Before I begin, I should state that I am a man. This fact may, at first glance, bring upon questions of why a man should feel so compelled to write about a topic that belongs primarily--if not solely--to women.
I feel compelled to write this precisely because I stand in solidarity with the women so affected by our cultural obsession and manipulation of rape; because I believe that the topic of rape belongs to women, and political decisions about what constitutes rape and how it should be handled both subjectively by the victim and under the law should be made only by women.
The very real problem of Todd Akin is not necessarily that used the term "legitimate rape", but that he even admitted through his apology that he is absolutely alienated from what rape actually means. He will never be able to either understand nor empathize with a rape victim. Todd Akin is merely a symptom of a systemic, fundamentally ideological problem.
Todd Akin merely said more than he should have. The reason the GOP is so eager to kick him out of the race is because his choice of words is an expression of their ideology bereft of all its usual flowery language, language employed to disguise what is at bottom an ultimately misogynistic worldview that mirrors that which they currently combat overseas; the only contrast lies in their subtlety and the banner under which they march. This language, in most contexts, speaks to fundamentally nebulous values held only by the most desperate, and, when properly examined, tramples upon more concrete, individualistic values which we rely upon every day.
This is why Todd Akin's comments--and the GOP ideology as a whole--is so terrifying: Squeezing legal definitions of rape absolutely violates any possible notion of personal autonomy, and there is absolutely no way for anyone whose right to personal autonomy is guaranteed both culturally and legally to ever empathize with someone who is not guaranteed the same protections. It would be nothing short of a sexual apartheid, similar to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or Iran, in which women are treated as third-class citizens, and are violated with impunity.
The whole enterprise, given what they say to anyone who is fortunate enough to have white skin, a penis, and an annual income of over $300,000 dollars is sickeningly ironic: They parade around as if the individual is a Randian god, while telling everyone else to lick the soles of their shoes. More rights for them, and the rest of us can wallow in abject poverty, constantly terrified of being violated at a whim.
But there is a reason why an entire political party has centered its platform around The Handmaid's Tale: Our culture is obsessed with it because, while women in all other areas of life are making enormous progress, they are still viewed as exploitable sexual objects. Effort is being exerted on a constant basis to disenfranchise them and remove their ability to seek legal reprisal, while at the same time punishing them for what happens to them (removing reproductive health options such as abortion and thus replacing sterilized medical instruments and hospital rooms for coat hangers on the kitchen floor).
Reddit is an incredibly popular site on which users can submit, comment, and vote on content, either generated by other users or pulled from elsewhere on the Internet. I must here disclose that I am a Redditor, a Reddit user. Reddit has a rape problem. No, that's wrong. It has a problem interacting with anyone who is not a white male, often objectifying them for ridicule. However, nowhere is this problem so bad than on the subjects of rape, feminism, and/or women generally. There are always cases of women in r/AskReddit--where users solicit questions or advice from other users--describing what might be called possible rape scenarios (in which the Original Poster is not quite sure if she/someone s/he knows had been raped under ambiguous circumstances) and being ridiculed for posting, justifying the actions of, or sympathizing with the offending male(s), or even going so far as to harass the OP directly. A psychologist actually had to post a topic warning against an extremely popular "Ask a Rapist" thread, in which he theorized that rapists would be triggered to commit rape by reading the experiences of other rapists1.
Reddit is one of the most popular sites on the entire Internet. These people are real. Granted, who they are in real life may differ from who they are under an alias behind a computer screen, but these behaviors and attitudes seep into the real world, and are continually reinforced by a society and legal structure which places so little value upon the autonomy of an entire class of people. Rapists know that they will probably get away with it, and the fact that so few rapes are reported--much less successfully reported (in that legal action is taken on behalf of the victim which leads to conviction)--all but subjectively justifies their actions. There is nothing I can possibly say that would do justice to how incredibly dangerous this attitude is.
On a personal level, no one who exists under this system can ever authentically say they are happy with who they have, because they have no idea what it means to earn the consent of another. The power relations underlying this not-so-subtle sexual apartheid mars any claim to love because the real freedom to choose does not exist: There is only the oppressed and the oppressor. Anywhere sexual inequality exists, whether culturally and/or legally, love cannot exist. Anyone who seeks to truly love must eradicate any notion of sexual inequality, of the supposed right to violate, and respect his or her partner as an equal, as a human being worthy of the same rights s/he enjoys.
1) http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/xf5c2/reddit_are_you_aware_how_dangerous_the_askarapist/
