Violet’s take on female self-defense mechanisms

She totally wants it.

Violet Socks at Reclusive Leftist comments on Todd Akin’s assertion that womens’ bodies can deal with unwanted intercourse. Akin said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”

Violet speculates on the ideal rape self-defense mechanisms women might have developed:

So, presumably, he thinks that God Himself specifically equipped women with the magical, hitherto unknown superpower ability to “shut that whole thing down” so as not to get pregnant from rape. But why only that? Why didn’t God go further, and give us the superpower ability to, I don’t know, secrete a toxin that would instantly dissolve the human penis that’s being forced into our bodies? Or maybe the superpower ability to cause the owner of said penis to keel over and die? Or even better, perhaps we could have the superpower ability to detect a potential rapist before he even gets started, and then emit a fantastically noxious pheromone that would knock the fucker over and render him senseless.

Funny what you can come up with when you let your imagination and righteous indignation roam without supervision.  Violet’s talents are wasted on a blog.  I’d read any science fiction she wants to write.

I don’t know whether the absence of these built in self-defense mechanisms is more evidence that God doesn’t exist or that rape is evolutionally favorable.  Depressing.

Still, Akin might have saved himself a lot of ridicule and consternation if he had just taken the trouble of reading up on the women who were systematically raped in Bosnia and Sudan in the recent past.  Akin just felt the truthiness in his gut.  Either that or there is no such thing as rape.  All women secretly want it.  That’s why they let their shields down and get knocked up.

What’s really amusing is that Claire McCaskill was trailing this braintrust.  Well, it *would* be funny if there weren’t so few women in Congress and McCaskill wasn’t such a craven Obama fangirl who doesn’t want anyone to know she’s a Democrat.  It makes me feel sorry for Missouri’s children.  They didn’t choose to be raised and educated in Missouri.

Short and Sweet

Alina Cojacaru and Johan Kobborg, principal dancers at the Royal Ballet, have been described as a historical ballet couple.  They’re beautifully matched. Their joy in dancing together is apparent and they’re a couple off-stage as well. She’s the prize winning ballerina from Romania, with long arms and legs making her look taller than her 5’2″ height.  He’s the muscular Dane who is a dancer of the Bournonville technique.

August Bournonville, a 19th century Danish dancer, got much of his dancing experience in Paris at the Paris Opera.  When he returned to Denmark, he began to choreograph and created a new school of dance.  His technique is noted for a modest carriage of the head, arms held in front of the dancer, technical footwork and short, light leaps and jumps.  Jennifer Homans who wrote Apollo’s Angels on the history of ballet says that in the Bournonville technique, the essence of 19th century ballet at the Paris Opera has been preserved.  The Degas dancers probably moved a lot like a Bournonville dancer does today.  But because the stages in Denmark were so small, the dance had to adapt to a smaller space, necessitating the quicker footwork and lighter jumps.  It’s more “lords a-leaping” than giant, virtuoso grand jeteing.  The jumps don’t travel. They’re tighter and happen in a confined space but are no less impressive. The ballet called The Genzano Flower Festival is an iconic example of the Bournonville technique.

But today’s ballet video is a short one act ballet choreographed by Fredrick Ashton of the Royal Ballet based on a Strauss Waltz called Voices of Spring.  It’s light, fresh, a little playful and makes use of the whole stage.  I like it because the male dancer actually gets to dance with his partner instead of just holding her up and it shows Kobborg’s Bournonville style nicely.

It’s a nice ballet to start the day.

Politicians Making Health Care Decisions

I must have misunderstood President Obama’s statement yesterday.  I thought he said politicians shouldn’t make health care decisions for women.

“What I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, the majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women,” the president said.

“Although these particular comments have led Governor Romney and other Republicans to distance themselves, I think the underlying notion that we should be making decisions on behalf of women for their health care decisions or qualifying forcible rape versus non-forcible rape, I think those are broader issues and that is a significant difference in approach between me and the other party,” Mr. Obama said.

I MUST have misunderstood because Executive Order 13535 sounds exactly like a health care decision to me:

March 24, 2010
Executive Order 13535— Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s Consistency with Longstanding Restrictions on the Use of Federal Funds for Abortion

EXECUTIVE ORDER

ENSURING ENFORCEMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ABORTION RESTRICTIONS IN THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (Public Law 111-148), I hereby order as follows:

Section. 1. Policy. Following the recent enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “Act”), it is necessary to establish an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), consistent with a longstanding Federal statutory restriction that is commonly known as the Hyde Amendment. The purpose of this order is to establish a comprehensive, Government-wide set of policies and procedures to achieve this goal and to make certain that all relevant actors — Federal officials, State officials (including insurance regulators) and health care providers — are aware of their responsibilities, new and old.

The Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly created health insurance exchanges. Under the Act, longstanding Federal laws to protect conscience (such as the Church Amendment, 42 U.S.C. 300a-7, and the Weldon Amendment, section 508(d)(1) of Public Law 111-8) remain intact and new protections prohibit discrimination against health care facilities and health care providers because of an unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.