Dennis “women should just have sex with me whether they want to or not because it’s their duty to make me happy” (and here’s part 2) Prager has weighed in on the Akin controversy. He says Akin’s comments should be condemned, but …
While he should not have used the term “legitimate rape,” he could have explained later that, given the expanded definitions of rape, not all claims of “rape” are truly rape. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry for Feminist Perspectives on Rape states, for example, that “we must recognize that, in some cases, ‘yes’ also means no … The man may threaten to sue for custody of their children, to derail her green card application, to evict her, or simply to sulk and make her life miserable for days should she refuse to have sex. …
For Dennis Prager, the paragraph above describes “foreplay.”
Then he says that saying women can’t conceive from rape is stupid, and all good Fetus People should condemn such an idea. Except …
I have spent a good part of my life showing what an intellectual bubble the left lives in.
You may take a few minutes to clean the coffee off your monitor.
Bubbles tend to produce nonsense. When the only people you talk to, read, and socialize with agree with you, it is easy to abandon critical thinking.
And when you are morally right — and those who argue for a right to life of unborn human beings (or human fetuses, if you prefer) are morally and even scientifically right — a bubble can make critical thought even more difficult.
I wonder if that is not the case with Rep. Akin’s comment.
Ya think?
This country is on the verge of an inexorable moral, social and economic decline. The left is doing to America what it has done to almost everything it has deeply influenced — the arts, the university, religion, culture, minorities, Europe: ruining it. It is therefore morally incumbent on conservatives to do everything in their power not to give the left legitimate targets.
And save America by cutting off funding to the National Endowment for the Arts!
And then we’ve got Rep. Steve King, who has revealed his own peculiar notions of human reproduction —
King supports the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” It would ban Federal funding of abortions except in cases of forcible rape. Right now, Medicaid also covers abortions for victims of statutory rape or incest – for example, a 12 year old who gets pregnant.
Congressman King says he’s not aware of any young victims like that.
“Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way, and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter,” he said.
I’m willing to believe that he’s never heard of a pregnant 12-year-old. Considering where he keeps his head, he probably hears very little beside digestion and gas.
The fantasy lives of these guys would challenge Thurber.
My wife has delivered nearly 4,000 babies. One “how did your day go” story is especially memorable, among many wild, tragic and dramatic tales. My wife delivered a child to a mother who was so young that she clung to her toy doll for comfort. As I recall, she was barely eleven.
It is difficult to conceive a more ironic tragedy than having so many ignorant clowns with so little understanding, making our policy and drafting legislation. They feel perfectly capable of and entitled to make medical decisions based on their own biases and misconceptions and to write those decisions into law.
Is it my imagination or does living in this country get stranger every day?
Like almost all Conservatives, Prager is a master of projection.
I’m surprised their theme song isn’t “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Forever_Blowing_Bubbles
And with these guys, I can understand that they probably want to keep all of their dating options open, but one might think that in the case of rape or incest, they might think ‘The less evidence, the better.’
So, while they’re all on TV and the radio, trying to get as far away from Akin as they can, and decrying what he said, here’s what they’re doing – at their Convention, they just drafted an official platform strongly supporting a “a human life amendment†to the Constitution.
What a difference a day or two makes, eh?
Sunday and Monday, “Nuh-uh! NO HE DI’N! Oh, that’s not what WE believe at all!!!â€
And on Tuesday, they’re are trying to codify Akins’ position into a Constitutional Amendment to present at their Convention.
All while still calling for Akin to step down.
Hypocrisy doesn’t recognize itself anymore.
Satire is dead.
And irony has rusted shut.
Someone remind me, how does The Onion stay in business?
They’re circling the wagons…
as in “’round the drain.”
I guess Praeger’s bubble must have popped….his words are no longer up.
I remember when Dennis Prager thought he had a slamdunk argument for the righteousness of the Iraq war. He thought he could silence the doubters and vindicate George W. Bush for all eternity by asking a single question: “Do you think Saddam Hussein was evil?”
“Critical thinking” my ass.
Is it my imagination or does living in this country get stranger every day?
Goatherd…For me it’s a feeling of despair. I find it frightening. I can appreciate a good verbal joust, but Romney has abandoned decency with his bold face lies. It’s scarey when a person running for the highest office in the land goes unchecked in the telling of his blantant lies. Where does the blame and shame of that situation fall? It doesn’t speak well for our country.
What Akin said was stupid. He is apologizing for it. The OFFENSIVE part– which neither he nor the rest of the GOP goons is distancing himself from– is the idea rape victims would be forced to carry to term.
Yeah Swami, it’s time for another “old person’s commune” probably in another country.
I started facebook a while ago. I wanted to see how some of my friends from high school turned out. Most of them are doing okay and still seem like kindred souls, but a few just seem whacked out gun nuts, who post an occasional “God” post. That’s usually about how God hates liberals and gays. Sometimes I am overcome by the ignorance and lack of empathy. Of course, I probably affect them the same way. Reading their posts is painful, but educational.
I think their anger and hatred just balance out their inner inner fear and uncertainty. They have been fed misinformation and rancor. Their dodgey grip on reality and their fragile security all seems ready to shatter. Mix those elements together and it looks a lot like “stupid”. But, it’s not. They’re just twisted beyond the capacity for rational thought.
But, the Dunning Kruger Effect does seem to be born out.
“Is it my imagination or does living in this country get stranger every day?”
Yeah, I’m afraid to go out to a restaurant or bar, lest some young Limbaugh Youth raises his right arm and starts singing, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me!”
Well, I have to say that I don’t think anybody knows exactly the total amount of hookers-and-blow going on in Oscar’s trash can, but since it is most likely Section 8 housing, being in a non-gentrified neighborhood where they do that kind of thing and all, we do have a patriotic obligation to insist that all funding related to him should be suspended until we get to the bottom of essential things, like Obama’s birth certificate and voting fraud. After all, money is fungible, and we cannot risk having tax dollars help children when we could be buying bombs! Uhmurka! Uhmurka! Uhmurka!
I am up for the Old Persons Commune in Another Country. Just let me know.
Did it ever occur to Prager that some of us guys might enjoy( get off on ) begging for sex.
“Oh, please, please,pretty please..I’ll gladly do the dishes on Tuesday for a little sampling of your feminine charms today, my little buttercup. Beat me, hurt me, humiliate me..love me!”
“They feel perfectly capable of and entitled to make medical decisions based on their own biases and misconceptions and to write those decisions into law”
Goat, they got the Lord on thier side, can’t you see?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZYbEL06lEU
The good MoDo again:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/opinion/dowd-just-think-no.html?_r=1&hp
She’s great a tearing apart Conservatives.
Now, if she could just avoid feminizing Democratic men, and butching-up the women, she might be good most of the time.
But she feels she needs to be an even-handed destroyer, so I’ll expect her next column to give us some more Obambi BS, or Elizebeth Warren as trying to out-pick-up truck poor little Scottie Brown.
Well, I’ll take what I can get when the times match the stopped hands on the clock.
OT, It’s working. Tropical Storm Isaac a concern as GOP convention nears.
Better that Prager is blowing bubbles.
His previous compadres in the party such as Mark Foley and Larry Craig were busy blowing things other than bubbles
Lynne,
We don’t need another country.
This country is already divided about as bad as it can be without a physical Civil War.
Isn’t it time we started to talk about physically dividing the country, BEFORE we have that Civil War 2.0?
And we’ll need some sort of displaced persons program to deal with Liberal and Progressive Southerners, and Dominionist and Bircher Northerners, who’ll want to move.
I thought I was nuts for suggesting this for the past decade, but now, it appears even the GREAT Charles Pierce seems to feel somewhat the same way. By the way, did I mention how GREAT he is?
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/louisiana-police-shooting-11911108
Here’s the last couple of sentences of it, though I recommend reading the whole thing:
“There is already a civil war raging between us in the way we think about our country and ourselves. It is time to find a peaceful spot by the river and sue for decent terms.”
I read him every single day. He’s the best political pundit since Hunter S. Thomson.
There is a wonderful book written by Robert Altemeyer, a professor of psychology, who has studied the how and why the extream rightwing thinks and how dangerous they would be if they take over this government. He has done scientific studies since 1966.
The book is free, please check it out, it is frightening, and it is happening now.
Theauthoritarians.com
If my wife sulks until I go with her to the inlaws does that mean she has kidnapped me?
But if I sulk until she agrees to jump in the hay that’s rape?
You realize you actually said that?
Really?
Philo — in some cases, it could be. What you might call “sulking” I might call “emotional abuse.” The point is that it’s not OK.
Philo:
If you sulk until your wife agrees to sex, you are not having happy, consensual sex with your wife. If you need that explained to you, please mature.
If you think that anyone seriously believes that there will someday be the arrest of passive-aggressive sulking boys in men’s bodies who emotionally pressure people into sex, then you either need to mature intellectually, or hang out with a better class of people.
A new feminist perspective on sexuality is a move away from the “if I keep her from saying ‘no’ it’s okay” because there are too many assholes that find a way to keep a woman from saying ‘no’. It points out that sex should occur when both sides say yes.
Prager would actually have a point if he could step away from privilege. It is true that in any healthy relationship, people must sometimes compromise in their desires. Sometimes, if one partner doesn’t want sex, but the other does, a compromise must be found. But that doesn’t mean that oh, wow, guys are just such pitiful beings who can only think with their arousal circuits and must be given access to the Honeyed Gates Of Love or they’ll feel rejected and forlorn. Sometimes it means that they have to realize that, yeah, they’re tired after coming home from work – and so are their wives. And the kids are running wild – maybe they should help settle them down and get dinner on the table. And then, maybe their wives won’t be so *exhausted*, and sex might seem like a happymaking moment.
And sure – sometimes a woman won’t be in the mood and will instead offer to (ahem) lend a hand while whispering in his ear how she loves him and wishes her body was cooperating. Or, maybe she’ll decide she’s able to go along because she does love him – but it has to be a voluntary choice, one where she feels free to say ‘no’. Because if you can’t say “no” then “yes” doesn’t really have any meaning.
In my first sexual experience, I was severely emotionally pressured into sex. I killed my sexual experimentation for years. I didn’t say “no” because I didn’t feel I could. And I wholeheartedly support the idea that it’s not just about finding a way to get a person to feel unable to say ‘no’, and then fucking them.
If sex isn’t about making people happier, in a manner that all involved are positively choosing, then it’s messed up. And people who are involved in messed up sex can feel violated and have their minds and spirits messed up thereby. Do you want people to disregard that?
You realize you actually said that?
Philo…Where did Maha say that? I evidently missed it..I only see where Prager says that in citing an expanded definition of rape.