Rape, Health Care, Cartoons...Oh My!

Let me begin with this - I have not read the Health Care Reform Bill.... yet. This essay isn't a critic on the reform, and I will not be injecting my opinion on the bill...yet. However, what needs to be discussed is continuation of the conservative rights usage of racism and misogyny to thrash the Health Care Bill. Like many of the Republicans little metaphors and imagery’s they use to shock or rile up the public, this new plow is however going fairly unnoticed by the majority of society. Consistently over the past few weeks many Republicans have used rape as a metaphor for the new Health Care Reform. What has made it even more disgusting is that today, March 27^th, a cartoonist took it all to a whole new level. Below, you will see the new political cartoon drawn by Darleen Click. This graphic picture depicts Pres. Barack Obama leaving the bed of Lady Liberty, having just raped her and stating “You gave all the consent I’ll ever need in November 2008”.

If this picture doesn't show up click HERE.

I know, I know…breath….just breath. Lets dissect the many layers of misogyny, racism, and victim blaming from this disgusting piece.

First, lets discuss the spatial situation going on here and what this all implies. If one looks to the window, it is streaming in a sort of “morning glow”, this could imply it is early in the morning, which implies that he was there all night. Also, with him so callously walking out and stating that he will be coming back, means that Lady Liberty brought him home. From here we already have two implications that this was the “victims fault” – morning and she brought him home. Next on the victim blaming list is the little one-liner, “You gave all the consent I’ll ever need in November 2008.” This is something that within the society at large we see continue to be echoed, “Yes means yes, and no means no,” but we rarely say “Yes can mean NO”, and “Yes! Yes!” can still turn into a, “Get the hell off of me!” The Republicans are using this skewed and inaccurate idea around consent as a weapon against woman or people who suffer from sexual assault. This is stating that when people once say “yes” to being intimate with another person, even if they were just agreeing to one certain sexual act, this means that it is free for all from there. This is infinitely untrue, and is one of the trains of thoughts that allow for the rape culture, which we live in today to flourish. Rape is NEVER okay, no matter what has happened. Rape is sexualized aggression and does not even resemble sex.

Another tool in play in this piece is racism. Racism is something that the Republican right are far to close of friends with, and even better friends with Racism’s brother…subtle racism. Historically, Black men have been depicted as the over eroticized sexual beings that react animalistically in sexual arenas. This dates back to slavery, when White women would have sexual relations with Black men, and once caught would blame it on rape or sexual assault. This is not, however, stripping women of their validity within sexual assault, and also I am not perpetuating the false idea that circulates through the world that women call false rape. The historic events that I mentioned above arose from a society that did not allow for interracial relationships to occur, and people were punished greatly. People were using Black people as scapegoats for wanting to express themselves sexually. In any case, historically Black men have been painted as highly aggressive sexual beings. So with the rape analogies continually being used in reference to Pres. Obama’s Health Care reform shows an obvious reliance on racist ideals that developed through slavery. This I find disgusting and extremely inappropriate that society cannot recognize the language they are using towards a man of color and not be aware of the racist undertones. This goes back to Biden’s comments on how “well-spoken” Pres. Obama is and all of the other comments thrown around in 2007-2008. Subtle racism is something that is being thrown at the President like candy in a parade, but no one is checking to see if it is laced with anything.

At the end of this little “masterpiece” we see that the cartoonist cannot stop kicking a horse when it is down, “Get yourself cleaned up. I’ll be back ----CapNTrade, Immigration Reform, whatever. And I’ll bring friends.” Skrrrrrrrrrrr! Hold – on, what? The cartoon is threatening, no actually, promising to come back and gang rape Lady Liberty? With the icing on the cake now on, the cartoon decides to throw in a few sprinkles of racism again, with the Immigration reform bill. When many Americans think of immigration, now thanks to media representation and the Conservative Right, many automatically think of “Mexicans” or Latinos. So, what the cartoonist has done is perpetuated another racist ideal about minorities being aggressive and sexually uncontrollable. Tisk. Tisk.

My question for the day is, when will people learn that sexual assault is not something to use for the butt of their jokes, or the punch line in their comedic performance to further oppress people? Rape is not funny, gang rape is not funny, and perpetuating harmful ideals about minorities is not funny. What is funny is how ignorant this cartoonist is that they would think that this is appropriate or even acceptable to produce. This cartoon is just another coal in the fire of sexism, which burns just as bright as it did before Pres. Obama “raped” Lady Liberty, and obviously before Pres. Bush destroyed our economy…but my rant on sexism and capitalism is another blog. For this to end, we as a collective need to call out the racism, misogyny, and victim blaming and bring it to the forefront of our national narrative. People need to understand that sexual assault is never anyone’s fault, and it isn’t a tool to punish someone. To play off a famous quote from feminist ideals, “The personal is political.” I would like to propose another version of this, “The personal is rape.”

Contributor: Zachary J. Stafford