From: Nancy Braus <nancykbraus@yahoo.com >
Date: Mon, Jan 27, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Subject: rape
To: Voices Section/The Commons <voices@commonsnews.org >
The confirmation of Pete Hegseth is the final affirmation of the Republicans’ move toward fully supporting the act of rape. This is a huge development in the far right’s attempt to force women to conform to the Nazi feminine role: Kinder, Kuche, Kirche: children, kitchen, church. This is the goal of the “cat lady” nonsense that the odious JD Vance shoved down our throats during the campaign from hell.
Pete is not just a one time, impulsive rapist- are any of them? He is a real pro- when he paid a woman $50,000 to keep her experience of being drugged and raped private, the old hush money story, his lawyer then told the world that the WOMAN was guilty of blackmail- Pete was as innocent as a newborn baby. This guy is a lot like Trump- serial marriages, serial affairs, takes no responsibility for his actions, children out of wedlock, as if anyone cared any more, Democrats actually thought this guy was vulnerable to blackmail. Personally, I think he was more likely to get a medal of honor from Donald. Some of the other sexual predators Trump has decided to make great leaders are RFK jr. He groped a babysitter in his own home- repeatedly. He claims it was due to his “very rambunctious youth.” He was 46. Trump’s best friend, meaning the associate with the most money, Elon, apparently sexually assaulted a flight attendant in one of his private jets: $250,000 later, she did not file a complaint. This is the tip of the iceberg as far as these men go- violence against women seems to be almost a ticket of admission to the rich, powerful white men’s club.
The consideration of rape as a crime has evolved over the centuries. In feudal times, women were so disrespected that the “victim” of a rape was the male “owner” of the woman. Women were considered to have no autonomy, no voice, and no power. Slavery was a terrible time for Black women, and post-slavery wasn’t much better. In one of the many horrible Supreme Court decisions of the late 1800’s, the 1885 case of Missouri vs Celia, the court ruled in a travesty that a Black woman was declared to be property of her owner and had no right to a legal defense against rape- she would be severely beaten if she tried to defend herself. The racial component of rape has been huge in the United States: for many years, a white man could not be tried for raping a Black woman, but a Black man was usually lynched or legally killed for raping a white woman. And usually it was a set-up- most Black men knew better than to attack a white woman. But, in many states until very recently, consensual sex between a Black man and a white woman was also rape.
Before Second Wave Feminism of the 1960’s-70’s, rape was like breast and ovarian cancers: a “woman’s problem.” Nobody talked about these things in polite company. From an article by an anti-rape group called the Resource Sharing Project here are some features of life for women before 1970:
there were no rape crisis centers or shelters for battered women
women’s studies did not exist
women made less than 59 cents on the dollar compared with men
marital rape was not acknowledged
Many feminists in communities around the country worked to make rape a crime taken seriously, but in research, it appears that the crime is definitely reported less than half the time, and one credible report estimates 1 in 20 rape victims reports her assault. At this time, rape remains a crime in the United States legal system, but what does it mean when the men running the country are rapists? What does it mean when the powerful leader of the military is in a far right Christian cult with a pastor who preaches that men need to rape women and women need to accept it? What does it mean when people meant to uphold the law are those who are assaulting women? Will the already sorry reporting numbers on rape go down? Have they already? Will police officers who are MAGAts destroy rape kits? Will we see rape laws go away, or be weakened?
Women have the right to feel safe in our streets, our schools, our homes, and everywhere else we go. People like Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Pete Hegseth have a seriously twisted view of women- that we are only there for their pleasure, we have nothing to offer society except dinner and babies. Many Trumper men have pretty much gone down the Tucker Carlson path- blaming women for pretty much every problem men have created for themselves. You are a filthy, crude guy with a vocabulary centered on the “f” word, who open carries 2 or 3 weapons and a beer can, you never exercise except at the shooting range, and you play video games 4 hours a day. Of course, you blame women that you can’t get a date! When far right creep Peter Thiel tried to create a right wing dating site, they couldn’t attract women. We see stories in the news that tell us that while men will date out of their political comfort zone, not so for women. Not hard to see why.
As long as Trump is in power, he and his minions will use the threat of rape as a tool to try to control women. If the laws become weaker, if those police who are Trumpers refuse to protect women from dangerous men, if women are forced to allow the rapist to be a custodial parent (this already happens rarely- to great outrage,) we had better dig out our feminist organizing tools and re-plow the ground to re-sow the seeds of women’s power.
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