News & Politics  
comments_image Comments

The 11 Dumbest Things Conservatives Have Said About Women














2. "Lavishly contracepted.""By any reasonable standard, we are one of the most lavishly contracepted society in the history of the planet," Rich Lowry wrote earnestly in his New York Post column. (h/t to Irin Carmon). This phrase led to a spate of online jokes about diamond-encrusted IUDs and gold-plated condoms (not to mention birth control pills spiked with designer drugs). But Lowry's words underscore the fallacy that is so common to conservative perspectives on the issue: that legality equals availability. For abortion and contraception, cost is a genuinely prohibitive barrier--as Fluke's testimony shows.

A right is a right in name only if it's not combined with access.

3. "What do you expect from a woman driver?" You know you're hearing a throwback back to another era when a complaint about those darn women drivers assaults your ears. But king of the misogynists Rush Limbaugh (yep, him again) wasn't criticizing race car pro Danica Patrick for her driving chops, of which she has some of the world's best, but for sticking up for the president on contraception. And for the runner up, this one is just pathetic: denying the existence of "birth control moms," as though any woman who has ever had a child would be against birth control.

4. Women in the military should "expect" to be raped. Why, exactly? This gem came from Fox News talking-head Liz Trotta, who in addition to asking "what do they expect?" when confronted with the upsurge of rapes in the military, criticized the money spent on dealing with those rapes:


Trotta later refused to apologize, that class act.


Meanwhile, Rick Santorum said: "When you have men and women together in combat, I think men have emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way.’’ 

As Jon Stewart asked: which of these dueling instincts kick in, right-wing? Rape or protect?

5. In my day, "gals" used to put an "aspirin between their knees" [for contraception]. This misguided attempt at nostalgia may be one of the most egregious examples of the kind of talk that's circulating about women in right-wing circles. It came courtesy of Rick Santorum super PAC sugar-daddy Foster Friess whose retro recommendation for contraception is pretty much in line with the candidate's. 

Here's the key transcript, with Andrea Mitchell's shocked response:

This contraceptive thing, my gosh it's such inexpensive, back in my days we used Bayer aspirin for contraception, the gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly.

Mitchell: Um, excuse me, I'm trying to catch my breath from that Mr. Friess, frankly...


6Dana Loesch: Women already consented to be penetrated when they got pregnant. When discussing the Virginia bill that would have mandated certain kinds of invasive ultrasounds for women, Loesch seemed unable to process the idea that consent is needed every single time a person's body is penetrated. "They had no problem having similar to a transvaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy," she said. Fortunately, Loesh was not alone -- her words were echoed by a legislator working on the provision.

7. Booing birth control at the GOP debate. In response to a rather mild question from a voter about "which candidate believes in birth control?" the GOP audience burst into emphatic booing. Whether these Bronx cheers were due to the question or to birth control itself is sort of irrelevant. The GOP, after all, politicized the birth control mandate issue.

8.Democrats and Republicans sitting together is "like date rape." From Stephen A. Moore of the Wall Street Journal, responding to the State of the Union address's unorthodox seating arrangement. As Kelsey Wallace notes in a sharp rejoinder to Moore: "Jokes like these contribute to rape culture and trivialize the experiences of victims of actual date rape. Having to sit next to someone you don't like is something we all learn to live with starting in kindergarten...."

9. My wife won't sleep with me because of this ultrasound provision. Isn't that hilarious? It came from lawmaker Dave Albo of Virginia, who went on a long comedy-like routine about how he couldn't get laid thanks to the "transvaginal" (which he called trans-V) provision. It was one of the frattiest moments ever filmed in a long history of fratty lawmaking moments. I'll let Erin Gloria Ryan's takedown stand on its own: "Telling a story about the implications of abortion legislation on your personal dick is completely tone-deaf and assy, not to mention a disturbing testament to just how unaffected by abortion restrictions the middle-aged men who make laws actually are. For Virginia women, it's a matter of having something inserted into their vaginas...for the men making the laws, it's just another catalyst for a hilarious anecdote told over a game of golf."

And two bonus round comments. 10. and 11. The Pope says couples who conceive using in vitro fertilization are arrogant while a DC blogger notes that lady journalists who are nice-looking in their Twitter avatars can't be serious.  


The silver lining to all this obnoxiousness? "Pro-women" posturing from the GOP's extremist members has gone out the window. The fact that they hate us, and that underlies their policy, is now out in the air for all to see.

See more stories tagged with: