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MSNBC on the human trafficking bill debacle

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Katie Pavlich’s gun fantasies

Sandy Rios is more worried about gay marriage than sex trafficking

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, Tara Culp-Ressler will tell us more about the Colorado IUD controversy. The Senate has gridlock over a sex trafficking bill that Republicans snuck an anti-choice poison pill into and gun fondlers try to hijack the campus rape debate.

I’m going to get into this story more on the first segment, but I thought you all would appreciate Jon Stewart’s denunciation of Mitch McConnell for Republicans trying to cram abortion restrictions into every bill they can get their hands on.

• Daily Show *

Yep, pretty much. But I’ll get into more detail during the next segment.

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If you want evidence of how much the Republican Party is in thrall to the Christian right, look no further than this debacle over a bill that was supposed to be bipartisan and all kumbaya and whatnot, but because conservatives have this obsession with forcing rape victims to give birth to their rapist’s babies, the entire thing is falling apart. What’s going on is there’s this bill that would create a restitution fund for victims of sex trafficking, funded entirely by fines levied against sex traffickers. Sounds like an easy win, right? But Republicans slipped a provision in that would bar the victims who got money from using that money for abortion. Democrats are now revolting, as they should, because that provision is revolting. MSNBC brought on Politico’s Burgess Everett to discuss what the hell is happening.

• trafficking 1 *

Some background on this: In recent years, the Christian right has really taken on sex trafficking a major issue. Human trafficking generally, but really their interest is mostly focused on sex trafficking. It’s difficult to criticize people taking on this issues, since the wrongness of slavery is just black and white. But putting my cynic hat on, I have to point out that sex trafficking is a rather perfect issue to give conservatives cover to push an anti-sex agenda. They can use the issue to promote the idea that sex is inherently demeaning to women, that women are inherently asexual creatures, and that sexual liberation has created nothing but problems, all while shielding themselves from criticism because, you know, forcing women and children into sex slavery is wrong.

Now there’s a way to be against sex slavery that isn’t anti-sex, of course. It’s by centering the issue around the concept of consent. But the Christian right doesn’t like the consent framework, because, of course, they support the use of force when it comes to child-bearing—how a woman feels about having children should have no bearing on whether she is forced to have children, they believe. Thus the opposition to abortion and hostility to contraception.

It’s tempting for more sex-positive opponents of sex trafficking to overlook this critical difference between how they frame the struggle and how anti-choice conservatives frame the struggle. But as this entire fight shows, that was a mistake. NPR has more reporting on the specifics of the fight.

• trafficking 2 *

Anti-choicers are, unsurprisingly, gloating and doing the neener neener you didn’t read the bill dance. But you will not be surprised to learn that it’s not so simple. If you’re reading this bill, there’s not any direct language banning victims of sex trafficking, who are, by definition, rape victims, from getting abortions. Instead, it seems like it was deliberately obscured with legalese.

• trafficking 3 *

Under the circumstances, it’s hard to deny that there was an attempt to sneak this in. But what is really sleazy about this was it was a backdoor way to try to expand restrictions on how women pay for abortion. As noted, no taxpayer money is going into this fund. This is clearly part of a larger move on the part of anti-choicers to create so much red tape and so many obstacles to getting an abortion that it’s basically illegal in all but name. And, as is typical with antis, they are doing so by attacking the most vulnerable amongst us, this time women forced into sex slavery.

But I would say that, in this case, it’s more than that. This whole issue goes back to the larger Christian right framework around women and sexuality. The basic anti-choice belief is that sexuality is degrading to women, even if it’s consensual. And that the only way to purify the dirtiness of sex is through the purifying power of motherhood. The purity language, the obsession with waiting until marriage to have sex, and the hostility to contraception and abortion is all part of that. In that view, sex trafficking degrades women because of the sex part. Under that mentality, forcing women to give birth becomes some kind of good thing, because motherhood is what women are supposed to be doing, instead of all that degrading sex stuff. This is what happens when you approach issues of sexual violence while downplaying the importance of consent. It’s a disaster, in other words.

Of course, Dana Perino of Fox News isn’t happy about this.

• trafficking 4 *

Nah. You know who is a jerk? Someone who wants to force a woman to bear a rapist’s baby. Jerk is actually too nice a word for those people.

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Interview

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Just when you thought that conservative exploitation couldn’t get any uglier, I bring to you this new, uh, movement created by the gun lobby to hijack the campus rape issue and use it to sell more guns. By trying to convince people that the way to stop rape on campus is to fill the campus with guns, a move that won’t make campuses safer and will probably make them more dangerous. Not that it matters, because gun manufacturers know that gun sales are going down with younger generations, and trying to normalize guns on campus is a great marketing opportunity.

• guns 1 *

Here’s the thing: I grew up around guns. I’m very familiar with them. And most gun owners do not carry their guns, armed and at the ready, in every social situation in fear that their friends or relatives are going to attack them. That’s the behavior of a severely paranoid person who does not need to be carrying gun. And let’s talk about campus rape. It’s not just that most rapes happen between people who know each other, which this woman is tacitly allowing. It’s that they often happen in sexual situations. You’re with a guy you intend to make out with, even have sex with, and he springs a rape on you. What kind of person has a gun at the ready when having consensual sex? And if so, how do you keep the rapist from getting to it first? But no, the fantasy that you’re just going to be some badass with a gun who is kicking ass and taking names has so much power that people refuse to see how guns work in the real world.

• guns 2 *

The Jameis Winston case is a really good example of why this entire idea is so painfully dumb. Winston was accused of raping a woman who was too drunk to resist. How was she supposed to safely operate a firearm again? Regardless of his guilt or innocence, what’s critical to remember here is that rapists already are wary of victims fighting back, so they take measures to prevent that. They get victims drunk. They gain their trust. They create purposefully confusing or ambivalent situations so that victims second guess themselves. How a gun is supposed to change that, I don’t know. What I do know is that the same rules allowing would-be victims to have guns will also allow rapists to have guns. Indeed, a lot more rapists will be interested in getting guns, because while a gun offers crappy protection and can even be taken from you and used against you, if you’re a rapist, a gun is a great idea. You don’t even need to directly threaten your victim if you have a gun. Just have it visible in the room and subduing her will be much easier. Or reminding her you have a gun is also a good way to make sure she stays quiet about her rape after the fact. Really, these bills are just about doing rapists a solid, regardless of the intention.

But conservatives are always willing to offer free marketing to gun manufacturers, and so you have Katie Pavlich making a speech at Iowa State University where she pimped this stupid idea, by invoking the beloved but mostly fantastical image of the stone cold badass putting down the bad guy like a boss.

• guns 3 *

Hey, we all watch movies and we all love to imagine ourselves as Ripley from Alien or Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies, just ice-cold mofos who can drop a bad guy with haste before he attacks us. In reality, of course, the number of people who phone in a rape before it happens dwindles in the very low numbers, probably a fraction of a percent. Again, most rapists work to get you to lower your defenses before they rape you, and they sure aren’t going to let you have access to your phone anymore than they will let you have access to your gun. But here’s the other way that action movies have poisoned basic common sense. In action movies, the would-be victim grabs a gun and blows away the bad guy who is coming at her and then the screen fades to black, and next scene, everything is over and the sun is shining and the day is saved. Even if yours is that one in a thousand rape where you do have that chance, guess what? Now you have a dead body on your hands and now you’re the person who has to explain stuff. Already if you accuse a fellow college student of rape, you’re accused of being a scheming bitch who is making up false accusations to ruin a man’s life. Why should we think it will get any better if you take his life? Now you’ll just be accused of crying rape to justify murder. Between the danger of jail time and the danger of your rapist using your own gun against you, the last thing you need if an acquaintance tries to rape you is a gun in the room.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, priorities people edition. Right wing radio host and American Family Association governmental affairs director Sandy Rios is skeptical of the Christian right’s new enthusiasm for fighting sex trafficking. But not for the same reasons I am.

• Rios *

She claims the problem of sex trafficking is “overblown” before this, and I’m not here to debate that. But it is telling that she thinks the measure of the “morality” of an issue is how much it offends liberal sensibilities. Liberals hate rape and love gay marriage, so gay marriage must somehow be worse than rape or a bigger deal than rape. Also, note the continuing inability to understand the concept of consent. Gay marriage is, you know, consensual. Sex trafficking is not. But Rios seems more concerned about her own feelings of ickiness than your bodily autonomy.