By now, I hope that we are all aware of Missouri GOP Senate-Candidate and current Represenative Todd Akin's remarks concerning rape. For those of you not aware, Akin stated, "From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," said Akin
said of pregnancy caused by rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female
body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume
maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some
punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/19/todd-akin-abortion-legitimate-rape_n_1807381.html)
While Akin's remarks have left a wide swath of outrage across the country, and I hope the world, I wanted to point out one particular response: Eve Ensler's. Ensler is the playwright of The Vagina Monologues, and she is an activist on behalf of women's rights. Here is her response, kindly posted by The Huffington Post:
Dear Todd Akin,
I am writing to you tonight about rape. It is 2 AM and I am unable to
sleep here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am in Bukavu at the
City of Joy to serve and support and work with hundreds, thousands of
women who have been raped and violated and tortured from this ceaseless
war for minerals fought on their bodies.
I am in Congo but I could be writing this from anywhere in the United
States, South Africa, Britain, Egypt, India, Philippines, most college
campuses in America. I could be writing from any city or town or village
where over half a billion women on the planet are raped in their
lifetime.
Mr. Akin, your words have kept me awake.
As a rape survivor, I am reeling from your recent statement where you
said you misspoke when you said that women do not get pregnant from
legitimate rape, and that you were speaking "off the cuff."
Clarification. You didn't make some glib throw away remark. You made a
very specific ignorant statement clearly indicating you have no
awareness of what it means to be raped. And not a casual statement, but
one made with the intention of legislating the experience of women who
have been raped. Perhaps more terrifying: it was a window into the
psyche of the GOP.
You used the expression "legitimate" rape as if to imply there were
such a thing as "illegitimate" rape. Let me try to explain to you what
that does to the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on
this planet who experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The
underlying assumption of your statement is that women and their
experiences are not to be trusted. That their understanding of rape must
be qualified by some higher, wiser authority. It delegitimizes and
undermines and belittles the horror, invasion, desecration they
experienced. It makes them feel as alone and powerless as they did at
the moment of rape.
When you, Paul Ryan and 225 of your fellow co-sponsors play with
words around rape suggesting only "forcible" rape be treated seriously
as if all rapes weren't forcible, it brings back a flood of memories of
the way the rapists played with us in the act of being raped --
intimidating us, threatening us,muting us. Your playing with words like
"forcible" and "legitimate" is playing with our souls which have been
shattered by unwanted penises shoving into us, ripping our flesh, our
vaginas, our consciousness, our confidence, our pride, our futures.
Now you want to say that you misspoke when you said that a legitimate
rape couldn't get us pregnant. Did you honestly believe that rape sperm
is different than love sperm, that some mysterious religious process
occurs and rape sperm self-destructs due to its evilcontent? Or, were
you implying that women and their bodies are somehow responsible for
rejecting legitimate rape sperm, once again putting the onus on us? It
would seem you were saying that getting pregnant after a rape would
indicate it was not a "legitimate" rape.
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes and
imagine that you are on your bed or up against a wall or locked in a
small suffocating space. Imagine being tied up there and imagine some
aggressive, indifferent, insane stranger friend or relative ripping off
your clothes and entering your body -- the most personal, sacred,
private part of your body -- and violently, hatefully forcing themself
into you so that you are ripped apart. Then imagine that stranger's
sperm shooting into you and filling you and you can't get it out. It is
growing something in you. Imagine you have no idea what that life will
even consist of, spiritually made in hate, not knowing the mental or
health background of the rapist.
Then imagine a person comes along, a person who has never had that
experience of rape, and that person tells you, you have no choice but to
keep that product of rape growing in you against your will and when it
is born it has the face of your rapist, the face of the person who has
essentially destroyed your being and you will have to look at the face
every day of your life and you will be judged harshly if you cannot love
that face.
I don't know if you can imagine any of this (leadership actually
requires this kind of compassion), but if you are willing to go to the
depth of this darkness, you will quickly understand that there is NO ONE
WHO CAN MAKE THAT CHOICE to have or not have the baby, but the person
carrying that baby herself.
I have spent much time with mothers who have given birth to children
who are the product of rape. I have watched how tortured they are
wrestling with their hate and anger, trying not to project that onto
their child.
I am asking you and the GOP to get out of my body, out of my vagina,
my womb, to get out of all of our bodies. These are not your decisions
to make. These are not your words to define.
Why don't you spend your time ending rape rather than redefining it?
Spend your energy going after those perpetrators who so easily destroy
women rather than parsing out manipulative language that minimizes their
destruction.
And by the way you've just given millions of women a very good reason
to make sure you never get elected again, and an insanely good reason
to rise.
#ReasonToRise
Eve Ensler
Bukavu, Congo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/todd-akin-rape_b_1812930.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
