Women Can Avoid Sexual Assault By Focusing on Marriage

[Toothfairy]

What a douche!!!!

Eagle Forum founder and radio host Phyllis Schlafly tackled sexual assault in her radio address this week, saying that women can avoid rape and violence if they just got married rather than focusing on a career.

“Marriage settles men down,†Schlafly said. “So what’s the answer for women who worry about male violence? It’s not to fear all men. It’s to reject the lifestyle of frequent ‘hookups,’ which is so much promoted on college campuses today, while the women pursue a career and avoid marriage.â€

“It’s true that women who have found men who are already better partners are more likely to marry them but it’s also true that marriage settles men down,†Schlafly said. “Being married makes a man care more about his family’s expectations and future because he sees his family as enduring. It also makes him more faithful and committed to his partner. Marriage makes men directly protective of their wives, and living in a home with their daughters gives them the opportunity to be directly protective of them as well. Marriage also creates indirect protection for wives and daughters, because married women and their children tend to live in safer neighborhoods.â€

A few months ago Schlafly sent a “report†out to supporters, explaining that college has become a “dangerous place for men.

She lamented that one college textbook discussed “that it is common for women to be bisexual. Of course, the book endorses abortion. The traditional model of the family is presented as only one of the many forms of family. The book teaches that married women should be liberated from marriage and turn their children over to the state to be raised. This college textbook has a radical feminist political agenda: anti-marriage, anti-homemaker, pro-abortion, and pro-lesbian. College students should not waste their tuition dollars taking women's studies courses.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/p ... not-career

[MissA]

OT, but every time I read that Phyllis Schafly has opened her mouth again my first thought is always "Wait, she's still not dead?" The lady is ninety and hasn't changed her schtick since the sixties. I swear hate must be a preservative.

Anyway, if it's marriage that settles men down and keeps 'em from raping, wouldn't that indicate that we should be focusing more on promoting early male marriage? Maybe, for example, we could exclude them from equal access to education and career advancement. Or make it seem that a man who hasn't married and had children can't be truly "fulfilled." Or tell them that they should just give up on the silly dream of "having it all" and focus on making the most of their reproductive years. Maybe we can normalize older, more professional women marrying younger, more attractive men. Thank you, Phyllis!

[lemonhead]

OT, but every time I read that Phyllis Schafly has opened her mouth again my first thought is always "Wait, she's still not dead?" The lady is ninety and hasn't changed her schtick since the sixties. I swear hate must be a preservative.

My therapist told me the other day, "If the good die young, your mother will be immortal." Maybe Phyllis will be, too? :lol:

She's totally ignoring the women like myself (and a significant percentage of women in the US) who encounter rape and violence well before marrying-age. Marriage can't inoculate against childhood abuse. And guess what? My perp was a married male, in a traditional fundie marriage. So much for marriage settling him down.

Her statement that "married women and their children tend to live in safer neighborhoods" is so staggeringly ignorant and reductionist that I don't even know where to start.

[polecat]

Once again, it's all women's fault if men rape. Only it's not because the woman is being too tempting but because she didn't marry the rapist. (Also, it's interesting that she says that women should not fear men, but she herself espouses this viewpoint by insinuating that men are natural rapists who must be married in order to reduce/eliminate the rape tendency).

I don't know about anyone else, but the LAST person I want to marry is a rapist.

[Childless]

I wonder if she realizes how much she insulted men with her latest rant.

[Hane]

Does she actually give the title of this "college textbook"? And, if it indeed exists, does she cite where and how frequently it's used, and in what contexts? And does she not realize that most college textbooks aren't manuals on The Way Everybody (or Schlafly) Should Do Things?

Oh, Phyllis. Time to hang it up and be a good little housewife YOURSELF.

[ViolaSebastian]

I guess she missed the memo that the majority of perpetrators of violence against women are their husbands/significant others. If a woman turns up dead, they look at the husband/boyfriend first with good reason.

[SPHASH]

Fuck Phyllis and the horse she rode in on.

[DGayle]

Being married didn't make me immune to sexual assault at the hands of a married man we trusted.

[crazyforkate]

What about when the rapist is the one you're married to?

[EmiGirl]

Fundies don't believe in marital rape.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Actually, marriage turned the Scarborough rapist Paul Bernardo into a murderer (since his wife could be a partner in crime and she was practical enough to realize that keeping teen sex slaves in the basement was not a long term option).

[salex]

I've tried to respond a few times and given up faced by Schaffly's idiocy. However, is what she said basically this--"To prevent rape, women need to marry as many men as possible, even those who are scrubs and/or creepy, as if they are married they won't rape"-- since apparently she believes rape is just brought on by not getting sex?

BTK Married 31 years and a church elder. marriage.about.com/od/infamous/p/dennisrader.htm

John Edward Robinson Sadist and murderer Married for 41 years also a sunday school teacher. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Robinson

[samurai_sarah]

Fuck Phyllis and the horse she rode in on.

Oh, that's unfair! The horse didn't say or do anything...

[Olive Plant]

Yeah, because back before college co-eds and the sexual revolution, when, like, everyone was supposed to get married for sex, there was no rape ever. Especially not during war, raids, slavery, etc. That's why the Bible talks about rape, because literally nobody ever did it, even though women were stoned for having sex before marriage and women got married at about age 14.

Let's just make shit up and pretend like it's fact, that sounds good.

[nausicaa]

I've tried to respond a few times and given up faced by Schaffly's idiocy. However, is what she said basically this--"To prevent rape, women need to marry as many men as possible, even those who are scrubs and/or creepy, as if they are married they won't rape"-- since apparently she believes rape is just brought on by not getting sex?

Yep, good ole' Schlafly is making a pretty intense argument for polyandry and a matriarchal society.

[browncoatslytherin]

BTK Married 31 years and a church elder. marriage.about.com/od/infamous/p/dennisrader.htm

John Edward Robinson Sadist and murderer Married for 41 years also a sunday school teacher. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Robinson

john wayne gacy, married (multiple times), father, active in the community, businessman...raped and killed over 30 men and boys. yeah, i don't think marriage did squat for him.

*edited for riffle, because i do understand plurals*

[ADoyle90815]

john wayne gacy, married (multiple times), father, active in the community, businessman...raped and killed over 30 men and boys. yeah, i don't think marriage did squat for him.

*edited for riffle, because i do understand plurals*

There's also that show on ID, "Who the bleep did I marry?" about mostly men who were married, but were serial killers or rapists. Also, as mentioned before, if a woman turns up murdered, there's a reason police first look at the husband/boyfriend, then an ex.

[browncoatslytherin]

There's also that show on ID, "Who the bleep did I marry?" about mostly men who were married, but were serial killers or rapists. Also, as mentioned before, if a woman turns up murdered, there's a reason police first look at the husband/boyfriend, then an ex.

oh yeah, i love that show! i mean, i feel sorry for the women who were duped into marrying those men, but i find seriel killers and the like interesting. i have a morbid fascination of the psychology behind it all, how they developed, what happened to them, etc. one of the things that's pretty common for seriel killers - most especially those that elude law enforcement for years - is that they have a very successful face that they present to the public so that no one can tell what is really going on. court all you want, if someone doesn't want you to know them, you won't know them.

[patsymae]

Sort of but not completely OT (because as someone who was raped at age 15 I'm not sure how many more of these rape arguments I can endure making at the moment), if you ask any vice cop in any small city (ie., I don't know about those in NYC, Miami, LA, Chicago), they will tell you that the overwhelming majority of "johns" who come to the city to patronize (lots of words come to me here but I'm using this one as advisedly as I can) street prostitutes are married men from the suburbs, usually white, always affluent, often pillars of the community ("who cry like babies when they realize they are actually arrested"), and they seek out addicted street prostitutes so that they can "do things to them that they could never do to/with their wives."

Yeah, it's not about the men at all.

[Hane]

In her book about Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule says that she'd have trusted Ted, that "nice guy" who volunteered with her on a suicide hot line, to drive her kids home. She is extremely grateful she never did.