was he shocked out of his ever loving mind when he finally got arrested for domestic abuse.

You will probably find a lot of that in Muslim countries. I doubt they are calling themselves Republicans.

and the bill ignores the fact that men can be victims of domestic violence too.

believe it's both.

they object to it covering Native American women ... they are a sick bunch.

They hate human rights.

I don't know why that is, but they do... and they hate liberals most of all!

Native Americans, GLBTs, and immigrants.

They're just against personhood and autonomy for anyone but themselves.

At one time in the past, Muslim and Christian rules were actually an improvement over what had existed before. hundreds of years later the dogma is stuck in whatever century the religion was founded while enlightened attitudes have progressed.

And it's all over the world while being a Republican isn't a worldwide thing.

there is more christian terrorism in this country then islamic

Wouldn't Europeans be more enlightened than us? I just couldn't think of where they would be. But it's easy to realize most Muslim fundies aren't republicans.

is there a rw talking point you wont grab on to as the attempt to demonize islam here shows?

But yes I have more of a problem with the especially fundamentalist types of religions and Islam is more so.

My point is that the mentality of how wives are treated (or mistreated) comes from a religious POV, not a political one.

Of course people are free to pick their own religion but it is not for me.

Wierd definitions for rape, contraception, anti-choice, family leave, fair wages....

When I was an assistant DA, one of my defendants actually told the police that one cannot rape his own girlfriend. (Guilty verdict, affirmed on appeal, BTW).

When I was in law school in the '90s, a few students expressed dismay when Ohio removed the marriage exemption from the rape statute. Before, to prove rape, the state had to prove the defendant and the victim were not married, otherwise it would be a lesser sex offense. It was pretty surprising to hear supposedly educated men (or course they were all men) talking about the change as somehow undermining the natural order.

About the "educated" men who didn't see women as human beings....appealing to the " natural order" argument to justify their narrow mindedness.

Makes me think about how there isn't just ONE natural order. Why, gracious me, if "natural order" as pertains to certain spiders were the reference point, they'd have a whole other opinion about the good lord's plan, now wouldn't they??


What really amazes me is how often I see it made clear that many men don't see women as people; women's human rights concerns just don't even enter their consciousness. And when you try to suggest inclusion, you get a hostile reaction. (Antagonism towards being "corrected&quot .

A lot of them implicitly bought into the pregnancy as punishment for fornication argument in opposing abortion. The probably did not consider it in those terms, but what they said in class (Constitutional law) was essentially the woman waives the right not to be pregnant by having sex.

The law, contrary to what RW blow-hards might say, is a very conservative, authoritarian profession.

norms will change. Slowly, yeah that is a fact that is frustrating but over time and as the percentage grows.

(And yeah....authoritarian personality types come in male AND female.....)

snf there are millions of women who vote Republican and register Republican too. McCain got 43% of the female vote in 2008. That's about 26 million Republican women.

The argument now is about the expansion of it, not the renewal of it. However, even the original bill. 46 House Republicans voted for it (and 131 against it) and 64 House Democrats voted against it (and 188 for it) http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1994/roll416.xml

and quite a lot of Republicans who do. And some of them are even female. It's very sad.

I won't even go into the convoluted and disgusting expectations they have of all women - and then complain they can't get a woman to comply to their demands.

A quote which comes to mind is: "I'm the Lord God in this house!"

Usually delivered with a beer in "The Almighty's" hand and foam at the corners of his lips.

Do you not think there are any Democrats who are that way?

But there are some nasty characters in our midst as well. Makes it even the more disturbing when an ostensibly "good guy" engages in this sort of behavior.

there are just some men and women who like power plain and simple. If you did away with the political parties and religion tomorrow they would find another excuse to exercise their power. It's all about power. That is the fundamental element. Religion, politics, business, you name it, it does not matter. It is all about power and you will never do away with human beings lust for it. That is not to say we shouldn't fight it. But it will never go away.

to those that terrorize women.

Under the drone memo, we could target and kill these Republicans if they were overseas.

Why any woman would vote for a Republican when there are plenty of fiscally conservative Democrats to choose from is beyond me, except perhaps it's a type of "Stockholm" or battered wife syndrome.

PTxS

ideology. This seems to happen to some extent in every group. Even Gandhi was a wife beater, and he is usually considered a hero of peace.

"By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape."

Same woman who said that also wrote in defense of the San Francisco sheriff convicted of domestic violence and used that to argue that Big Gubmint is conspiring to break apart families!

Schlafly has also spoken in defense of Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin and [link:freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2013/02/01/schlaflys-disgusting-views-on-rape/|blames rape on feminists] and makes the most absurd "liberals tearing apart the family" conspiracies. She's got a nephew who also writes garbage for a new generation.

The husband is head of the wife and is instructed by god to keep her in line.

People would be shocked by some baptist fundamentalist teachings. It's a sickness to cover up rape and beatings and use god as some kind of fig leaf.

It is in the old testament, I think in Leviticus, and I can't speak for other religions, but the baptists are considered Christians and I don't believe the New Testament talks about cow towing to the male of the relationship, or the man being able to forcibly "take" his wife or beat her or dominate her in any way. At least that is what I remember from my Dad, who was a Presbyterian minister with his theology degree and minors in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. And I only say that last part because he always read the bible in those languages and was very good at proper interpretations of it.
I have no problem thinking the men are wrong in their actions. My problem comes when the female of the relationship thinks it OK.

I don't think I expressed exactly what I was thinking, but I hope you get my meaning.

It's a living nightmare if you find yourself married to one of those SOBs. That is not love. Put plainly, they are sadistic misogynists. Not good as a spouse. Not good as a father.
Heck... not good for anything!

Anyone who disagrees with that should seek psychiatric help.

It's like they have been trapped in a time warp... Maybe it's because they just can't learn that the "good-ole-boy" days are over. And yes, they probably belong in an institution, as they are mentally deranged and probably have assault weapons laying around all over the place... (No kidding.)

coping skills (knowledge, problem solving, opportunity seeking, intelligence, learning . . . stuff like that) . . . certain kinds of limitations in SOME people's coping skills have resulted in higher rates of all frustrations, lowered response thresholds, and dependence upon reactionary forms of responses that tend to lead toward reflexive kinds of behaviors, which reflexive behaviors have a higher tendency to be (hard-wired) for fear, anger, and, hence violence, and violence, in its most basic form is physical and, therefore, more highly associated with physical traits like strength, which co-relates more strongly with maleness.

Because the kinds of things I sketched above may have developed at this point in our social and cultural history to a degree of extremeness that is more common than it was previously, even a relatively small minority of such actors can have significant effects, which, given our general tendencies toward "divide and conquer" types of thinking (ignorance, false dichotomies, bad logic, dishonesty, propaganda, unrecognized biases, anti-rationalism etc. etc. etc.) those more extreme dysfunctional coping skills, though they still really are rooted in a relatively small group within the whole population, the extremeness of the behaviors makes them have wider influence than they previously have had, especially with the availability of technology and its potentials for in-group/affinity-group formations.

This is why even men who have not, and might not ever, abused their wives or other females, by their inclinations/temperament CAN come to support those who have and do abuse in any degree thereof.

An important part of this dynamic is women. SOME women, too, are handicapped by limitations in their own individual coping skills. Though the limiting factors that have that effect upon women are different and probably more deeply founded in our social and cultural history than are the limiting factors that affect men, the effects upon women would be varying degrees of the same kinds of behavioral traits I mentioned above. Put two such interactive dysfunctional behavioral sets together and what do you get?

In my universe, the majority of the responsibility for what happens in a dynamic situation belongs to the stronger, more powerful, of those who are involved in what is happening. A majority, of course, can be anything from 1 to 99.99999...%, depending upon the specific strength/power of the different behavioral factors relevant to their respective actors or their role in the elementary dynamic of what happened.

This means that, because it is necessary to identify justice, we should try to assess what portion of what has happened is sourced in which element of the events under consideration. It should be justice for as close as possible to ALL who are involved, in due and appropriate proportion. It will do justice no service, not only between abusive males and women, but also in any situation (e.g. abuses from police vs. those subjected to the processes and procedures of law enforcement) . . . that is, it will do justice no service, to deny that responsibility is NOT a zero-sum commodity. It is a SHARED thing. The real questions are shared HOW and by how much. And the reason that is important is because, ***IF*** we have any hope of ever doing any better for ourselves, we NEED to learn and learning has as much, or maybe even more, to do with how one can get things wrong as it can have to do with how one gets them right and one can't learn from what one is doing wrong if one denies that is happening in whatever degree, from weak to strong, that it is so.

Therefore, if women are ever to stand a chance against their STRONGER or more powerful abusive male partners or relatives or associates (beyond holding a gun on superior male physical strength and/or on all of the different forms of superior male power), we, each one of us, must begin by recognizing how each one of us may be making the mistake (and I'm sorry to say that at least in some cases that could be an intentional "mistake" designed to shift responsibility away from one's self) of allowing ourselves to become part of anyone else's dysfunctional coping responses.

I know that this is not a very popular thing to say about women, but I think it is necessary to begin here with, to whatever degree, weak or stronger, that we are responsible for what happens to us, if women are ever to discover and take charge of what their OWN female strengths/powers are. It will no longer do to claim somekind of "right" to do whatever and then blame others for their dysfunctional responses to us. YES! men SHOULD be able to control themselves. The fact is that some can, some can't, and still others "can't" and it does us no good to pretend that isn't so. You can kick a dog forever for not being able to sing opera and it will only make a monster our of you and the dog and kill singing of any kind altogether.

Yes, men, by virtue of their strength and power do own, in most instances, the majority of the responsibility for what happens between them and women. But that does not mean that it is not NECESSARY for each individual woman to honestly recognize what portion of the causes of what happens ARE in fact hers BY CHOICE. I think if we could do this, it could end a tendency toward a female culture of victimization by independently breaking the reiterative cycles of dysfunction generated by limited reactionary coping skills and set women on what could be come a more authentic path to what it means to be women, for women's sake, in America today.

okay to beat a wife, but we don't know if he beat his. I think he knew that I (an employee) did volunteer work at the local Women's Shelter.

He also made comments about Jews ripping off the bank by not repaying their loans, etc.

But he was at mass early every Sunday where God takes attendance.

This concept didn't die with the end of the Roman Empire, you know.

This mindset is still the gold standard for conservatives

Oy...though there are men who do believe that.

I am one of seven children, five boys and two girls. My father loved his boys, but ignored me and my sister totally. I do not remember him ever touching me, whether in punishment, or love or kindness. I do not remember him every picking me up, hugging or kissing me. He barely acknowledged my existence.

recent threads about rape on DU show that it's a crime that spans the political spectrum.

and state sanctioned rape through transvaginal ultrasounds.

to try to keep the two parties as far apart and inflamed at each other as possible on issues of race and sex and gender that do not affect the bank accounts of the one percent. These social issues are used and deliberately fomented as wedges to keep all of us distracted, hating each other, and divided angrily into our red and blue camps, convinced that the two parties are still worlds apart...

...when in reality the two parties are actually purchased by the same one percent, and they collude relentlessly on the issues they DO care about, agree upon, and profit from: economic policy, the wars, the police state, education, energy/environmental issues, free trade, etc., etc., etc.

Look at the corporate media and the memes floated on discussion boards across this country. Republicans are exhorted to believe that Democrats across the country are amoral degenerates who hate marriage and families and would legalize pedophilia, and Democrats are urged to think that Republicans across the country are potential eager rapists, assailants or murderers of every woman, person of color, or gay person.

It is imperative to the corporate hijackers of both parties that our emotional loyalty to our Blue or Red Team (and willingness to circle the wagons and defend *anything* it does) is fierce and reflexive and defensive enough to override our loyalty to the Constitution and the fundamental civil rights that both parties are now, together, destroying before our eyes.


This is what happens when corporations are allowed to purchase influence in governments, and when they can buy and consolidate the media. They begin to use those governments and that media to enrich themselves and to create a political narrative that will ensure the people cannot or will not unite against what they are doing. As long as the Reds hate the Blues to this extent, and the Blues hate the Reds, we will continue to take turns defending everything our own parties do when they are in power. And the one percent will continue to run corporate candidates on both sides, knowing that they can continue their predatory agenda and always count on half the country to rally around and defend it.

This is how we are losing our country.