Why do politicians want to control women so badly?

@RayaHope Excellent question.
Bullies go for what they consider the weakest target. The politicians are pandering to the religious right. To be re-elected . Most women don’t go on shooting rampages when oppressed, the way that men do. So the politicians think they can get away with oppressing women.

I understand where you going with this… BUT. Not just politicians, men since
the very dawn of time need to control something, or kill it. But times are a changing.
Slowly it seems but it is.

It’s been about 100 years since the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote.
The question might be, will humanity survive long enough to become civilized?

They call it tradition. It isn’t just politicians. Old habits die hard.

Nobody wants to control your body. If you want to fart, go ahead and fart. If however, you want to kill another human being, At least some passing consideration should be given to the person you’re killing.

Evangelicals want that control and are influential in getting certain politicians elected, so politicians pander to that desire. e.g. Trump used to be Pro-Choice, but to get Red votes he “became” Pro-Life.

It’s pandering to the religious right for votes,but they have gone to far with wanting a total ban, not making exceptions for rape , incest, or the mother’s health, let’s hope it hurts them big come November.

When you subjugate women, you subjugate populations. Limiting reproductive rights mostly affects poor communities and groups, which translates, in this country, to people of color. When you are desperate to feed your children, you are willing to compromise, to not argue with lesser treatment. It’s a time honored technique of tyrants, to keep the proletariat hungry and exhausted, they won’t fight back. Mao Tse Tung was a master of that.

Wealthy, even moderately wealthy, people will always have choices, whether politically sanctioned or not.

@canidmajor I wish I could express myself as well as you do! Thank you

TLDR: This is about appeasing a subset of religious zealots.

To really get into the weeds, ultimately the purpose of reproduction is to have “a part of yourself” live on after you’re dead. There’s a fundamental genetic compulsion to reproduce that most animals experience as part of their lifecycle.

Women KNOW when a kid is theirs for obvious reasons. For nearly all of human history (until blood and ultimately DNA paternity tests were available), men have to trust that the child is theirs and not some other guy’s kid. This reality results in a very real fear for many men about their sexual partner’s faithfulness across history. This fear has manifested in various legal and religious codes designed to punish women for cheating outside of marriage. Adultery has been punished extremely harshly (the Old Testament of the Bible even REQUIRES the wife who conceived a child from sex outside of marriage to abort it). In some cultures women are stoned to death for such offenses.

Anyways, the point is that controlling women bodies became codified into many religions all over the world and also the laws in countries that like to mix church and state. This has carried over into the US via the extremist Evangelicals, Mormons, Pentecostals, Catholics and other fundamentalist religious groups/sects/cults.

@gorillapaws I have a problem with that passage since the husband only has to be “jealous” of his wife (with no proof?) so she has no say even in that situation :(

@RayaHope Yeah, the Bible has some fucked up stuff in it (good stuff too though).

First, let me point out that controlling women means controlling more than half the population. So you get the church to help with that dirty work. If you look throughout history, there has to be a boogeyman for politicians to advance. So the boogeyman right now is a women and minorities and education. Women in power are ruining the nation. So they must bring us to heel. Their message is women are disobeying God’s laws and that is why the world is failing. They won’t admit it is their greed and desire for power that is failing the world and that it’s been doing so for thousands of years. If all women actually stood up for other women and supported them in gaining real power, then we may actually get stuff done and men know there is a possibility that they may never gain that power back. That is why they must suppress women.
I hope before I die that I get to see a nation that is being managed by women. I want to see what kind of world they would make.

A lot of it is biblical and religious teaching.

A lot of it is power.

A lot of it is just shitty people.

@Pandora Why would women in power be part of the problem? Why do they help us more? I would hope that a woman vice president would be helping us a lot more.

Politicians care about your vote, they don’t care enough about you to want to control you. This is not about controlling women. The abortion rights rollback is a product of right-wing activism fueled by evangelical Christians who view abortion as murder and also morally wrong. This is but one example of why highly ideological people have no business meddling in politics. Does not matter what side of the isle it comes from. Ideology without regard to objective reality is the great destroyer of our society, or any society. It’s poison.

@RayaHope Men hardly pay attention to the world around them. Most go to work and may listen to the news now and then but it’s women who focus more on what is happening. They voice their opinions to their husbands and persuade them. So you get the Church to agree with you should be in power by giving more support to the church. The church knows it’s mostly women who attend and they convince the women that men should rule and that politicians are sent by God to rule, and women convince each other and other men. Easy peasy. The Christian rights support republicans and republicans support them financially. But you must have the power to reach more than half the population. The Christian right easily does that.
I use to go to Church faithfully when young. I miss it. But I don’t miss being made to feel that women are dirt to God. If he wanted us to be lap dogs he would’ve made us as dumb as one. I don’t feel a need to feel demeaned for being born a woman.

@Pandora How do we overcome this trend? If most women aren’t even for their own rights, how do we fix this? I think we as women are doomed to this “lesser” role :(

@Pandora “Men hardly pay attention to the world around them.”

That’s just a silly generalization to make…

Also, women tend to be more pro-choice than men. The “anti-choice” crowd tends to be older, less educated and poorer than those identifying as pro-choice. (source)

They don’t have the spine to take on the gun lobby. So they attack female reproductive rights to score with their base. Abortions make Baby Jesus cry. Twenty school kids gunned down by some maniac? No prob, hand JC another cold beer.

Support the women around you and let them know that there is nothing wrong with being born a woman. I believe women who are suppressed are women who never had anyone believe in them. My dad once told me. Hold your head up high. You have nothing to be ashamed of. God made you who you are and so therefore you are perfect. I was shy and when I had zits I use to keep my head down. You have no idea how much those words helped me. So long as people are kept ignorant and the church and rich politicians work to keep control, I don’t see how it will be possible for women to advance.

@gorillapaws True, in the age of the internet that is probably less true, but I will say when it comes to politics it’s mostly the women I hear from. The men generally are not as vocal unless they are angry about something. And yes women are more pro-choice but why isn’t it all women? You would think all women should be in favor. By the way, most of the crowd I know are of the older crowd and even they don’t have a problem with abortion. But then I can’t say I know very many republicans. I do know a lot of Christians democrats though. Plus the amount of older people in the US is at about 16 percent. So you can’t lay it all on the older people. That means that most of the voting power is in the younger generation. But don’t underestimate the power of religion. It has stood the test of time and been the source of many tragedies over history.

@Pandora All good points.

“And yes women are more pro-choice but why isn’t it all women?”

There were women who were anti-sufferegettes. As much as I love and respect women, some are capable of amazing logical gymnastics to convince themselves to support positions that are against their interests (some men too of course).

There’s trickery too.

This one lady wrote a whole book on why women shouldn’t vote that’s freely available to read: Anti-suffrage : Ten Good Reasons by Grace Duffield Goodwin. Crazy (and fascinating) how people can justify things that go against their own self-interest.

The politicians want to be politicians. They want people to vote for them so they can win.

A large percentage of the people registered as Republicans are Evangelical Christians and also some very religious Catholics, and they are convinced terminating a pregnancy is murder.

The people in charge of those religions (men) know that if you keep women preggers and in turn have babies, the women have less autonomy, less power, and are more dependent.

I think the reason so many women vote against their own best interests is that that is how their husband wants them to vote and most women want to please their man. So they vote how their man wants them to vote to avoid conflict with the marriage.

@RayaHope I have some experience e pressing my thoughts (age does that). You are well on the track to speaking/writing with eloquence, keep at it! <3

@canidmajor Thank you so much for your kind words. ((HUGS)) <3 xoxo

Politicians base their platform on getting the majority of votes. If your voters care, you care. If you want to win.
In red states, most of us vote for Pro-Life politicians, which is why they are comfortable putting in the abortion trigger laws instead of us voting on it.

@jaxk There you go again. Granting personhood to a clump of cells. Radical!

They are afraid of us. Our bodies hold so much power over them it scares them.

^^ I wish we could use that “power” to change their thinking on this subject!

Yes you have great power! The power is not a replacement to the power men wield.
To make that power even greater use it alongside men power, guide it in a way
only a mother can. All that will make the world a better place.

I don’t agree with your premise. I do agree that many women probably do.

Who you talking to @Snip?

Politicians want to control EVERYONE. Why should women be any different?

But they don’t make laws governing men’s bodies.

Yeah, @Entropy do politicians tell men what they can and can’t do with their bodies? Do they monitor your reproductive organs?