Sunday, May 23, 2010

Hatred Fuels Their Souls

Anti-choicers seem to love hating people. It almost seems like a game to them. Pick any group of completely innocent people, and find a reason to hate them. Trans people? They hate them. Pregnant people? They hate them. Rape survivors? Well, they apparently hate them, too!

The subject of rape tends to come up a lot with me, particularly when I'm speaking about abortion. Rape and forced pregnancy are so closely tied together, it's difficult to avoid the connection. Both are extreme violations of bodily autonomy, and I will fight against both for as long as I live.

However, I've noticed a bit of a trend. Whenever I mention rape, speak about my own rape, or call an anti out on his or her rape apologism (without even mentioning abortion), they go berserk. This is when they start calling me names, this is when they tell me to "shut up", this is when they tell me that I'm playing the "victim card". This is when they imply that I'm stupid. This is when they call me a rapist and/or a rape apologist. This is when they call me a whore, delusional, paranoid, psychotic, pathetic, a "little bitty girl", a nut, and a Nazi.

Oh, and by the way, I made none of that up. Those are some of the things that anti-choicers have said to me recently. Aren't they so peaceful?

All of this has got me thinking; What is it about rape that gets these people so riled up? Why do they get so angry when I advocate against rape? Well, I have a few ideas.

My first thought is that they will obviously be pro-rape. You either believe in bodily autonomy or you don't. Anti-choicers obviously don't believe in bodily autonomy when it comes to pregnancy, so why in the world would they believe in it when it comes to sex? They have no reason to. If they're okay with traumatizing women with a pregnancy, they'll also be okay with traumatizing women with rape.

My next thought is that this hatred comes from the fact that many rape survivors go against their agenda. Rape survivors easily debunk the "all women who have abortions are dirty little sluts" sentiment. They see me tell my story, and they get angry. My story is of a 14 year old who got raped who would have surely killed herself if she got pregnant and was forced through her pregnancy. This angers them. They only care to hear about the young teenagers who are raped and are overwhelmingly happy about carrying a rape pregnancy. That's great for those girls, but what about all of the others? What about the ones who are/were in my situation? Anti-choicers go as far as they can to silence those who can not be exploited to advance an anti-choice agenda. Every time I speak about my rape experience, an anti-choicer straight up tells me to "shut up". It's very obvious that they're trying to silence those who are bad for the anti-choice agenda. They like to pretend that people like me don't exist. They might as well cover up their ears and scream "LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!".

The more I interact with anti-choicers, the more I am convinced that 100% of them support rape in one way or another, and I am not exaggerating. Even the ones I trust the most do this to me. They will tell women that it's their job to not get themselves raped, they will blame women for their own rapes, they will tell rape survivors that they must carry a rape pregnancy to term, they will stand by rape apologists if that rape apologist is anti-choice. I haven't met one who doesn't do anything any of those things. Not one soul.

And sadly, it doesn't surprise me. Not one bit.

Oh, and anti-choicers, don't even bother leaving rape apologist comments here. I'm telling you now, they will be deleted.

21 comments:

  1. It's all part of the authoritarian, women as property mindset. A rape victim (or even a woman who in voluntarily sexual) has lost her value as a virgin but can still be an incubator.

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  2. You are touting your opinion of an entire movement of people as TRUTH. As FACT. Unless you have taken a poll of every prolifer in this country and around the world to assert that we HATE pregnant women and we BLAME the victim for a rape, you are being intellectually dishonest and you know it. This blog post holds nothing but hatred for prolifers which you consistently accuse us of doing.
    Your commenters will soon see the extreme position that you take and they will fall away while you keep getting more and more enraged.

    I know you won't publish this but I will not stop trying to get you to see how wrong you are. See you at Jill's, PCG.

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  3. I never said that it was a fact, C. I said that I am convinced that 100% of anti-choicers promote rape in one way or another, I obviously have no stats to back that up.

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  4. Here here!
    I'm curious what kind of rape apologist comments you get. It's a side of the topic I don't get as far into as you probably do.

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  5. Hi, Jenna!

    I haven't gotten too many rape apologist comments on this blog (thankfully), aside from one post where someone said that certain kinds of rape aren't incidents of "real" rape. A few commenters have perpetuated the myth that it's a woman's responsibility not to get herself raped, not anyone's responsibility to respect other people's bodily autonomy (ie, saying crap like "ladies, remember not to take walks alone! Carry mace with you at all times! Wear your hair a certain way! Don't dress a certain way" etc etc). Those are the most common ones.

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  6. I don't care if you post what I write or not. What I write here is for you anyway.

    Please understand that I can never ever support what you plan to do to unborn human beings.

    Please know that this doesn't mean that I don't care about you. I cry for what you went through and pray for you often. But I also cry and pray for the future children you plan to abort.

    Please call you parents. They love you more than you'll ever know -- until you have your first baby -- then you will know.

    If you need a shoulder down the road, look me up on Jill's because

    "hey I'll cover you honey cause the pain's gotta go somewhere"

    Praxedes

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  7. I think it's more the second thought you had. You and the millions of women and girls who get raped every year are evidence that sex and pregnancy aren't always wonderful experiences. Anti-choicers try to separate forced sex from forced pregnancy, but they can't. When they're reminded that forced pregnancy is as traumatic, invasive, and inhumane as forced sex, they get very nervous and angry and try to drown out those voices.

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  8. I had another thought. Anti-choicers also get very angry when a woman tells them that they don't want children. Every woman out there who doesn't want to have sex with men and make babies makes an anti die a little bit inside.

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  9. Yeah, FEMily. I've seen a lot of anti-choicers bashing Elena Kagan for not having children. They weren't bashing her for her politics, only for not having children. WTFruit?

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  10. I accidentally deleted a comment that came through moderation. I hit "reject" instead of "publish". Oops. I was able to go back and get a screen shot of the comment if anyone cares

    http://twitpic.com/1rddpe/full

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  11. As for my response- if you would have taken a few seconds to look through my comments, you would see a few anti-choice comments on my blog. I've let through all of the comments that are respectful (..or, as respectful as an anti-choicer can be :/) and related. If you disagree with the fact that I'm not letting vile, hate promoting comments on my blog, you are free to go to another blog.

    You are very lucky (or very..forgiving) if you don't see the hatred that anti-choicers spew. The anti-choice belief, that women do not deserve bodily autonomy, by itself is hateful. That's not to mention the cursing and the names (refer back to my post for a FEW of those names). Do those anti-choice organizations also tell rape survivors that they should go through traumatizing pregnancies? Yes? Then they are hateful and they are coercing women. That is that.

    Please quote me where I said that every rape survivor wants to have an abortion. I'd be very interested in seeing that, because I do not remember where I said that. Not at all.

    If you would go back and read my post, you would see this

    "The more I interact with anti-choicers, the more I am convinced that 100% of them support rape in one way or another, and I am not exaggerating."

    Notice that I didn't claim that that was fact. I obviously can't make that claim and call it fact, I have no statistics to support that data. It's merely what I have experienced. ALL of the anti-choicers who I have met have been pro-rape.

    To learn about my views concerning rape apologism, you can read this posts:

    http://herauthority.blogspot.com/2010/02/anti-choicers-and-rape-apologists.html

    http://herauthority.blogspot.com/2010/02/living-in-rape-culture.html

    http://herauthority.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-prevent-rape.html

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  12. oh, so sorry I'm not doing to good at consolidating my comments! But one more thing.....I mean on this particular post you only have one comment in the opposing voice. I do read the comments. I don't think you should shy away from the nasties. Comment moderation just looks evasive to me, that's all.

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  13. Here you go, Anonymous. You can complain here: http://herauthority.blogspot.com/2010/05/for-those-who-hate-comment-moderation.html

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  14. I've read much of the discussion that lead to this post, and I wish to proffer (I like that word!) some unsolicited advice.

    Considering some of the vicious remarks I saw directed to you I can only imagine how triggering the situation was for you. That said, if you wish to have any possibility of holding a meaningful exchange on anti-choice turf, I advise you to moderate the rhetoric.

    Since you haven't linked to the discussion in question, I won't quote from it; I'll work from this post instead.

    "Hatred Fuels Their Souls" I submit that this is harsh. These people, for the most part, honestly seem to believe their mission is to save fetuses. I can't say I understand how they can maintain this belief while making misogynistic arguments such as "women who consent to sex automatically consent to bearing children," but I'm sure my beliefs aren't 100% self-consistent, either.

    "The more I interact with anti-choicers, the more I am convinced that 100% of them support rape in one way or another, and I am not exaggerating." Even assuming this statement was not meant to be hyperbole, I hope you can understand how outrageous this sounds. If I were an anti-choice rape survivor, I certainly wouldn't take kindly to such an accusation. (Your statements in that discussion were less nuanced than this.)

    "... they will tell rape survivors that they must carry a rape pregnancy to term, ..." You seem to suggest here that they are singling out rape survivors for particular mistreatment. Since the same goes for all pregnancies, I think they are just being consistent. That rape survivors on average may find forced pregnancy to be more traumatic is just a side-effect. (I am of the opinion that those who advocate for an abortion ban with no rape exception are at least being consistent; a rape exception to me provides additional evidence that they wish to punish women for having sex. For the record, my wife was unimpressed by this opinion.)

    I like you blog. I agree with most of what you write. I think your plans to become an abortion provider are caring and courageous. I hope I am not out of line.

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  15. Gawsh, anonymous, I make a whole space just for you to complain about me and you don't even use it? You hurt my feelings :(.

    Arium-

    I'd really like to believe that most antis have good intentions. I really would. However, the more I interact with antis, the more I'm convinced that most of them (or at least, most of the anti-choice activists) really do have hateful intentions. And, even if they do have "good" intentions, I still think it's possible for them to be hateful. For example, I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I think it'd be safe to assume that most people promote rape apologist ideals (ie, it's a woman's job not to walk at night, not to wear a short skirt, not to wear her hair in a certain way, etc, if she doesn't want to be raped). I don't think that most people have the intention to promote rape and to hurt rape survivors, but yeah, I do consider them hateful (particularly so if they continue to promote rape apologism when called out on their BS). Same applies to antis for me.

    I'm sorry to say that ALL of the anti-choicers I've met do promote rape in one way or another. I'd even say that the general population promotes rape in one way or another (even if they are subtlety promoting it), but at least I've met pro-choicers who are anti-rape. Some people would call this pessimistic, but it's the reality that I've lived in since I was raped.

    I do agree that the "exceptioneers" are not consistent. BUT I also think that the less people an anti-choicer wants to hurt, the better. Yes, the exceptioneers probably just want to punish women for having sex, but I can't say that I've seen anything different from the more militant anti-choicers.

    Btw, I didn't link to Stanek's blog because this post wasn't intended to be all about the crazies on that blog (although they did inspire the post). I've seen a huge trend where antis just get pissed at me for advocating against rape (like justsnapd8 for example, who told me that I was using the "victim card" for calling her out on implying that a pregnant 11 year old wasn't really raped. http://herauthority.blogspot.com/2010/04/spoken-by-true-rape-apologistanti.html). Whenever I disprove the anti-choice sentiment that all rape survivors are just THRILLED to be pregnant from rape, the insults begin. This was not a one time thing.

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  16. I'd be curious to hear your opinion on the Hodari issue. :-)

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  17. Arium, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Anti's are completely inconsistent in that they claim to care about women, but then force them through pregnancies. Many are rape apologists or victim blamers, thus PCGs statement re. rape is not untrue. Find me an anti who doesn't support rape in one way or another and I'll show you a wolf in sheep's clothing.

    With respect to the exceptioneers, they make it sound like they are doing the women a favour. As if they have some right to grant rape victims an exception.

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  18. Hey Arium-

    The other day, I was so caught up w/ discussing the antis, I completely breezed over this paragraph

    "I like you blog. I agree with most of what you write. I think your plans to become an abortion provider are caring and courageous. I hope I am not out of line. "

    Thank you ♥♥♥. You are not out of line. You're respectfully disagreeing. Thank you for commenting.

    Anonymous-

    The Hodari issue was a sad story of a horrible doctor. People like that should never be abortion doctors or ANY kind of doctors. What really irks me is the reason why women went to Hodari. His clinic charged less. That is one reason why we need abortion funding, to keep women safe.

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  19. Conversations like this make me self-conscious. I worry that I will not get my point across well, and in this example my advice could come across as dictatorial.

    Approaching this from a positive direction, whenever I see you call someone out on a particular comment that you identify as being rape apology, I think to myself, "I don't think/say things like that, do I?" I assume others are similarly provoked to thought.

    I suppose I was (and am) thinking out loud regarding my effort to understand antis. I may also have been including all who self-identify as "pro-life," not just the activists.

    Regardless, our value system seems to be irreconcilable with theirs. They believe human life needs needs to be protected from fertilization. (Most of them, conveniently, don't seem to understand how much time can elapse between ejaculation and fertilization.) They believe women should be conscripted into gestation because it is "natural."

    We, on the other hand, consider women's right to bodily autonomy to be paramount. Forcing women to continue unwanted pregnancies is unacceptable in our system, and the idea that taking action that might prevent implantation would be immoral is simply bizarre to us. We consider fetuses that have not yet matured to viability to be expendable if not wanted.

    And each side considers the other to be evil.

    And there is precious little common ground to be found.

    I've nearly abandoned commenting on anti-choice blogs, because I don't see the use. Perhaps instead of critiquing the efforts of those who persist, I should just say thanks.

    Enough rambling for today.

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  20. so I stumbled upon this just now, and I know its a little late but all I want to say is I am very very very VERY sorry for what you have gone through. It brings me tears hearing about anybody being raped - to me it's worse than murder.
    And what pains me more is hearing that people actually give you shit for it. That is just plain AWFUL. People tell you to shut up when you explain your past? Thats horrific...
    Please, punch them in the face next time.
    And have a wonderful life

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***PLEASE READ***

Due to constant spam and derailing coming from a few antis, I am now making this blog a "safe place". This does not mean that I won't allow opposing views. It means that I'm not longer going to allow hateful or unrelated/spammy comments. This will continue on until the anti-choice spammers get bored with harassing me and the people who post here, and is especially relevant when it comes to the topic of rape. I hope this doesn't deter any respectful people from commenting. :)