"Legitimate" Rape / legitime Vergewaltigung

It's been interesting to observe the reaction from the German press with the raging abortion debate ignited by US Senate candidate Todd Akin's comments concerning "legitimate" rape.  Here is what Akin said:

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

German news outlets struggled to explain to readers and views what is meant by "legitimate rape".  Here is the Tagesschau:

Nicht nur die Aussage Akins ansich hat für Debatten gesorgt, sondern auch die Mehrdeutigkeit des englischen Wortes "legitimate". Der Politiker sagte: "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Das kann übersetzt werden als "legitime Vergewaltigung" oder als "echte Vergewaltigung".

Es lässt sich nicht eindeutig sagen, welche Unterscheidung Akin mit seiner Formulierung treffen wollte: Die zwischen einer "tatsächlichen" und einer "vorgetäuschten" Vergewaltigung oder - noch heftiger - zwischen einer "berechtigten" und einer "nicht berechtigten".

But for any observer of American politics over the past decade, Akin's words are quite familiar.  It is a matter of faith among Republicans and southern KKKristians that women are fundamentally "sluts", and if they claim that a pregnancy was caused by a rape they are lying - in fact, they "wanted" the sex.  For in a "legitimate" rape - where a woman is beaten to within an inch of her life - the female body releases secret "secretions" that prevent fertilization of the woman's egg.  This is what evangelical "Christians" call "God's Little Shield". 

What is the origin of this junk science espoused by Akin and his Republican colleagues?  According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, from Akin's home state of Missouri, the idea stems from experiments conducted by Nazi doctors on Jewish women at the death camps:

In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.

The Nazis tested this hypothesis "by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate."

I have been unable to confirm this information about the Nazi experiments. But it is interesting that Todd Akin serves on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.  How reassuring that someone as ignorant as Todd Akin is determining the nation's policy on scientific research. 

 

 

Comments

[Hattie]

This is explosive stuff. We hope that this nonsense will lose the election for the Republicans.

[koogleschreiber]

I'm afraid this will only have minor effects, Hattie. It's only a preaching to those who are already convinced, a message that the loose ends in the extreme right have a voice in the Republican Party. And there many more things like this on the agenda of the campaign: Why all muslims must hate the jews. Why tax cuts for the super rich reduce poverty in general. Why abolishing social welfare reduces poverty. Why fire weapons prevent crime. Why it is a test of the believers that God created a world that only looks like it is more than 4 billion years old. Why crude oil is a renewable resource. Why skyrocketing energy consumption has nothing to do with the climate change and why think tank sponsored by the oil industry are trustworthy and NASA and the JPL are not. I could continue, but the examples for stupidity appear to be endless.

[Hattie]

Yes, the Republicans don't seem very reality based these days. But I really think they are going to lose the election!

[Mwatha]

completely awesome