band despite an international outcry over jail terms for three women who protested against Vladimir Putin.

The Russian president’s critics have condemned the court proceeding that yielded the two-year prison sentences on Friday as part of a clampdown on a protest movement and reminiscent of show trials of dissidents in the Soviet era.

Police said on Monday they were searching for other members of the group in connection with the protest at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral in February, but had not yet identified the suspects.

Police did not say how many people they were looking for, or whether they faced arrest and charges or were wanted merely for questioning. “The necessary search operations are being conducted,” a representative of the Moscow police told Interfax news agency.

A police spokeswoman in Moscow’s central district confirmed that other, unidentified members of Pussy Riot were being sought in a criminal case that was now separate from that against the three performers who were tried.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/20/russian-police-hunt-pussy-riot

From The Washington Blade:  http://www.washingtonblade.com/2012/08/20/akin-rape-remarks-draw-attention-to-candidates-anti-gay-record/

By Chris Johnson
August 20, 2012

The Republican  nominee for U.S. Senate in Missouri has been thrust into the national spotlight following comments he made suggesting a woman can resist becoming pregnant after a “legitimate rape” — prompting LGBT advocates to decry not only his views on women but also his long history of opposition to LGBT rights.

Todd Akin, who’s seeking to oust Democrat Claire McCaskill from her seat representing Missouri in the U.S. Senate, raised eyebrows when he made comments in an interview that aired Sunday on St. Louis television station KTVI-TV after being asked if women who become pregnant as a result of sexual assault should have the option of abortion.

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” Akin said. “But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

The remarks ignited a media firestorm, particularly over the notion of what Akin would consider a “legitimate” rape. The next day, Akin apologized on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s radio show, saying his earlier remarks were “ill-conceived, and it was wrong.” Amid speculation that he would drop out of the race, Akin said he had no intention of quitting.

Last year, Akin introduced a committee amendment to expand the Defense of Marriage Act to prohibit military chaplains from officiating over same-sex wedding ceremonies and to bar same-sex marriages from taking place on military facilities. A similar amendment introduced by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) this year was attached to pending defense legislation. Palazzo said during the markup that Akin helped write the legislation.

Continue reading at:  http://www.washingtonblade.com/2012/08/20/akin-rape-remarks-draw-attention-to-candidates-anti-gay-record/

From Buzz Feed:  http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/exclusive-gop-platform-draft-strongly-defends-tr

Zeke Miller and Chris Geidner
Aug. 20, 2012

TAMPA, Florida — The Republican Party platform will strongly oppose the Obama administration’s decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law that bars recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages, in court and will support “a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” according to the draft platform language approved by subcommittees today.

The language must still be adopted by the full committee on Tuesday and then by the convention delegates in Tampa next week. According to the draft documents obtained by BuzzFeed from two subcommittees, the Restoring Constitutional Government subcommittee and the Health, Education and Crime subcommittee, the platform will take those two positions, as well as “support[ing] campaigns underway in several other states” to amend their constitutions to recognize only marriages between one man and one woman.

Complete article at:  http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/exclusive-gop-platform-draft-strongly-defends-tr

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/todd-akin-rape_b_1812930.html

Eve Ensler
08/20/2012

Dear Todd Akin,

I am writing to you tonight about rape. It is 2 AM and I am unable to sleep here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am in Bukavu at the City of Joy to serve and support and work with hundreds, thousands of women who have been raped and violated and tortured from this ceaseless war for minerals fought on their bodies.

I am in Congo but I could be writing this from anywhere in the United States, South Africa, Britain, Egypt, India, Philippines, most college campuses in America. I could be writing from any city or town or village where over half a billion women on the planet are raped in their lifetime.

Mr. Akin, your words have kept me awake.

As a rape survivor, I am reeling from your recent statement where you said you misspoke when you said that women do not get pregnant from legitimate rape, and that you were speaking “off the cuff.”

Clarification. You didn’t make some glib throw away remark. You made a very specific ignorant statement clearly indicating you have no awareness of what it means to be raped. And not a casual statement, but one made with the intention of legislating the experience of women who have been raped. Perhaps more terrifying: it was a window into the psyche of the GOP.

You used the expression “legitimate” rape as if to imply there were such a thing as “illegitimate” rape. Let me try to explain to you what that does to the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on this planet who experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The underlying assumption of your statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror, invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and powerless as they did at the moment of rape.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/todd-akin-rape_b_1812930.html

From Jezebel:  http://jezebel.com/5936160/the-official-guide-to-legitimate-rape

Katie J.M. Baker
Aug 20, 2012

Yesterday, Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, Republican Senate nominee and member of the House Science, Space and Technology committee, saidpregnancy from rape was “really rare” because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin quickly said that he “misspoke,” but he didn’t rescind his claims that women have magical sperm-defying ovaries — or that there’s a hierarchy when it comes to different “levels” of rape.

If you’re unfamiliar with the exciting concept that your uterus can pick and choose between various kinds of rape, don’t fret. We have just the guide for you.

Non-Pregnancy Rape

For decades, conservatives have claimed that women can’t get pregnant from “legitimate” rape thanks to their wise, all-knowing uteri, psychic “juices” and Spidey Sense-like “secretions.” (Hmm, if legislators can applaud our vaginas for being so omniscient, how come they can’t let us control them?)

In 1988, Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Stephen Freind said the odds that a woman who is raped will get knocked up are “one in millions and millions and millions” because rape causes a woman to “secrete a certain secretion” that kills evil sperm. I don’t know about you guys, but my “secretions” are so judicious that they start flowing the second after an Ayn Rand-lover approaches me at a bar, before he can even utter the word “Objectivism.” I guess my vag is just highly evolved.

Continue reading at:  http://jezebel.com/5936160/the-official-guide-to-legitimate-rape

How can anyone still believe that Republicans don’t hate women?

From CNN:  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/20/first-on-cnn-gop-prepares-tough-anti-abortion-platform/

By Peter Hamby
Aug. 20, 2012

Tampa, Florida (CNN) – The Republican Party is once again set to enshrine into its official platform support for “a human life amendment” to the Constitution that would outlaw abortion without making explicit exemptions for rape or incest, according to draft language of the platform obtained exclusively by CNN late Monday.

“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,” the draft platform declares. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

The party will reaffirm its opposition to federally-funded stem cell research and demand that the government “should not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion coverage.”

Republicans have also inserted a “salute” to states pushing “informed consent” laws – an apparent reference to ultrasound bills that have moved through some state legislatures – “mandatory waiting periods prior to an abortion, and health-protective clinic regulation.”

Continue reading at:  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/20/first-on-cnn-gop-prepares-tough-anti-abortion-platform/

From The Nation:  http://www.thenation.com/blog/169451/danger-laughing-todd-akin

Ilyse Hogue
on August 20, 2012

The Twittersphere went nuts yesterday after a video was posted of Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin expressing some jaw-dropping views on rape and abortion in an interview with local news:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

The short-term consequences of such an incendiary remark are predictable: Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill will trumpet the remark to her own political advantage, donations will spike to her campaign and the party committees will offer the remark as one more proof point of the GOP’s war on women. But the impact of Akin’s effort to redefine the terms of this debate reaches beyond this one race. In the multidimensional chess that shapes public opinion, the game is less about individual elections and more about a sustained effort to mainstream radical ideas. In the case of denying women control over their lives, there’s evidence that the bad guys may be winning the long-game.

Akin was Paul Ryan’s co-sponsor on a House bill just last year banning the use of federal funds for abortion except in cases of “forcible rape.” This term seemed laughably redundant since all rape, by definition, is forced. But this redefinition of rape was deceptively sinister. Statutory rapists often use coercion but not physical force. If the measure had passed, a 13-year-old emotionally manipulated into having sex with an older friend or relative would no longer be able to use Medicaid to terminate a resulting pregnancy. Nor would her parents be able to use their tax-exempt health savings fund.

While the measure was defeated, conversation around it introduced skepticism about whether all rape is created equal and what distinctions should be recognized by law. Instead of making him politically toxic, Ryan’s support of the pioneering forcible rape measure likely made him a more attractive vice presidential candidate to a Romney campaign needing to energize the right-wing base.

Continue reading at:   http://www.thenation.com/blog/169451/danger-laughing-todd-akin

From Think Progress:   http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/20/713571/akins-spiritual-mentor-women-occasionally-invite-rape-victims-are-hysterical/

By Zack Beauchamp
on Aug 20, 2012

Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) spiritual mentor Reverend D. James Kennedy harbored extreme and sometimes flatly misogynistic views about rape and abortion, according to a ThinkProgress review of Kennedy’s sermons on the topic. The Senate candidate, who set off a massive controversy by claiming this weekend that victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant, has deep ties to Reverend Kennedy, having cited some of his sermons as key intellectual influences and having been named in Kennedy’s book How Would Jesus Vote?as one of the Reverend’s “favorite statesman.”

Kennedy, who the Anti-Defamation League has termed a “Christian supremacist,” repeatedly railed against legalized abortion, calling it the “American Holocaust” and suggesting that it would lead inevitably to genocide in the United States. But Kennedy’s discussions of rape and abortion in particular betray extraordinarily disturbing views about rape victims:

1. Kennedy believed that rape victims who chose abortion are “hysterical.” In “Abortion: Myths and Realities,” Kennedy labels victims of rape who chose unsafe abortions when safer procedures are illegal “hysterical,” saying “We are told by some of the radical feminists that the women will become hysterical, that they will abort themselves with coat hanger.” Abortion rates are, in fact, higher in nations where the procedure is criminalized, and men describing women whose choices they disapprove of as “hysterical” has a storied sexist history.

2. Kennedy suggests rape victims can be responsible for being raped. In “Life: An Inalienable Right,” Kennedy expresses concern that rape victims who chose to get an abortion are occasionally responsible for their own rape, saying that “Even if they want to say the woman had some part in it—which in most cases they probably don’t—surely the baby did nothing wrong, so the only innocent party is killed and the rapist often goes free.” He doesn’t elaborate on how this might be true, but another Kennedy sermon says “the immodest woman is contributing to the lust of other people” by wearing revealing clothing.

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/20/713571/akins-spiritual-mentor-women-occasionally-invite-rape-victims-are-hysterical/

From RH Reality Check:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/08/20/is-it-really-best-women-akin-resigns-questions-about-defining-moment-0

by Jodi Jacobson, Editor in Chief, RH Reality Check
August 20, 2012

This weekend, Missouri Representative Todd Akin justified his opposition to a rape exception for abortion by claiming that women don’t actually get pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.” In doing so, Akin was parroting an outlandish and wholly medically-inaccurate claim persistently made by the Christian right to undermine rape claims generally and access to safe abortion care specifically.

Now, Akin is under fire from some quarters of the GOP to drop out of the race and allow another candidate to challenge Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. (Others, such as the Family Research Council and fundamentalist Christian activist Bryan Fischer have supported Akin.) Some women’s rights advocates also are calling on him to resign.

But is forcing Akin out the best strategy? I am not so sure. I think that what Akin has done is given the women’s rights movement and all progressives a gift and we should take it with open arms.

Because the fact is that Todd Akin said what the GOP meant. He is no outlier; he actually is in the mainstream of what the current GOP stands for. But since this is an election year, the GOP wants to tamp down the war on women… at least until November 4th.

And the fact is that this is about rape and violence against women in the specific sense, but it is also about something much more profound… the violence against women of a political movement that seeks to deprive them of their fundamental rights to decide whether, when, and with whom to have a child and under what circumstances. And that is the battle we have an opening to fight.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/08/20/is-it-really-best-women-akin-resigns-questions-about-defining-moment-0

From Raw Story:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/20/bryan-fischer-todd-akin-right-about-real-genuine-rape/

By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, August 20, 2012

Bryan Fischer of the hate group, American Family Association on Monday insisted that Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) was right to claim women could not become pregnant from “legitimate rape.”

“What Todd Akin is talking about is when you’ve got a real, genuine rape. A case of forcible rape, a case of assault, where a woman has been violated against her will through the use of physical force where it is physically traumatic for her,” Fischer said on his radio program.

“Under those circumstances, the woman’s body — because of the trauma that has been inflicted on her — it may interfere with the normal function processes of her body that lead to conception and pregnancy.”

Fischer said the trauma from rape interfered with normal physiological processes that occur during conception, which “may make it impossible for her, or difficult in that particular circumstance, to conceive a child.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/20/bryan-fischer-todd-akin-right-about-real-genuine-rape/

From Right Wing Watch:   http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/paul-ryan-headline-todd-akin-love-fest-next-month

by Josh Glasstetter
Mon, 08/20/2012

Earlier today, Mitt Romney described Rep. Todd Akin’s comments on “legitimate rape” as “insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong.” In a separate interview, Romney said, “I can’t defend what he said, I can’t defend him.”

From Daily Kos:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/20/1122153/-Todd-Akin-clarifies-he-s-on-the-same-page-as-Paul-Ryan-on-forcible-rape

Kaili Joy Gray
Mon Aug 20, 2012

Whew. Great news, everyone. We no longer need to be upset that Rep. Todd Akin, an actual member of the House and an actual Senate candidate, said that women have magical ladyparts to protect them from rape sperm when they are victims of “legitimate rape.” Because that’s not what he meant at all. As he explained on Mike Huckabee’s radio show:

I was talking about forcible rape. I used the wrong word.

Ohhhh. Well, obviously talking about “legitimate rape” is totally out of line. But talking about “forcible rape”? That just makes everything better, doesn’t it?

It also puts him in line with the rest of the Republican Party—including, of course, the party’s vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan:

Paul Ryan also co-sponsored HR 3, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion” bill in which Republicans tried to redefine rape so that it only applied to “forcible” rape so those fake rape victims would stop exploiting loopholes to cash in on fabulous gifts and prizes. Republicans pulled that part out of the bill so everyone would stop criticizing them, and then they tried to sneak it back in anyway.

The Romney campaign took the oh-so-bold step on Sunday night of announcing that “Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement.” This morning, after thinking about it, Romney added that Akin’s comments were “offensive”:

Continue reading at:   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/20/1122153/-Todd-Akin-clarifies-he-s-on-the-same-page-as-Paul-Ryan-on-forcible-rape

From Truth Out:  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11006-romney-ryan-and-rape-a-todd-akin-special-delivery

By William Rivers Pitt
Monday, 20 August 2012

Monday morning found me awake just before dawn. When I stepped outside to make my daily pilgrimage to the coffee shop, the sun was still behind the houses and the trees…and I felt it for the first time. Just a hint in the air, but it was there all the same: the first faint kiss of Fall, my favorite season. It’s coming, I thought to myself. It’s coming.

Not the season. The election. It is twelve weeks away, waiting for us on the far side of Halloween, which is all too appropriate given what we have seen so far. President Obama and the Democrats, for their part, have donned a Rocky Balboa costume and come out swinging, confounding every historical precedent of what normal Democratic behavior should be. Mr. Obama calls the GOP plan for Medicare “snake oil,” Mr. Biden correctly tells a crowd that the banksters want to put them in chains and then refuses to back off when accused of race-baiting, and Mr. Reid can easily pass himself off as a world-class knitter for all the knots he’s tied in the Republican campaign with his ceaseless attacks on Mitt Romney’s tax status.

What planet am I on? This doesn’t happen. Democrats are supposed to tuck tail and run at the first whiff of smoke, not charge forward in a dervish-wind of daggers and fire. Given the howls of dismay and outrage from the realms of the right wing, I am not the only one gobsmacked by this new turn of events. It is not supposed to be this way, and the GOP is not enjoying the use of its own tactics against them.

Mitt Romney has donned and discarded a number of costumes over the course of this campaign. He tried to dress up as the guy who created Romneycare in Massachusetts yet despises Mr. Obama’s national version of it, but wasn’t able to pull off the broad straddle required to make the outfit fit. He tried to dress up as a world-class businessman whose management acumen gives him all the proper qualities for national leadership, but wound up staggering and stumbling through attacks on his history at Bain Capital and his own shady relationship with the tax code. Mr. Romney jettisoned that particular mask in highly amusing style by practically begging the Obama campaign to stop discussing “business or family or taxes or things of that nature “ during the campaign. Yeah, right, any minute now.

Continue reading at:  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11006-romney-ryan-and-rape-a-todd-akin-special-delivery