sexual violence

How Can We Prevent This? Social Narratives About Sex, Shame, and "Fates Worse Than Death" Are *KILLING CHILDREN!*

Ok, so while we're working to eliminate sexual violence can we also spend at least a little time here talking about ending the one thing that makes it even worse. Because sweet mother of pearl, what kind of society and social narratives do we have that victims of sexual violence feel so ashamed they end their own lives?

In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, but this whole "even involuntary sex is shameful for girls" and "if someone's seen you naked that makes you a slut," and, especially, "you should rather die than 'let' someone assault you or 'get' yourself assaulted'" has just got to stop.

In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, but waaaay too often the very culture of shame surrounding "chastity" and all that purity crap is precisely why young women are sexually humiliated as opposed to some other form of bullying.  Because at the end of the day, bullies pretty much drill down on that which their victims fear most... on that which they believe (and their victims believe) will humiliate them most.  And then they do that.

And for teenagers?  Even if for some reason they didn't personally fear being assaulted while passed out, they still might fear having it become known.

Whether it's from the dehumanizing scorn of peers to the equally dehumanizing pity of others, to the insidious calulations of clever perpetrators or the thuggish cunning of stupid ones, the universal message society conspires to crush the prey of predators with is "your life is now over."

With the tragic results that, too often, they end their lives.

I don't know what we as a society can do to prevent all sexual violence.  And I don't know for sure what we can do to end victim blaming, slut shaming, and "fate worse than death-ing."  But I do feel, strongly, that curtailing one requires curtailing both.  That trying to end one without the other will almost certainly end either.

This is killing children, folks.  Most notoriously, at the moment, two young women from Canada and another from California are in the news for ending their lives after receiving unbearable shaming from their nominal friends and communities.  But the same fate befalls so many other victims, of all sexes, genders, and orientations.

We should all be ashamed of ourselves.


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Chart: The Goldberg Spectrum of Sexual Violence Denial, From Bad Men Project

Over at my other blog, The Bad Men Project I wrote

Goldberg Spectrum of Sexual Violence Denial
Click for larger image

In remarks both here and on my other blog I've made snarky references to what I've been calling "The Goldberg Spectrum of Sexual Violence Denial."  I'd like to explain what I mean with this chart.

In a nutshell the chart shows that what constitutes most people's people's notion of "sexual violence" rattles somewhere between Todd Aikin's so-violent-organ-failure-shuts-that-thing-down "legitimate rape" standard and Whoopi Goldberg's egregious Roman Polanski didn't commit "rape-rape" standard.  Anywhere to the right of Goldberg's standard on the spectrum and denial first creeps in and then roars.

First there's the infamous "gray area" of denial. Further over even if people concede the "gray area" isn't so gray they may still deny that catcalls or "stolen" kisses count. Then there's denial about whether boys or men can be victims. By the the time you get to still-on-the-spectrum epithets and slurs ("flat chested," "bad in the sack," "cocksucker," "fuck you," it's almost all denials because the violence is basically completely emotional rather than physical. And we're all still coming to grips with the idea that emotional bullying constitutes violence at all.

One consequence of leaving things up to Goldberg and Aikin is that over at that end of the spectrum victims really are overwhelmingly female and perpetrators overwhelmingly male. Unfortunately while the reality blurs the further one gets from the extreme edge of denial (see above) the stereotype is already set.

By the time you get to epithets, for instance, targets and recipients so varied it's basically impossible to characterize them.

Meanwhile if like too many people you're still rattling back and forth between Aikin's and Goldberg's standards you're still denying almost the entire range!  Much hilarity does not ensue. :-P


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Alain de Botton Not Just Wrong but Dangerous About Meaning of Involuntary Erections, Wetness

I already didn't like "philosopher and writer" Alain de Botton before he got is gig at Psychology Today. Now, via I've got a serious problem with him. Here's why I think you should too.

In a post called 12 Rude Revelations about Sex de Botton makes the following startling, and wrong, and very, very dangerous assertion

Involuntary physiological reactions such as the wetness of a vagina and the stiffness of a penis are emotionally so satisfying (which means, simultaneously, so erotic) because they signal a kind of approval that lies utterly beyond rational manipulation. Erections and lubrication simply cannot be effected by willpower and are therefore particularly true and honest indices of interest. In a world in which fake enthusiasms are rife, in which it is often hard to tell whether people really like us or whether they are being kind to us merely out of a sense of duty, the wet vagina and the stiff penis function as unambiguous agents of sincerity.

Source: Psychology Today (naturally)

Emily Nagoski nicely dismantles de Botton's factual, psychological, and sexual claims so I don't have to. (Hint: if he were right then most men have serious sexual attraction to full bladders first thing in the morning.)

That means I can concentrate on de Botton's seriously creepy sexual-violence-supporting implications instead.

Involuntary reactions such as wetness or erections are "satisfying?" "Erotic?!?!" Seriously?

 this is giving direct aid and support to rapists? Because that whole “if you didn’t really want this you wouldn’t be hard/wet” is one of the big guns in abusers and rapist’s bags of psychological tricks. (Tip for de Button: try Googling “arousal during sexual assault.” Asshole!)

One result that pops up early on is from survivor-support site the Pandora Project (my italics.)

A sexual response or orgasm in the course of sexual assault is often the best-kept and most deeply shameful secret of many survivors. If you are such a survivor, it’s essential that you know that sexual response in sexual assault is extremely common, well-documented and nothing for you to be ashamed of.

And it isn’t just about you and the way your body responded either. It may also have been one of the repertoire of dirty tricks rapists use to get their victims to feel responsible. Diana Russell writes that “Some rapists think they’re lovers” and tells us:
(These rapists) think that if a woman is stimulated in ‘just the right way’ she will enjoy it. The conquest may seem more important if the rapist believes he has turned the woman on physically, particularly if it is against her will. Getting the victim to respond physically may also alleviate the rapist’s guilt feelings.

Source: Pandora Project: Sexual Arousal & Sexual Assault

Or regarding erections, from Living Well, and Australian site for recovering male victims (my italics)

People who sexually abuse boys and men often use their knowledge about male bodies to deliberately cause an erection and/or ejaculate to occur. They do this because they know it is extremely confusing and embarrassing. They might also do it to try and convince both the person being abused and themselves that what is happening is not really abuse. Whatever the reasons, ultimately they know that if the boy or man was aroused, they might be less likely to tell anyone about the abuse due to feelings of shame and embarrassment.

Source: Living Well: Sexual Assault and Arousal

In that context de Button’s choice of the words “Involuntary physiological reactions such as the wetness of a vagina and the stiffness of a penis are emotionally so satisfying (which means, simultaneously, so erotic)” (my italics) are just beyond horrifying and right up there with encouraging, endorsing, and maybe even celebrating sexual violence.

Maybe he’s too stupid to understand. Maybe he thinks he thinks he’s being “edgy” and contrarian. Maybe he’s trying to rationalize his own prior victimization. Or perpetration! But one way or another it’s not funny either that he said it, that his editors passed on it, or especially that Psychology Today (of all people*!) published it!!!

Sweet Mother of Pearl!

* Not that I expect Psychology Today to be particularly interested in truth, reality, or responsibility -- after all they seem to have picked de Button to replace their previous calculated-to-offend, too-distraced-even-for-them columnist Satoshi Kawazana -- but for a journal purporting to be about, well, psychology, today, I would at least expect them to have some sensitivity to the psychological and emotional well being of survivors of sexual violence.


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As You Do to the Least of Your (Frat) Brothers and (Sorority) Sisters: Drunks, Assault, and "Awkward" Facebook Photos

Photo by Flickr user cherbert. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Photo by Flickr user cherbert. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Heads Up: This post is about blind spots regarding sexual violence and gender assumptions.

So... what do we call the activities recorded in those "embarrassing moment" photos taken by drunken straight girls and boys of the things they do to even drunker and/or passed out members of their own sexes?  (No, I'm not going to post photos I was quickly able to find but you should be able to find some just as quickly.)

So here and over at the other blog (e.g. The Problem With Prosecuting Rape is Patriarchy - Time to Get Rid of It) I've been wrestling with the gradations of understanding/misunderstanding degrees of sexual violence, who commits it, who it's committed against, and especially how we prioritize different kinds of violence either for greater punishment or outright dismissal.

The classic example would be 1970s throwback Whoopie Goldberg's dismissal of Roman Polanski's notorious aggressive assault on a drugged and still resisting teenager because  "I know it wasn't rape-rape."  Because, presumably, Polanski didn't jump out of a dark alley and assault a complete stranger.  See also erstwhile Senate candidate Todd Aikin's 1870s throwback requirement that an assault is "legitimate" only if the victim experiences organ failure.

We can mock and scorn those attitude for being benighted, but I'd like to argue instead that rather than being different from the rest of us their lines are only drawn unfashionably further along the spectrum of unambiguous sexual violence than we draw ours.

I mentioned photos I'd found.  You know the kind, right?  They're what really drunk or high people do to whoever passes out first -- usually involving undressing them, tying them up, writing obscenities on them with Sharpies, putting phallic objects in their mouths or buttocks, getting behind them and pretending to "hump" them?  

Oh, and, duh!, taking and posting photos!  All, pretty obviously, without the unconscious victim's consent.

And with the extra juicy assaultive/abusive elements of a) intentional wielding of power advantage, b) implicitly establishing or enforcing relative status over the victim, c) calculatedly sex-related humiliation of the victim for not-necessarily-directly-sexual gratification, d) triumphal disclosure to peers.  Oh, and for even juicier extra credit, e) doleful tisk-tisking by peers and parents at the victims for passing out rather than the perpetrators for committing "not rape-rape" sex-related violence, and f) further peer and parental tisk-tisking about how their damaged reputations (but somehow not their assailants!) will haunt them in later years.

Who's doing this sort of stuff?  Well, about half an hour with Google Images I'm able to confidently say "everybody."  Stoner dudes assaulting other passed-out stoner dudes? Check.  Sorority members assaulting other passed-out members?  Check.  Drunk male and female college students assaulting other passed-out male and female college students. Drunk women drawing penises on passed out men? Check. Drunk men drawing arrows and words like "fun" on passed-out women's legs or collarbones? Check.

On the other hand you may not want to check.  Not just g) because "eww" but just as often because "yikes!"  And other times "why didn't someone call the police?"  Even though you know that, h) once sober, the victims are generally too ashamed to do so themselves.  (Gee, doesn't this all sound familiar?)

Please note, by the way, that these are just the photos that people are willing to post. That these are the photos that Memebase- and LOLcats-style sites with names similar to "passedoutfirst" and "embarrassedmyself" are willing to keep up unflagged. Keep in mind these are just incidents people happen to photograph at all!

So!

Where do you sit on the... let's call it the Goldberg spectrum of "legitimate" vs. "all in fun" sexual violence?


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Why "Too Drunk to Keep Your Keys" is a Fine Metric for Judging "Too Drunk to Consent"

Responding to my last post, On Guilt or Innocence While Intoxicated a commenter named Samantha who shortens it to Sam at the end pointed out that my argument that the line dividing competence to consent to sexual overtures breaks down at the same point one is intoxicated enough that reasonable third parties would ask for their car keys.

Of course we shouldn't be saying that all victims must be sober in order to "count." But where it seems to me that this gets complicated is that after a mugging, one person is missing the wallet and the other one has it; after a shooting, one person is dead and the other is alive. But after intercourse between two drunk people, both people had sex (or, were raped?). I agree with the upshot that people too drunk to consent or to get consent shouldn't be having sex, period, but this doesn't much help with establishing the identities of perpetrators and victims.

Brief quibble: It might be more accurate to say it doesn't help much with establishing the guilt or innocence of perpetrators.  But I think it can still be used consistently and fairly to determine whether the party or parties were to "tipsy" to competently consent or competently distinguish a prospective partner's consent.

I don't think this is all that big a problem because to a large extent it's already been solved in other contexts. Based on considerable case law on the liability of bartenders and hosts when they serve to someone who's intoxication later leads to injuries or death, the fact that it's vague isn't as important as one might reflexively make it.  Specifically, a guideline, rule, or law doesn't have to handle *every* edge case to severely narrow the area in which edge cases -- what's sometimes called the 'gray area" -- occurs.  Judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys have established some pretty effective methods for determining drunkenness and liability after the fact, even in cases where "hard facts" like blood alcohol levels are in question.  And therefore it shouldn't be that difficult to apply those same established criteria to questions of whether or not a victim was deemed competent to drive, and therefore whether he or she was competent to autonomously decide to have sex.

Now mind you, this seems to be the only area where establishing an accuser's intoxication or sobriety might be used against his or her assertion of having been attacked.  (For instance how many non-sexual assault victims have to demonstrate that they were sober before someone will accept their accusation that the didn't want to be in a fight?  Even if the accused said no, it was all in good fun and it wasn't fighting it was consensual sparring.)  But that's actually neither here nor there -- another edge case and an analogy to boot.  But in the main, anyone with experience in the field of host/bartender liability would have no trouble in the field of intoxication assault.

Oh, and speaking of bar fights and assault there's another metric where bartenders (probably more than lawyers or judges) are likely to have perfectly average judgment: assessing whether someone in a bar fight was just the loser of a two-party fight or the victim of a one-party fight.  Even when both parties to a fight are equally intoxicated body language, behavior, shock response, between someone who actively participated in a fight but lost and someone who hadn't wished to fight at all is readily apparent.  Even a day later when they've sobered up.  I'm not about to say "oh, let's just be all subjective about it" but I'm very confident that it's an assessable and teachable skill.  That, now that I think about it, might be an interesting public-safety research project.

Bottom line, though, is that based on several years of third-hand, second-hand, and I'm now very ashamed to say first-hand experience in college bar culture in the mid-1970s (the era Mary Koss was prompted to begin her research, incidentally) the issue isn't *quite* as clear-cut as some proponents say but it's *waaaay* less ambiguous than almost any detractors say.


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On Guilt or Innocence While Intoxicated

A not completely unreasonable objection to the general assumption that in no- or badgered-consent situations both parties can be equally intoxicated yet one party can be consdered a victim and the other a perpetrator.  The objection does become unreasonable when an analogy is drawn between a drunk driver who's held accountable for passing out behind the wheel and a drunk victim who passes out where he or she can be assaulted.  For both not-unreasonable and unreasonable objections here's how that thing works:

If I roll a drunk for his wallet he’s a victim, no matter how drunk he was. And if I’m drunk when I roll him I’m still a mugger, no matter how drunk I was. Same if a drunk murders another drunk — doesn’t matter how drunk the parties were, the victim’s the victim and the murderer’s the murderer. Now, you can argue whether that’s fair or unfair, but you can’t say it’s an unusual distinction.

Similarly, in almost all law a contract or agreement signed while drugged or intoxicated can be invalidated with the completely reasonable argument that when drunk or drugged one is not capable of making sound decisions. And again, it doesn’t matter whether the counterparty to the signature was drunk, nor does it matter how drunk that party was.

So. Even if I was drawing an analogy between being too drunk to drive and too drunk to either consent or accurately discern consent in others, instead of making a pharmacological distinction, it still wouldn’t matter. Or wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t the historical assumption that a woman who gets drunk “deserves” to be assaulted because she would have been "more careful" had she remained sober.

But!

Again, I making a pharmacological distinction not drawing an analogy: if you're so drunk your friends are asking you for your keys you're also too drunk to make a competent decision about your own or a prospective partner's consent.


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About Degrees of "Tipsy," Consent, and the Ability to Recognize Consent

Ozy Frantz started a nice conversation about whether "drunk sex" is rape. Since the possible cases under discussion range from one or both parties having only half a glass of wine all the way over to both parties are incompetently black-out drunk I thought I'd reiterate my position.

As for the “tipsy” vs. “drunk” vs. “wasted” distinctions, my hard and fast rule is “if someone is drink enough for you to ask for their keys because they’re too drunk to realize they shouldn’t drive then they’re also too drunk for meaningful consent.

Similarly if you’re drunk enough to realize you shouldn’t drive then you’re also drunk enough to realize you shouldn’t try to accurately determine whether someone else is consenting.

Either way, that’s where I draw line between “tipsy” and “drunk.” It’s also the point where red flags ought to start going up for a) one’s self, b) one’s prospective paramours, and c) friends, onlookers, family members, and especially hosts and bartenders.

I say “especially bartenders” in part I used to be a bartender. In a college town. Where “spinning” drunk women into “consent” was all too often considered par for the course rather than what it actually was.

Which, incidentally, is exactly why “but I do that so it can’t be rape” is such a dire total fucking bullshit metric. As is, incidentally, “but everybody does that so it can’t be rape.” Because you know what… it sure as shooting can be. Not always. Not necessarily. But, yeah, you hear someone say anything like that and it should send up a big red flag.


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Silence and Socrates: Speaking Out Makes It Harder to "Unknowingly" Do Evil

So. About the various debates about "knowing whether action X, Y, or Z is wrong" going around the world lately. Over on Ozy Frants's new blog a commenter named Joshua Bennett nails the general case.

Socrates admonished us that no one knowingly does evil. Everyone has a reason for what they do, even if it’s a ridiculous, selfish reason. Our actions seem like a good idea at the time. Only in retrospect do we realize we were wrong. We all do this, so some measure of empathy is in order even for those who hurt others.

But this doesn’t mean we should just say, “Oh, your heart was in the right place,” and let shit slide. Condemnation is a powerful social tool to change people’s behaviors. People who are shamed or otherwise punished for their actions are more likely to avoid doing the same thing in the future, especially if they can see in retrospect why their actions were wrong.

Furthermore, when society makes a Big Deal™ about things like the importance of consent, we’re less likely to think our own reasons make our actions okay. The more we talk about this, the more it sticks in people’s brains: “Having sex with someone without their explicit consent is never okay! No, not even then.”

Source: Ozy Frantz's Blog

He was talking in the context of a post about "date rape," (a.k.a. "rape") but like it or not the same metric applies to countless other contexts both larger (shooting up a school in Connecticut, piloting a drone into a school in Pakistan) and smaller (grabbing the parking space someone else was clearly waiting for, grabbing the nice gloves in the lost and found that "nobody will miss.")

What I particularly like about Joshua's point about making things a "Big Deal™" is that it really has worked in other realms of crime and violence -- assaults, murders, and even domestic violence are way down compared to 50 years ago and waaaaayyyy down compared to 150 years ago or further. In particular it'll continue making it harder to blow off other people's or our own excuses. For that reason I agree that continuing to make a Big Deal™ about "date rape" (again a.k.a. "rape") will continue to make a difference.


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Here in the 21st Century the Incentives for "Crying Rape" Is "Not Today What It Was," Congressman

Still referring to E.J. Graff's probe into Republican rape apologists' pulpy decay here. Graff quotes Jessica Valenti in The Nation

As Tennessee Senator Douglas Henry said in 2008, “Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse.”

She also quotes Irin Carmon in Salon (emphasis mine.)

“Dear everyone asking what it is about Republican candidates and their clumsy talk about rape: This is a feature, not a bug.” Really. Mourdock, Akin, Walsh, Angle—all of them are simply saying straightforwardly what they and many other people around them believe. ... They believe that most of what you and I would call rape today is just some slut who got angry because the dude didn’t take her out to breakfast the next morning.

Ok, look. I know, I know, back between roughly the early 1700s and late 1900s social and especially economic forces made it extremely important for women to protect their "virtue."  A.k.a. their resale value in the male virginity-fetish market.  With the result that any hint of "lack of virtue" could result in very real risk of social, economic, and even physical harm.  And consequently one can imagine (and I do stress imagine here) that women might have felt some pressure to claim that any consensual sexual "lapse" was actually somehow the result of coercion by her male partner.

But...

But...

C'mon!  Look what we've seen just among right-wing extremist conservatives in America!  In 2008 the daughter of an arch-conservative Vice Presidential candidate has an out-of-wedlock daughter.  Consequences to either the daughter or the candidate?  Zero.  Compare that to, say, the 1972 Presidential race where a male VIce Presidential candidate was forced to step aside just because he had been treated for depression.  Depression!  See also the nude photos of arch-conservative radio shock-jock "Dr." Laura Schlessinger. Consequences?  Zero!  Allegations of an affair by South Carolina Gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley.  By a political ally no less.  Consequences?  Zero. 

Among less prominent women in the 21st Century the issue of the importance of "feminine virtue" gets more hazy rather than less.  Yes, Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch had to step down when it was revealed that she'd had inappropriate relations with a male employee.  But the actual uproar, and cause for her stepping down, had more to do with him being a subordinate than about Koch's actual sex life itself.

And about that male subordinate?  Interestingly, he's filed a wrongful termination suit against his former employers on the basis that female employees who'd had similar relationships with male legislators had not been fired.*  A.k.a. discriminated against for having willing or unwilling sexual relationships.

Does this mean everything everywhere in America is just hunky-dory for women who choose not to remain "untainted?"  No.  Duh.  Of course not.

But!

It does imply that Republican knuckledraggers who like to imagine that women have any image-protecting (or even job protecting!) reasons to "cry rape" are simply talking through their hats.  Where "their hats" is a euphemism for "their stupid, lazy, throwback asses." Because for the most part, and largely thanks to feminism, the incentives for "crying rape" here in the 21st Century "today is not like it was."

* This is SO not a whutaboutthemenz/reverse-discrimination ploy, at least not on my part. Here in the 21st Century NOBODY should be punished for being a victim either of workplace sexual harassment or sexual favoritism by a superior.


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Nominal Christian, Closet Pantheist, and All Around Dick Mourdock Must Have Meant "If The Gods Intended..."

So one of the hardest things for us modern Western people to wrap our brains around is the ancient pre-Christian idea that things like one's death is foreordained by fate and, thus, there's simply no escaping it.  For instance in the Illiad, Homer stresses over and over again that at their appointed time men could die courageously in battle, or as cowards in battle, or of disease back at the camp, or by choking on a chicken bone back at home.  But one way or another you were going to die so...

Well, in pre-Christian fatalist thinking if you had no choice the thinking went that you should go ahead and try and have as good a death as possible: the heroic-in-battle one.

This Richard Mourdock guy is taking pre-Christian fatalism to a new extreme.  As you've probably heard (about a million times already in just the few hours since he spewed it) he's Indiana Senate candidate (guess which party, natch) who said tonight that he opposes abortion in cases of rape because 

...even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.

Which would be fine, I guess.  If he was just a typical inconsiderate tea-bagger misogynist and rape apologist.  But he says he's not.  In fact after the debate where he made his first... interesting assertion he said this:

"Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think God ordained or pre-ordained rape? No, I don't think that anyone could suggest that. That's a sick, twisted - no, that's not even close to what I said," he told reporters, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.
But he reaffirmed his view that conception is determined by a higher power.

See?  That's where it gets complicated.

Because if Mourdock's saying that a) God intended the conception but did not indend the violent sexual assault that led to it then...

Well, it looks to me like Mourdock thinks that specific spermatazoa was fated to merge with that specific ovum.  And the manner by which it was immaterial.  It was going to happen anyway, at that moment under any number of possible circumstances ranging from the romantic to the clinical to the criminally brutal.  The conception was foreordained, by God (or maybe, what, The Gods?)  With neither the Mother or the Father (victim and assailant in this universe but drunken pickups, test-tube donors, or life partners in others?) or God(s) having any more say in the matter of how than an 8 ball has a say in where it will roll when struck by the cue ball.

Does that sound Christian to you?

No, it sounds more Homeric, or, to be generous, maybe Stoic.

As a Washington State progressive I wouldn't vote for Murdoch if I could (or indeed if he was the last man on earth!)  But If I fancied myself a conservative Illinois Christian, as many Illinois Republicans claim they do, I'd be hard pressed to vote for Richard Mourdock.  He doesn't sound very much like one of them. 

Just suggesting.


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