Just a general comment on this thread. A few years back I read this book called "Sperm Wars", it goes over the evolution of sex and how men and women behave sexually and why they act the way they do. The book explains how and why each gender have the orgasms they do. One of the things I was most surprised to learn, is that females have the ability to influence weather or not they get pregnant. There are obviously a ton of factors, but how, and the intensity of the orgasm can give a males sperm a better or worse chance of impregnating the women. Now, this does not excuse Aikens comments. A rape is a rape, and while I don't think he was trying to downplay rape or say it is acceptable, his comments come across heartless and it is a puzzling defense for his abortion stance. However, the author of the book Sperm Wars would tell you that a women is probably less likely to become pregnant after a rape. This, of course, does not make rape anything less than an evil act. (I should note that the book Sperm Wars was written by an author who studied the subject of human reproduction over the course of his lifetime. Not everything in the book is scientific fact, but he believes it based upon his lifetime of research. It is a very interesting book for any who have not heard of it).
Sperm wars review: Imagine Baker's theory of "Sperm Wars" as a box; supporting evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, is cut and shaped to suit the size of the box. The storytelling method he employs would have worked well from a pop psychology perspective. However, it fails as science. Chalk it up to the current speculative non-fiction trend that owes a debt of gratitude to Erik Von Daniken, Immanuel Velikovsky and Sigmund Freud. The purpose of this book seems to be to explain human sexual behavior such as why people cheat on each other and fake orgasm. Each of the chapters of the book is preceeded by a ficitious sexually explicit story (which is refered to in the text as a scene) which the author claims is necessary to make a point discussed further in the chapter. However, the stories are always more explicit than necessary showing the book is intended to appeal to people's base insincts rather than to their intellect. The book makes several rather dubious claims some of which are stated explicity and others are implied in the stories. However the experiments to back up these claims are rarely discussed and never cited. In fact the only thing the author cites in the book is scenes from other chapters. Surprisingly, the book does not even contain an index. Readers interested in the the "scenes" described in this book would probably find their money better spent in the erotic literature section. Readers interested in understanding human sexuallity would be much better served by reading Robin Baker's other work intended for a scientific audience. A book named after something that doesn't even exist. There's a reason why the author of this fantasy book avoids citations (no, it's not the reason the author gives in his book). It's the same reason why the original subtitle "The Science of Sex" was changed: this book is NOT based on science at all. It's based on the author's fantasy. Robin Baker is a mediocre scientist (at best) - he's even worse as a fantasy author. Sounds like the kind of book Akin would read to support his beliefs
I'm just glad to hear someone's done the work of finding out about it and risk having the kind of cookies he'd get by clicking links after googling 'sperm wars'. God knows what sort of ads you'll be getting now
Seriously? This is the right's counterpoint? Please God, bring back VFISH, this shit is just too stooopid.
He was trying to say that some rapes (date rape, girl to drunk to consent, drugged women, etc) are not real rapes. He doesn't see rape as a matter of consent, but as a matter of force. In his twisted mind, if there was no force, there was not "legitimate" regardless of consent. It is quite disgusting.
The legitimate/forcible rape idea is really just an attempt to carve out more exceptions to the rape exception. The hardcore pro-lifers (including Akin of course) don't believe there should be a rape exception at all. In my opinion that's ideologically consistent, but it's pretty distasteful to most Americans. So they came up with this "forcible rape" thing, not in order to say that other kinds of rape don't count -- they don't give two shits about that -- but in an attempt to narrow the definition, so that fewer women would qualify for publicly funded abortion coverage. I don't think Todd Akin cares at all about what counts as rape and what doesn't. All he cares about is making abortions as difficult to get as possible. If that means changing the definition of rape so that it's much narrower, then fine.
It gets even more twisted. Check out a right wing blog, such as The Blaze, and read the comments. RWNJ consensus is tomen any women fake their claims of rape in order the "qualify" for abortions. Akin is speaking to his constituency. A good chunk of Americans go along with what he is saying. I'm shocked that someone with such a weak understanding of the human condition, and such a poor grasp of biology, is on the public payroll. He should be fired. He's a waste of democracy.
Oh, hey! I found some more evidence for this claim. Straight out of the Nazi death camps. Lovely company you and Rep. Akin are keeping.
You know it would come to this...Todd Akin is the real rape victim. Follow up questions to all GOPers...do you agree with Bryan Fischer? Do you support the AFA's characterization of this?