Yup. Huckabee thinks my libido might be out of control, perhaps out gallivanting, spending money on rubber underwear and G-strings, ogling at the bottoms of all beautiful men strolling by and getting drunk in public bars on White Russians. Or any color Russians. Or any other nationality. Because of that lack of control.
That was fun. I never realized right-wing religious politicians such as Mike Huckabee have a sense of humor. Huckabee is a former Arkansas Governor and a former runner-up in Republican presidential candidate elections and I have followed what he says for a long time. He never came across as a funny guy before, though he did once advocate the Biblical submission of wives to their husbands.
Anyway, this is what he has just said about the Republican war on women and free contraception:
"If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government then so be it! Let us take that discussion all across America because women are far more than the Democrats have played them to be," Huckabee said.
This is still very funny. Note that the social conservatives don't believe that good women have a libido. Good women are only supposed to have sex when they want children. Probably while closing their eyes, staying veryvery still and thinking of the Tea Party or the Fibonacci series or what to cook for him tomorrow.
In the conservative worldview, only sluts have a libido, but in any case (and at the same time!) all men have a giant libido and women have little postage stamp libidos and that's why women must be the gate-keepers in the sexual marketplace. That's also why conservatives never try to control the male libido, or notice that the birth control women get actually does sorta benefit heterosexual men as it takes two to tango.
Well, that's not the real explanation, that "why" in my last sentence. It's the conservative way of looking at only women's behavior when it comes to sex.
I love that Uncle Sugar reference, too! It does so much for those who argue that there is no Republican war against women, especially when we put it into the context of the most recent assault against Wendy Davis who is running for the governor of Texas.
Ann Coulter stated that Davis married a Sugar Daddy to put her through law schools (an old solution traditionally used in reverse by men who went to medical or law or business school while their wives worked as secretaries or nurses or teachers, though those wives never got called Sugar Mommies). And Erick Erickson, an anti-feminist conservative, joined in:
"So Abortion Barbie had a Sugar Daddy Ken," tweeted Fox News pundit Erick Erickson, referring to Davis' famous filibuster of an anti-abortion bill in the Texas state Senate last year and to her second husband. "[Not] exactly the bio she claimed."
Women can have Uncle Sugars (the government) or Sugar Daddies (husbands). But male politicians whose wives help them with their careers and then end up being divorced are never called Sugar Mommies. Neither do we have any similar name for men who make a lot of money out of the government subsidies for large firms, say*.
My point is not about what Wendy Davis has done in her past life. It's about the way conservatives view women's proper roles in life and how those views translate into criticism of uppity women in general. That's how you get a criticism of Wendy Davis as having abandoned her children because she was not the custodial parent for a few years after her divorce or because she showed ambition. Now gender-reverse that criticism. It doesn't bite at all, because the conservatives don't assume men to do the hands-on care of their children and because the conservatives don't see anything wrong with male ambition.
And it is in these generalizations that the conservative war on women is best shown.
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*These are not aimed at men only, of course, but the leadership of such firms is predominantly male, and as I point out in the post, heterosexual men also benefit from the birth control their partners use.