Vanessa of Feministing has a quote from a speech by paleo-anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly at Bates college in (I think) Lewiston, Maine.

Last night at Bates College, Phyllis Schlafly gave a lecture titled, “Conservatism vs. Feminism: The Great Debate” where at one point she contended that a woman can’t get raped by her husband: “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.”

Vanessa’s take here.

The original article appeared in the Sun Journal, central Maine’s regional newspaper. There server seems to be overloaded at the moment so I won’t provide a link. I Googled around, though, and found a bit more from reporter Max Brantley at the Arkansas Times:

Schlafly asserted women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier or construction worker, because of their “inherent physical inferiority.”

“Women in combat are a hazard to other people around them,” she said. “They aren’t tall enough to see out of the trucks, they’re not strong enough to carry their buddy off the battlefield if he’s wounded, and they can’t bark out orders loudly enough for everyone to hear.”

But wait, it gets better.

At one point, Schlafly also contended that married women cannot be sexually assaulted by their husbands.

“By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape,” she said.

It’s in the vow don’t you know? To love, honor, cherish and roll over on command.

Brantley’s take here.

The good news? I think Schlafly’s newsworthy again because there are moves afoot in Congress to reintroduce the Equal Rights Amendment, which Schlafly made a career out of defeating the first time around. (Note: remarks on the irony of Schlafly abandoning her own children to nannies to fight for the right to stay home with them are so… 1977.)

The better news? The first time around most people, even many progressives, had a nagging suspicion she maybe, sorta, could be right. This time around? Pretty much everything Schlafly tried to scare us with has come to pass… with no noticeable effect. Unisex bathrooms? Ally McBeal wasn’t just 90’s cartoonishness. Men’s restrooms have those fold-down Koala changing tables even in pretty out-of-the-way places. Women in college and professional sports? Eh, we had it back then too but now it actually draws crowds. Equal pay for equal work or promotion discrimination? Not there yet but now, at least, when major retailers are accused of discrimination public opinion shames them into lying instead of claiming “natural weakness” as they did in the past. Women in politics? It’s worth noting that the major objection to the two most qualified prospective women Presidents (Hillary Clinton and Condileeza Rice) is not their gender but their association with a disgracefully initiated and managed war. (Had the war gone better, especially considering the quality of the Red men in the race, I’m extremely confident that Rice and Clinton would have been the two nominees in 2008.) Women’s reproductive rights? While certainly under siege the vast majority of Americans support choice. Education? There are more women than men in many colleges, graduate programs, and law and medical schools. Women in the military? Um, while not officially in combat roles they’re seeing plenty of combat. Firefighters and police? Women who want the work and meet the physical qualifications are finding jobs — if not in their backwards towns then in the more thriving municipalities.

Civilization has not ended.

In fact, pretty much anywhere you look Schlafly won the battle against the first ERA but lost the war. And pretty much everywhere you look she wasn’t just wrong about the consequences, she was laughably wrong.

So do we still need an ERA? Um. Duh! But not, as in the 1970’s, for querulous, reluctant “do the right thing” reasons. Instead we need it today to be used to hammer the last clawing fingers of the Shlaflys and Dobsons of the world who, though aging gracelessly, would drag us back out of the daylight world and back into the regressive sewers and ditches they call paradise before the last of them dies of old age. (For instance she was born in 1924, Dobson in 1936, Falwell in 1933.)

So do we still need an ERA? Um. Duh! But not just for women’s rights. Men, too, have benefitted tremendously from the advances towards women’s equality since the first ERA was introduced, and men, no less than women, would resent being thrust back into the misery of single-breadwinner, absent-father, bored or frantic dependent partner, and incredibly socially confined war-of-the-sexes world Schlafly would drag us back to. Ratifying a new ERA would lend structural backbone against backsliding both for men and women.

Do we still need an ERA? Um. Duh! Just because no one would marvel at Billie Jean King kicking Bobby Rigg’s ass today doesn’t mean there’s not a lot more we could do, nor way too much ground we could (temporarily) lose. Simply debating ratification in the 50 states (and ratifying it in 34) over the following 10 years would create a marvelous platform for clarifying both what’s been done and what can be done next.

We hear a lot of talk today about “post-feminism” and “4th-wave” and “opt-out” feminism. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, the luxury of “I’m not a feminist, but…” arises directly out of the rising equality that’s come to us in the last 30 years. I mean, just semantically speaking “opt-out” implies an option that Schlafly would erase as ruthlessly as she’d erase one of her nannies for requesting time off when one of their own children fell ill.

And, to get back to Vanessa’s point, how debased? How disgraced? How gutter-sniffing, raincoat-wearing, alcoholic-dazed, self-hatingly, irreligiously bestial? How… strong>unmanly! does Schlafly imagine real men to be that they would want a right to force their wives to have sex against their will anyway?

It might cheer her to imagine her daughters powerless at the hands of their husbands but I’d not have that for my daughter. It might concern her not that her sons could never be sure that their wives tears were from joy or bitterness and fear, but I would not wish it so for my son.

Think the ERA would protect only women from the proposed depredations of Phyllis Schlafly? Un-uh. With Schlafly and her ilk still at large moral, decent, self-respecting, family-loving men need protection every bit as much.

If the ERA passes this year Schlafly, Dobson, Falwell will be out of the picture if not out of commission before the 10-year ratification deadline passes. Children who will be voters by then will have even less interest in returning to the Ozzie (died 1975) and Harriet (died 1994) era of their grandparents and great-grandparents day than will those who are now under thirty, let alone their Gen-X and Boomer elders. 24% of state legislators are now women compared to 10% in the 1970s. Nine state governors are currently women compared to two during the entire period the first ERA was up for ratification. If the troglodytes can’t filibuster it’s passage I just don’t see them blocking it’s ratification. I just don’t see 33 states Red enough to vote it down ten years from now.