Screwed

Republicans as a group strike me as having a much better grasp of the Big Picture than their opponents. Not the really big picture--not the one in which all the consequences of their agenda come into view. But within their narrow, profit-centered worldview, their strategic view is wide. Once a threat is detected, say, the possibility that science-driven policy might dismantle the fossil-fuel economy, they band together as one, distribute the script, and read off of it in unison. And that is how meaningful progress toward sustainability is thwarted. The goal was merely to "create doubt" about man-caused climate change, and in that they were wildly successful. Successful to the point that even a thoughtful commenter on this blog was moved to say I don't know; maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle; maybe we can find something to agree on and go forward; surely things aren't as urgent as the scientists keep saying it is. That's all the doubt you need to maintain the status quo, because getting us off this train wreck is going to take a ton of sacrifice and cause a ton of disruption. Of course, the middle-ground solution is a sham. It's as though flat-earthers are battling the round-earthers, and they get the people to think I don't know. Maybe it's shaped like a bowl?

So now a slightly different script has been supplied to the conservative lights, and this one is aimed straight at science in general. Because there is useful science, the kind with the promise of great profit in it, the kind any company like Monsanto or Merck would pay for, and then there is basic science, and basic science is often not in the Republicans' best interest. That's why the Bush administration tried to scour it out of the EPA. And, after all, the budget for basic science would buy two or three perfectly good days of war in Afghanistan.

Fortunately for the enemies of basic science, there is plenty of research that lends itself to ridicule, like the snail sex research. Why, they ask, grinning, are the taxpayers asked to pay for snail sex research? (The question is rhetorical. Nobody wants to hear an explanation.) Or why should we pay to find out about duck sex?

But oh, they made a big mistake there. Because they totally need the duck sex research. Evolutionary Biologist Patricia Brennan has discovered that the duck sex act has aspects found in no other animal. The male duck has an amazing, lymph-driven, explosive, spiral-shaped penis. He does not erect it and find someone to put it in. No. He keeps it inside and makes the pertinent contact with a female duck and it detonates. It unfurls inside her in a fraction of a second. It's ba-da-boom without the ba-da. And because his penis is spiral-shaped, he is truly screwing, or trying to.

But we all know how hard it is to screw something in if the threads are off. And the female duck, as it turns out, has evolved an elaborate vagina designed to thwart any male she is not interested in. She has cul-de-sacs built right in, branches that dead-end, segments that are righty-tighty where  he is lefty-loosey. His penis begins to go off and that's when the twat thickens. It takes a sudden angle his amazing exploding duck dick cannot negotiate, and in no time his semen is sequestered in a dead-end far away from the egg. The female, if she encounters a male she actually is interested in, can relax the whole contraption to enable the desired mate to be more successful.

In other words, when it comes to over-aggressive drakes, the female has ways of shutting that whole thing down.

This surely bolsters the otherwise risible contention of Todd Akin that conceptions from rape are very rare and, by extension, that women wanting an abortion must have been asking for it, deep down inside.

Mr. Akin was running for office at the time. His position was rigid and he tried to come from behind but it was no use. He, and Richard Mourdock (R-IN), and others propounding their own personal science, were shut down in 2012 in their quests for public office, and polls showed that they were opposed by a tide of women. We don't know what they're doing now or where their views are being spewed, but at least it's probably some dead-end where they can't do much harm, and not the United States Congress.

Vulvarine!

Todd Akin

By now most of us have heard about the interview with Congressman Todd Akin (R-Missouri) in which he was asked if abortion should be allowed in cases of rape. He said "if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." Now he is being castigated for his remarks, which is deeply unfair. Settle down, people! In this country we are free to express our beliefs, and we should not discriminate against people just because they live a different reality-style. That is simply factsist.

Bryan Fischer

Besides, Mr. Akin has plenty of company. State Rep. Stephen Freind (R-Penn) is on record as saying that the odds of a rape victim getting pregnant are one in "millions and millions and millions." As he elucidates, the "traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to secrete a certain secretion" that kills sperm. It's a secret secreted secretion, you see. Brian Fischer of the American Family Association agrees. "When you have a real, genuine rape...there's a very delicate and complex mix of hormones that take place that are released in a woman's body and if that gets interfered with it may make it impossible for her...to conceive a child."

I admit that this last statement gets me pretty fired up. Where is the subject-verb agreement? But the position itself is really very empowering for women. Previously, raped women were seen as victims, and now, according to all these gentlemen, they are anything but. They are magical sperm deflectors in control of their own destinies, able to decide on a cellular level whose sperm lives and whose dies, which is still legal in most states. We are strong. We are wily. We are Vulvarine! I for one am thrilled that our womanly power is being acknowledged in public circles at last. In particular, I like the description of my complex mix of hormones as "very delicate." I've been known to disparage my own hormones as cranky manufacturers of mayhem, at best. Now I realize they are just misunderstood.

A legitimate rape, or a real or genuine or "forcible" rape, is the kind that is bad, as opposed to the kind that you didn't really want but after it happened it turned out it was just what you needed all along. Unfortunately sometimes things go wrong. As Rep. Akin says, "let's assume that [the "way to shut that whole thing down"] didn't work or something." It's possible a woman could in fact conceive a child from a rape, even if she did not have an orgasm. It's a one in a millions and millions and millions chance, to be sure, and most of the pregnancies that did occur have been shown to result from contact with public toilet seats, but it could happen. Fortunately, Mike Huckabee is here to remind us that in that unlikely event, sometimes a truly extraordinary person is created, such as Ethel Waters. Scientifically speaking, the process by which this occurs is that the really good-person sperms are the ones most likely to try to put some distance between themselves and the legitimate-rapist guy. And in such a circumstance, it is only natural and proper that a woman's own powerful maternal instinct take over and she offer up her womb for the better part of a year to see that blastocyst to completion. In case it's Ethel Waters.