I avoid watching the news on television. The days of objective journalism are long gone and if I want to watch someone with an axe to grind, I can turn to my community television channel and watch a City Council meeting.

Newspapers are no better. I can read the Upper Valley paper which portrays my working-class town as drug-addicted, uneducated idiots or read the local papers where religious zealots explain that homosexuality is a sin and that abortion shouldn’t be an option because you should “pay to play.” Really.

Usually I can get through google news and learn a little about what is going on in the world without becoming overwhelmed with the idea that the zombie apocalypse might not be a bad thing. Until today.

Today even google news pissed me off.  Superior Court Judge Derek Johnson‘s on why he didn’t think a woman in his courtroom was physically damaged enough to prove she was raped.

“I’m not a gynecologist, but I can tell you something: If someone doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case,” Johnson said.

Is 2012 the year of men equating women’s vaginas to Fort Knox or an armored truck? Are there panic alarms that sound when women are sexually assaulted? Do large steel gates descend from our vaginal walls and lock out intruders or do razor-sharp teeth erupt, ready to mutilate any penis that enters without an engraved invitation? Do I have a small pistol hidden up there that I can shoot at will? This year, I’ve had to ponder those questions and ask, is this crap taught in sex ed classes or in the back pages of porn magazines?

As the mother of two daughters and aunt to two nieces, I despair that I live in an age where information is so readily available, yet men cling to idiotic, unsupported-by-reality ideas about women’s bodies. And, if women have these magical superpowers, what about men?

Is it possible to rape a man or will his body “shut down” and prevent entry. The only way to tell would be to send Judge Johnson, Todd Akin, and a few others with similar beliefs to a men’s prison for a week and see what happens.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think anyone who is sent to prison deserves to be physically or sexually assaulted. The fact that an estimated 9.6% of former state prison inmates report being the victim of sexual assault one or more times is sickening.  But, if being sexually victimized in prison helped to change the hearts and minds of idiots who blame woman for either “asking” to be raped or “not fighting hard enough” to prevent a rape, I could live with it.

Not politically correct, I know, but that’s how I feel.

Related articles

• Echoes of Akin in a Calif. Judge’s Rape Denial: ‘The Body Shuts Down’ (nymag.com)
• Judge Derek Johnson’s Rape Comment: If Sex Isn’t Wanted, Body ‘Will Not Permit That To Happen’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• CA Judge Suggests If Vagina Not ‘Shredded’ It’s Not ‘Real’ Rape (addictinginfo.org)
• The right and rape rhetoric, redux (maddowblog.msnbc.com)

Related articles

• CA Judge Suggests If Vagina Not ‘Shredded’ It’s Not ‘Real’ Rape (addictinginfo.org)
• The right and rape rhetoric, redux (maddowblog.msnbc.com)