My vagina is angry

Is it me or did I miss the memo that male politicians are informed enough to make healthcare decisions on behalf of women when their medical knowledge is lacking. And the fact that they lack female genitalia or know anything about being a woman in Western (or specifically American) society. In some cases, they do not even know how women’s bodies function biologically. Unless you have the initials MD, RN, PA, or any other fancy medical initials following your name, I do not believe that you should consider yourself an authority on women.

I usually do not try to talk about politics, since I believe that I am not always informed enough to make eloquent political statements. For the most part, my core beliefs do not change (we should help others, use logic when making decisions, seek the authority of actual experts in the field, etc) — but I do gather all of the information I can in order to make an informed decision/statement/whatever. I personally think it’s okay to wait on making a final decision by taking in all of the perspectives and making an informed one, instead of making an inpulsive/uninformed decision that makes you look like a complete idiot.

And if you do not believe that there is not a War on Women, then try to explain the following things:

• Threats to cut Planned Parenthood (which offers affordable healthcare for women and gives them the preventive care needed [pap smears, pelvic exams, screening for breast cancer, etc])
• Lack of paid maternity leave (it’s a complete joke to think that they think three weeks of unpaid leave is enough to physically and emotionally recover)
• Stupid male politicians threatening to take away contraceptives, abortion, and basically dictate what women can or cannot do with their bodies

One such stupid politician is Todd Akin. If you are completely unaware of who he is, refer to this well-done SourceFed story:

He has since apologized, but there are other things that worry me. The genuineness of his apology is questionable, but lets not go into that.

I understand that people screw up and say very stupid things. Humans are fallible and we should not put them into labels because they are more complex than that. But when you are in the public eye and trying to represent the people that voted for you; there should be more consideration of your words before opening your mouth.

One in four women and one in 33 men have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. It is more likely that these numbers are underestimated due to lack of reporting.

According to the US census, 51% of Missouri’s population are women (approx. 3 million). Therefore, he just cost himself at least 750,000 votes. Factor in any of the friends, relatives, etc and that number gets bigger. Akin not only lost or severely jeopardized a significant number of votes, he marginalized actual people who were victim of a traumatic event.

Also what the hell is “legitimate rape?” Rape is rape. You have no right to define what type of rape should be “legitimate.” Sexual assault (in any form) has the common denominator that a sexual act was committed without consent. That should be the ONLY definition. None of this “forcible,” “non-forcible,” “she was wearing provocative clothing, so what do you expect?” bullshit.

And despite the amazing things the human body can do; vaginas and uteruses are not magical enough to prevent pregnancy without the help of some sort of contraception or really accurate timing in their ovulation cycle.

President Obama stated it the best. I think he is the only male politician to ever state this as simply as he did. You may not agree with his economic policies or anything else he may have done, but the man actually uses logic when it came to this issue!

Rape is rape. The idea that we should be parsing, qualifying, slicing what types of rape we’re talking about doesn’t make sense to the American people. It certainly doesn’t make sense to me. 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.