Bury My Womb At Wounded Knee

What Really Goes On In South Dakota:

Below is a revealing five-minute TV spot about the political climate in South Dakota. You might want to put a rag in your mouth to bite down on.

Click the screen to start playing.

The highlight is about three minutes in, when State Senator Bill Napoli describes— in explicit sadistic detail— how "bad" a virgin would have to be raped in order for him to "make an exception."

What do you do with a man like this? How do we live in a country like this?

What Really Goes On In South Dakota
Video sent by susiebright

Please do GoogleBomb Senator Napoli by clicking here: "Sexist Asshat." Personally, I would have chosen something like: PsychoFuck, but I guess I can't have everything.

Update:

 

Comments

[C.S. Lewiston]

So, senator Bill Napoli (or is it “Napoleon”?) thinks that a woman should get an abortion only if she was a religious (read: Christian Fundamentalist) virgin who was brutally savaged and mutilated by her attacker? How about a Jewish virgin who was only threatened by an attacker with a knife, or strong-armed by her uncle? How about a Christian mother of two who gets raped?

Perhaps Senator Napoli needs to spend a few months in a state penitentiary (say, the one he wants to put family-planning doctors into) and meet up with a few prison gangs, who whould let him know in no uncertain terms what rape is really like, if you know what I mean. I think that might re-center his view of reality. Then again, maybe not. It’s a horrible thing to say, I know, but this is a horrible person. I’ve never seen anyone so homicidally monomaniacal about outlawing a surgical procedure, promoting a religio-fascist agenda, or heard anything so murderously stupid come out of any elected official’s mouth.

That Halbverson fella, he is SO typical of TOO MANY Democrats these days. Instead of fighting this murderously regressive legislation, he just bends over and hopes that his ass doesn’t get shot off. I guess I should cut him a little slack, him being in that snake pit of a legislature. No, God damn it, a legislator here in NY State SACRIFICED HIS POLITICAL CAREER in order to make abortion legal here in 1970. Mr. Halbverson should grow a spine, or get the hell out of Hell.

[Solace]

it's nice to see people like Cesear, and Hitler are alive and well. They just have new agenda's. How would the senator feel if that was a member of his family? Would he blame his wife? Daughter? neice? I wonder how many times he has had to comfort a rape victim who can't sleep because of there fear of the dark, after an attack, or their dreams are so real that no amount of therapy gets them through completely. I am very sure that a rapist does not care about religious beliefs. No I agree Prison would be just the thing for this man. A state to state tour with him as the headliner. Yeah that would be good.

[Professor Zero]

Amazing that Napoli actually articulates those things in that way and is considered respectable. He sure does seem to get into imagining sexual torture...do you think he might be into violent porn too?

And to think that one of the Republican justifications for intervention in the Middle East was to improve the women's rights there! What will they try to do next in South Dakota: stone rape victims to death as 'adulteresses'(after they give birth, of course)?

An optimistic friend says this law will never stand up in the courts. I hope it's true. I'm glad to know about Napoli, though. He's really dangerous, and I'm glad he's been identified!

[misterniceguy1960]

Okay, time to start setting up the underground railroad. We need people who can discreetly drive women to Minneapolis, and host families for them to stay with.

[The Fat Lady Sings]

My husband works with many “Bush is God” believers. It frustrates him - often angers him - but the hardcore few seem to stick to Bushco like glue. There are a few, however, who have veered away from right-wing asylum escapees such as Napoli. His little speech has proved to be a nail in the Republican coffin for those men who truly love their wives, sisters and daughters. Only a few, mind you; but that is better than none at all.

So let Napoli and his ilk pontificate till they keel over from lack of oxygen - the stupider they are - the more people will recoil in horror – just as we have done. Personally - it is men like him who make me wish there was in truth an individual god; for that mans soul needs to spend a few millennia in the purifying fires of the hell he seems to want to inflict on our gender.

[Megan]

I just read about this today from a friend. I can't even begin to describe my anger at these misinformed, judgemental, Little Napoleons who think they have so much authority to tell women how to run their lives. I love how he takes the 'I'm from the Wild West card out', as if a pathetic little twerp like that was out herding cattle with John Wayne by his side? Hardly. His description of "what people do when they get pregnant" in his little storybook land inside his head sounds like a description of a scene of a "happy marriage" right out of Brokeback Mountain.

The thing that worries me the most is that with South Dakota jumping on Bushie's little "let the States" decide bandwagon, it gives the other states who feel similarly free reign to do the same and consequently ape them. Leaving it up for states like South Dakota to decide on Human Rights issues is like letting the white citizens of Burmingham, Alabama in 1958 make executive decisions on Civil Rights Issues. This is appalling and more and more I feel like I'm living Margaret Atwood's vision of America as described in 'The Handmaid's Tale'. I'm twenty-six years old and I don't want my future to look like that.

[Tomo]

Now, I've come to understand both sides of the argument, and though I can agree that, yes, some women do seem to get abortions out of convenience rather than health risks, but seriously, that sentance alone is enough to make me want to never associate with anthing from South Dakota ever again.

[Bill Brent]

If South Dakota is this harsh on abortion, I can only imagine how brutal it must be for sexual minorities.

--Bill

[Bitch Nurse (soon to be Bitch Midwife)]

I got the creepy suspicion that the brutal rape scenario Napoli describes is his sexual fantasy. I wonder what other secrets this perv is hiding.

[Trish]

Unf*ckingly believable...

*sigh*

[Greg]

It's not only Bill Napoli opinions that scare me, it's how 'matter of fact' he is about them. He's not standing at a podium ranting and raving, he's talking about forcing people to marry as if it's an obvious, every-day fact of life. I've seen people get more emotional over ordering breakfast, yet he's talking about basic human rights. God save us from this repressed fool and everyone like him.

[bifemmefatale]

I love how Napoli specifies that a girl would have to be sodomized to qualify for an abortion. Last I checked, Senator, sodomy *didn't* cause pregnancy, which is why it was originally deemed illegal. Of course, in your case, I'd be tempted to believe in an exception.

[Sandrino]

Well, I surely ain't moving to South Dakota any time soon! What blows me away about all these right to lifers is how little they care for those who made it out of the womb. You would think they woud spare some of that compassion for children and people who don't have the means and choices they do. Compassionate conservatives my ass!

[ams]

I am beyond shocked at Napoli's comments. How deluded can one man be? The detail he goes into is horrifying as well - he obviously put a lot of thought into that one sentence.

[Alana Noel Voth]

Susie,

I'm so upset by this video right now I can hardly type. Every day now I hear or read another story or see another news reel in which I'm terrified my son, who is biracial and who I'm desperately trying to raise as an empathetic human being a.k.a not homophobic, not sexist, not racist, and not a goddamned fundmentalist Christian, will be emotionally or physically attacked by some ignorant jerk.

Susie!
Where are we?

Alana

[BrianB]

I wonder if he would feel different if he were the one being told you were not raped bad enough for us to help. It is appaling that the law should dictate what people do with their own body.

[C.S. Lewiston]

"I feel like I'm living Margaret Atwood's vision of America as described in 'The Handmaid's Tale'. I'm twenty-six years old and I don't want my future to look like that."

You and me both, sister. I'm worried for my own female friends and relatives.

You know, back in the 1960's when women were fighting for abortion to be legalized the first time, there was a *tradition* of bias against abortion and to a lesser degree, birth control. Factual discussion of any kinds of sex in the media did not happen except in the most cold, clinical and legalistic terms. If you wrote publicly about sex in any other kind of way, it was off to court to face "obscenity" charges. Gay people still have to fight for basic human dignity, but back then they had to live like the persecuted minority which they were.

The South Dakota thing is occurring after over three decades of not only legalized (if often hard-to-obtain) abortion, but an openness about the subject of sex which did not exist in the "radical" 60's or the "decadent" 70's. Gay people are now the subject of Oscar-nominated mainstream motion pictures. There's taken-for-granted access to contraceptives (in most places anyhow), articles about sex in supermarket magazines (if I had a dollar for every time the word "sex" appeared on the cover of Cosmo...), frank discussion of sex and sex crimes on television (more often titillating than factual, I'll grant you, but still), top news stories about oral sex in the oval office...the list goes on. (Time was when a sex scandal involving a president would have been only slightly less traumatic to the country than an assassination. With Bill and Monica, it was almost a joke).

Like a lot of radical rightists, our enemies wish to take us back to a "good-old-days" which never existed save in two-star Hollywood B-movies. Except for South Dakota where they obviously believe in that kind of thing, I wonder how mainstream Americans will ultimately respond to this frontal attack upon the decades-old openness and freedoms which many now take for granted?

[karen]

appalling. seriously appalling.

as much as i agree with an underground railroad-type of network to help women get whatever reproductive health care they need, i also think this is no time to roll over and let the courts take our rights away and go underground and be invisible. if anything, we need masses of women (and men) in the streets, on television, anywhere we can be seen and heard.

at this point, i don't think the democrats are going to "save us." many of them are moving or have already moved to a more centrist or even right-wing platform.

we have to do something. how much worse do things have to get? i just don't know what to say or do anymore.

[Been There]

I hate how he says, (paraphrased,) "Back when I was a kid,
if a guy got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married.
The whole darned neighborhood was involved in that wedding;
they wanted a child to be brought up with two parents, y'know,
'that whole story'."

Yes sir, That Whole Story. The one where a man is forced
to marry a girl he didn't really give two shits about, and they
spend 17 or 25 or... years together in an AWFUL marriage
where she gets beaten, the children get beaten, the children
are molested, he's never faithful to her, brings her all
sorts of diseases home, murders her, and gets out of it because
that WHOLE DARNED NEIGHBORHOOD which was involved
in the marriage showed up to the trial to say that yes, she was
a slut, and yes, she deserved it, because she was mouthy,
and they saw her down at the saloon kissing some man
from out of town, or some woman from out of town, or...

Yeah, we know That Whole Story, Senator Napoli.
And you bunch of square-tinted-glasses freaks can
all rot in hell. Me and a bunch of other people who've
lived that fucking **nightmare** WILL SEE YOU THERE!!!!!!!!

[Nancy S]

Susie,

The Midwest is becoming a very scary place. Here in Missouri a State Senator, Jason Crowell is attempting to introduce similar legislation making Abortion illegal in all cases except to save the life of the woman in extreme cases and what constitutes an extreme case is not very clear. Just makes me sick to think that this could come to pass here. These F-ing Senators who live in their ivory towers have no idea or concept or understanding of what a rape victim who finds herself pregnant goes through psychologically from first of all being so violently violated and who could now face a custody/visitation rights battle with her attacker because she has been denied access to medical treatment to terminate the pregnancy or the abused woman who is living in poverty; already has children she can't afford to clothe or feed (because the same senator's who want to ban abortion also slashed all the social welfare programs that would have assisted her) and doesn't want to bring another child into a family that is already struggling and could face physical or sexual abuse at the hands of his/her father or the young woman whose birth control failed and who, if her family finds out she is pregnant, will disown her; they just have no clue. These situations just don't even touch these Senator's lives, and yet here they are the individuals in power, whose job it is to protect the constituants they represent (now that's joke isn't it) pushing their own moralistic agenda. Not once does a single Senator say they are going to introduce legislation that will pay for all of the medical expenses that go along with having a baby, the prenatal care, the post natal care, the future pediatrician/doctor visits, dental care, clothing, food, education expenses for the "children" they are supposedly saving by making abortion illegal. Makes me so Angry!

[Greta Christina]

Okay. I may get drummed out of the club for saying this. So I want to say first: I am absolutely 100% pro-choice, and this guy Napoli makes me physically ill.

But I've always thought that the "rape/incest" exception idea is bullshit. If you believe that a six-week-old embryo is a human being, what possible difference could it make how that human being was conceived? If you're deciding whether it should be legal to terminate its life, why would that question be relevant? After all, you wouldn't say it was okay to kill a two-year-old child (or a twenty-year-old adult) because he/she was conceived by rape or incest. If it's a person, it's a person.

The "rape/incest" exception that most anti-abortion activists make has always struck me as unimpeachable proof that anti-abortionists are actually not concerned about "life" -- they're concerned about sex. They think people who have sex outside marriage should be "punished" by having to have babies. (What a great life for that baby, huh? Napoli's rant about shotgun weddings chilled me even more than his drooling description of the brutal rape of virgins.) That's the only reason for a rape/incest exception -- that rape/incest survivors didn't have sex on purpose, and therefore shouldn't be punished for it. (Other unimpeachable proof of this includes the fact that most anti-abortionists are also against easily accessible birth control and sex education -- if you really didn't want people to have abortions, wouldn't you want them to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place?)

Anyway. My point is this: I actually think that refusing to make an exception for rape/incest is a more morally consistent position on abortion. As enormously as I disagree with it, if people really believe a fertilized embryo is a human being with full civil rights, there's no reason they should make a distinction between embryos conceived by women who wanted sex and women who didn't.

Sorry to go on for so long. I clearly need to rant about this on my own damn blog...

[Alex]

They make laws like this because they can. It's stupid and pointless to argue how assclowns like this are wrong because it's not going to accomplish anything. They will piss on anyone they can as long as they can.

[Phoenix Woman]

Can you all say "Terri Schiavo"? I knew you could.

Remember how the wingnuts thought that backing Schiavo's parents (and their good friends at Operation Rescue) was a GOOD thing? And how they shot themselves in the foot thereby? (When even two-thirds of the evangelicals sided with Terri's husband, you know that the GOP done f-ed up.)

Already, more than a few right-wingers are being made VERY nervous by the sheer extremism of the SD bill. If anything can get young single women into the voting booths to vote out these clowns, this will.

Oh, and if this blatantly unconstitutional thing moves through the law courts like it should, it gets voted down by a 5-4 margin in the current SCOTUS. (See, the antis are gambling that John Paul Stevens is going to croak in the next two years. Thing is, he's in good health -- and if he lasts until we get a Democrat two years from now, then Roe is safe from this thing.)

[Steve]

Greta - I agree with you completely. I've always thought that's a bogus exception too.

For me, it's up to the woman, regardless of how the baby was conceived. If she doesn't want to go through with the pregnancy, she has the right to terminate it. I don't care about what any other player feels or thinks, THEY don't have to carry the baby. And frankly, I could give a [fill in the blank] whether an abortion is for convenience, or any other reason. If ANY third party doesn't like the reason, then that individual should definitely not get an abortion for that reason. But for Chrissake, they need to stay the hell out of every other individuals right to decide how they are going to handle their own private affairs.

[Miss Syl]

Oh Susie,

My heart is just breaking. How can this even be possible?

Napoi's comments are horrifying and ignorant in so many ways, I can't even begin. Some others here have already commented on his completely misguided views on abortion, so I won't bother repeating that. But what hasn't been mentioned yet is his completely misguided viewpoint on rape. Could he BE more misinformed? Despite public belief to the contrary, the vast majority of sexual assault victims do NOT sustain major physical injuries. And implying a non-virgin getting raped somehow "ranks lower" for people's sympathy than a virgin...my god.

I'm just speechless.

[Kirsty]

That is so disgusting, I actually feel physically sick right now. The utter hatred for women that these men show is just so hideous, I can't believe I have to share the planet with them.

Thank goodness I'm in the UK rather than the US. We've been wondering at what point the UK should start offering political asylum to Americans suffering under the Bush regime.

[Tula]

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/anti-tales.shtml

It's an old article (2000), but an interesting one.

[ShyLilHarlequin]

Abortion should be legal so that women don't have to go to other countries where they could face bacteremia, sepsis, and unsterile conditions that could cause infection and otherwise kill them. People need to understand this and the simple fact that when a woman makes her mind, she will do whatever it takes to make sure she goes through with it. It's better to allow it to happen and just preach against it that to not allow it to happen and have hundreds of women die as well.

Honestly, the people who are trying to stop abortions should spend more time telling their children about how babies are made so that they could stop their darling Christian children from getting pregnant in the first place. I think we should stop the unsafe/unplanned/unprepared sex first and that would stop abortion. People in politics don't look at the right side of the problem.

If we could educate children about the problems with unsafe sex, they would know how to keep these problems from happening.

"Well, it's promoting sex and that's bad!"

No, it's promoting safe sex for those who will most likely become sexually active anyway. At least then there aren't more unwanted children in the system.

[sandra]

Oh my f-ing god -- that is so...I don't even know how to express what a fuckwad that man is. Amazing that people can be THAT out of touch, delusional and insane -- among other things -- at the same time that they are "leading" the country.

[Gwen Masters]

Pompous louts like that jackass are what keep me awake at night. What is really frightening is not that Mr. Bigot said such ignorant, horrible things -- but that a WHOLE ROOM OF ELECTED GOVERNMENT LEADERS accepted it and passed this shit into law!

Proof that silence speaks louder than words.

[Alex]

Anti-Abortionists don't give a rat's ass about fetus rights--not the Anti-Abortionists who count.

Forget about the women in front of Planned Parenthood going "Don't kill your baby!", these women are irrelevent. They're like that girl you knew when you were a kid who would sob if you squished a bug or those people who treat their pets like kids. They're directing a human bond at a non-threatening, non-human object and it's a form of misanthropy, a form of emotional retardation.

But forget them, fetus fondlers who like to cry in public aren't the reason pro-life is in city hall.

I mean, I'm not going to try and argue ethics with one of these people any more than I'm going to argue with a guy who lives in a cave full of Third Reich pariphenalia that the Joos are NOT trying to steal his organs and sell them on the black market. If you have to get every single wingnut in existence to think right before you can exercise your rights then we're all doomed, that's just impossible.

The real reason that any of this crap is an issue is because people who donate the bulk of the money to these causes are afraid of being outbred by the darkies.

White women with demanding careers and birth control prescriptions don't have fourteen kids, baby!

The train of thought goes like this: Muslim women and Black girls on welfare are having fourteen kids each, but middle class white women are using birth control and having abortions and only having two apiece. Irresponsible race traitors that they are.

I've seen those falling birthrate scare articles, so have you, no? Those population projections used to scare the shit out of the ofay readership? "By the year 2088 there will be 20 white people in America, and they'll all work for Blacks."

So when concerned polies get together to talk about the Future of America it goes a little something like this:
"Those welfare queens are out breeding us, by this rate America will only be 4% white by the year 3035! AIEEEEEE!"
"Dear God, Boyd! How do we stop this horrible nightmare future from taking place?! Upper class white women aren't staying home and having fourteen kids, those irrisponsible, race-traitor bitches! Grr!"
"The pregnant teenagers will have to pick up the slack! Quick, write a new law: Nine month waiting period for abortions, and the girl has to walk over a mile of broken glass to prove she really, really needs one."

So that's what's really going on here. That's my opinion, but it happens to be correct.

[Bakari]

"I feel like I'm living Margaret Atwood's vision of America as described in 'The Handmaid's Tale'. I'm twenty-six years old and I don't want my future to look like that."

I've always been haunted by that movie from the first time I saw it, for deep down I really think that the fascist, sexist, and racist State that she describes could be possible, especially when you have a population of citizens who practically demand for that type of control. We best be assured that Napoi doesn't speak for himself. They're are plenty of people in this country who think this type of control over individual rights is the best way to live. They think it will make this country a better place to live. It's truly scary.

[Older]

Online, people are suggesting that "napoli" should become a verb like "santorum". One suggestion is that it mean "to brutally rape and sodomize a virgin", but the problem with that is that "my sister was napolied" just isn't funny.

How about if we define the verb "to napoli" as "to reveal publicly a fantasy that should never have been shared"?

[Alex]

"Napoli" doesn't work as a verb. It would be better as a noun meaning "a raincoater with a morbidly detailed interest in girls in pain, badly camoflaged as a concern for their welfare or the welfare of society/The Children." As in:
"I had this droolin' napoli of a court appointed psychiatrist. He insisted that I punched that guy because I'd been raped as a child and no matter how many times I said I hadn't been he'd circle around to another disturbingly nuanced incest question."
Or:
"Damn, Andrew Vachss is a napoli."

[Bitch]

Dearest Susie and readers,

I'm pissed and I decided to do something about it. It's small, but it's a start.

We're organizing. First, we need to show some organization and strength. Then, we start networking and build an infrastructure. Then, we can respond swiftly to these sexist asshats!

Please help us and learn more about how we can use our blogs -- and cyberspace more generally -- to network and keep on top of the latest information and what we can do to show these people we won't back down.

I've written a post explaining how and why we should build solidarity with, at first, a googlebomb campaign. It's easy and, with any luck, will generate attention.

Susie, I'm just a paramecium in the blogosphere, so if you could help spread the word, that would be great. The other big feminist bloggers pay attention to you, not me!

http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/03/09/grab-your-barf-bags-then-googlebomb-the-sexist-asshat/

[Susie Bright]

Hi everybody... like you, I've been walking around in a fugue somewhere between rage, nausea, and catatonia. Your words, information, and insight have been one of the few things to make me feel alive.

BitchLab, I was happy to add the Napoli bomb to my post, at the very end. Karma just can't catch up with him fast enough, eh?

[Bitch]

Susie! Thanks. I love you for helping to googlebomb.

As for PsychoFuck, me too! But I was thinking that some people wouldn't put that on their blog. Heck, when Brad DeLong linked once, he asterisked out everything after the B in Bitch!
(I've never understood why the asterisks make a diff to anyone. *rolls eyes* )

So, now we're building links about who's out there and I'll make a huge supporters blog roll at blogrolling.com so we can conveniently add to it.

Oh, and I'm going to put together an email list so we can coordinate action, distribute news, share info.

I

[Invigilator]

Some of you folks up thread are really slandering Caesar and Napoleon. As replete with crimes as they were, they were after real power -- over empires -- not to impose some crabbed version of religious morality on their subjects. I don't believe either of them ever tried to use his power to restrict the rights of women, such as they were at the time.

[Stu Brann]

No moderate response to this savage travesty is possible. A movement ought to start as a "Women of S.D. to recall" those who voted in favor of this law.

[corellus]

I think someone should alert the Bush administration, we've found where the Taliban has been hiding...in South Dakota!

[Alex]

Sam Brownback is in the current issue of Newsweek saying: "Rape and incest are horrible crimes, but why punish the innocent child."

How come you never hear about a serial killer who kills senators?

[Caitlin]

Kind of reminds me of a diabolic character in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible": Danforth, the Deputy Governor who drops in during the Salem witchcraft accusations. With a wave of his hand and a nod of his wig, he made sure that no one was exempt from punishment, torture and death, and everyone around him cowered in fear as his closet sadism against young women (but, ultimately, everyone) was revealed with every word that came out of his mouth. Yet, no one wished to cross him, lest they be fingered next as a witch by this powerful politician.