As Michael Bersin pointed out earlier today, Claire McCaskill can get to the heart of the matter when it’s necessary. She made it clear that the problem with Rep. Mike Moon’s (R-157) legislative resolution “calling for the Missouri Congressional delegation to “endeavor with ‘manly firmness’ and resolve to totally and completely repeal” and not replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act” isn’t the reflexively sexist language that he used. The problem is his cheering for “kicking folks off their health coverage and once again letting insurance companies discriminate against women and sick people.” It’s his meanness plain and simple that got McCaskill riled up.

The sexist language is just par for the course. This is the same Rep. Moon who last year advocated closing down the last clinic in Missouri where women could exercise their choice to procure an abortion. His idea of humor includes this tweet: “#FailedCharities The Sandra Fluke Recycled Contraceptive Program” – not surprising since he is endorsed by Missouri Right to Life (MRL), an endorsement that carries with it, according to MRL, an assurance that the candidate supports the such extreme positions as banning abortion with, ideally, no exceptions for rape or incest; banning emergency contraception, birth control pills, and IUDs; along with support for “personhood” amendments. These bozos even oppose membership in the Girl Scouts because they “they link to the “pro-abortion World Health Organization” on their website.”  

Rep Moon, however, seems to be somewhat bewildered by the attention Senator McCaskill’s response has focused on  his effort to pander to that especially tribal segment of the Republican base that gets upset whenever anyone suggests that our government has an obligation to work for the well-being of all its citizens. Not only does he think the issue is just language, but he also seems to be bewildered by the way language works:

“It is just like going to war,” Moon said. “You want a soldier to fight like a man. If a woman is in the trenches, you want them to fight like a man, too.”

Because the measure of bravery is manliness, right? But Rep. Moon wasn’t through, though, ramming his foot down his throat:

Moon said he does not believe that being a male makes him a better lawmaker than his female colleagues. “I know there are some women who are much smarter than I am and I tip my hat to them.”

Well, I’m glad to know that Rep Moon knows “some” smart women – not to mention that he’s now tipped his hat to them. Isn’t this line of reasoning similar to the “friends” fallacy. You know: “I’m not a racist, some of my best friends are black,” I’m not homophobic, I know some gay people,” or “I’m not a murderer, I know lots of living people”?

But of course, the real offence isn’t that Rep. Moon is the foot-soldier in the GOP War on Women he has already revealed himself to be by his actual legislative agenda, but that that agenda, as Senator McCaskill correctly points out, is just plain mean, and, worse, mean for no practical reason. In Moon’s mind the real message he was trying to send was that members of his own party who are calling for Obamacare to be replaced are weak (and, yes, he does seem to think that equates to femininity); he wants to make it clear that the real problem with Obamacare isn’t in how it does what it does, but rather that it does anything at all. Moon wants government totally out of healthcare, he clearly believes it has no role to play in the well-being of its citizens. In his own words:

… . “It was not meant to downplay their womanhood at all. We just want them to know, every man and lady who is representing us, that we are demanding, as citizens of Missouri, that Obamacare be repealed and make it clear we don’t want a replacement.”

And the folks who can’t afford to provide their own healthcare can just die. This isn’t just misogyny, it’s misanthropy. It’s so mean the mind boggles. We can do lots better in the United States. McCaskill was right to aim her metaphorical kick at his metaphorical backside. Good on you, Claire.

*Slightly edited for clarity.

By @BginKC

Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

That really just happened.  I’m having a hard time processing it, but it did.  It happened.

By now you have all seen the video of the woman walking around Manhattan and getting whistled-at, harassed and just in-general bothered by jackasses on the street who don’t know how to act. Those of us of the female persuasion don’t have a hard time believing it’s true, because we gird for battle every time we leave the house. We have mace and a flashlight in our purse, and the smoke detector at home might run a month or two longer than recommended between battery changes, but that purse flashlight? Those batteries are fresh as a daisy. We all get harassed verbally, and one-in-three will be sexually assaulted is a scary fucking number. We all know someone or it has happened to us. We also know that one-in-three means that more than one of those creeps who is challenging her space is probably an attacker in waiting.

We know that a PR firm mic’d up the young woman and sent her out there to collect data for them. We also know that the right-wing noise machine got really, really huffy about the effort, and have been trying to discredit it ever since.  The latest effort is an accusation that the men were all actors, the harassment scripted and fake and, a Facebook acquaintance proclaimed, he knows scripted and fake, and this was scripted and fake. I countered that I’m a woman, and even though I will be 52 in just a few weeks, it still happens to me; I know creepy and unwanted and what I saw was creepy and unwanted…but I shared links to legitimate criticisms, like the white guys being edited out and that the criticism was coming from the idiots at Fox, and said that, for me, until Snopes verified the charges, I wouldn’t believe them.

He countered by first congratulating me that my looks have held up well enough that I still get catcalls at 52.  Seriously.

Then, without missing a beat, he maintained that “Snopes is not infallible.” Then he followed that with an urgent comment that “they” were on CNN “right now” and repeated the admonition that “It was all scripted and fake! I knew it!”

I asked a simple question, because I don’t have cable…notice I let the obviously sexist comment go that he made, from the outset…I asked something else, trying to keep from starting a whole big thing and bringing the conversation back around to a place where reason might reign…was the PR firm confessing, or was it being accused?

And that’s when it all went to hell, boys.

Well they were being accused, but that didn’t mean anything, and by the way, don’t argue with me on my own wall kitten.

Then he “unfriended” and “blocked” me.

Now, this isn’t someone I “know” know, like I know the other bloggers here or the other Democrats in Jackson County. He lives in another state and I know him only on Facebook, and what I already knew of him there, he was not someone I was likely to seek out for a dinner companion if I had 24 hours to kill in his town. When I accepted his friend request a second time, I bought the excuse that Facebook had closed his account and he was restoring his friends list. Now I’m not so sure. Now I think I said something, he took exception to it and, lacking the balls to have a civilized debate just “unfriended” me.  After a sufficient cooling off time, he sent me another friend request and none-the-wiser, I accepted it.

That won’t happen again. I mean, for starters, I could never be friends with anyone who would congratulate me for my looks holding up well enough that I get catcalled at 52, then puts the cherry on that sundae of sexist stupidity by calling me “kitten.”

On a thread about how he knows the video is fake because men just don’t act like that.

What the fuck ever.

I think he just showed us all they sure as hell do.

Yesterday Missouri’s Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill went after Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky who, on Sunday’s Meet the Press, voiced his opinion that Bill Clinton’s philandering with Monica Lewinsky, if not the equivalent to the GOP legislative “war” on women’s rights – which he states has been “concocted by Democrats” – is still just the way to silence Democrats who’ve noticed the Republican battle maneuvres in said war. McCaskill, to her lasting credit, took Paul down in short order:

“I think I can speak for most women to say what I found what he said infuriating,” McCaskill said “I think most women understand that they should not be held accountable for the behaviors of their husbands. And you know, frankly, it was a long time ago, and our country did very well under the leadership of Bill Clinton.”

[…]

“I think Rand Paul is grasping, trying to show he can be tough and win the presidential nomination,” McCaskill said. “It was a political posturing and, frankly, what Rand Paul doesn’t get is that women want birth control. What Rand Paul doesn’t get is that women don’t want to be marginalized in the workplace. … The more the Republicans keep talking about how somehow they’ve got it all figured out about women, the more trouble they get in.”

Indeed. For good measure, as TPM reports, McCaskill also got in a salvo at Mike Huckabee’s recent, über-creepy “Uncle Sugar” gaffe, in which he seemed to conflate mandatory contraception insurance coverage with imaginary government subsidies for uncontrollable female libido:

McCaskill also responded to Mike Huckabee’s recent comment on the female libido by reiterating that most women view access to birth control as a basic right. “I don’t understand why these guys don’t get that,” McCaskill told Mitchell.

I can tell McCaskill why most Republians don’t get it – they’re essentially confused about the terms of combat, to return to the war metaphor that functions so well to describe GOP anti-women fervor. They think it’s all about free sex and free-loading. Their world view just doesn’t accommodate the idea that the “war on women” doesn’t involve those concepts per se, any more than it involves the private, sexual behavior of Bill Clinton – or Louisiana GOP Senator David Vitter’s penchant for prostitutes, if it comes to that. That’s why they think they can mitigate the perception of their policies by putting a saccharine female face on them, the strategy adopted last night when Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA) gave a carefully scripted response to the SOTU that was heavy on sentimental cliches and light on policy specifics, a speech that, incidentally, often implicitly belied her own legislative actions and priorities, a fact that GOP leaders seem to think women are too dumb to figure out.

McCaskill did a good job with just the right sound bites, but it’s too bad that when Paul accused Democrats of concocting a war on women, the media constraints meant that no one would ask him specifically which party fillibustered the Paycheck Fairness Act and consistently  fought against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. In which party do the members preclude any discussion of female and family friendly policies such as paid parental leave, and paid personal and family sick leave? Which party has enacted or attempted to enact cuts to child-care subsidies for working women, head-start funding and numerous other programs that act as a safety net for women and their families?  Which party seeks to shut-off unemployment benefits, or chop food stamps, thereby hurting the families of so many poor working or unemployed mothers? The list of Republican policy positions that negatively impact the lives of women directly or indirectly is almost endless.

And yes, Senator McCaskill’s right, the Republican war on women involves restricting abortion rights and access to contraception.  According to the Guttemacher Institute, various states enacted 205 provisions restricting abortion and access to contraceptives over the past three years (2011-2013). The first order of business for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014 was to pass HR7, the “rape-audit” bill that would use the IRS to discriminate against women who have had an abortion. It was Missouri Republican Senator Blunt who, based on a contrived “religious liberty” argument, sponsored a bill that attempted to deny women right to have health care insurance that covered essential aspects of reproductive health. Just about every Republican in GOP-land has tried to restrict funding to Planned Parenthood – which would undercut support for routine medical procedures such as mammograms as well as the more obviously targeted abortion and contraceptive services. All of which suggests a Republican party that is obsessed with controlling female sexuality.

Nor does the Republican obsession with sexual behavior end with denying women the right to control their fertility. GOPers continue to try to redefine rape more narrowly and to make the victims of rape pay the price for what was done to them. A Republican even suggested that rape kits, used in emergency rooms to collect evidence, are used to give abortions!

Does any of this suggest a party that respects women? Or even a party that respects basic human rights and freedoms, much less even understands what those terms mean? We can at least be grateful that Senator McCaskill, Republican-lite on so many issues, well and truly “gets” the issues involved in the GOP war on women and is willing to stand up along with most of her Democratic colleagues and fight.