We all know that the entire clown car of GOP candidates running for the presidential nomination are terrible when it comes to women’s issues. Sadly, one of the Democrats isn’t so great either. The problem is so out of hand that it's hard to keep everybody's insensitive comments about women straight, so we here at BTL decided to put together a handy-dandy list of insane quotes to remind us all about who said what.
There are some real doozies here, but it’s important to note that this list is VERY incomplete…you’ll notice there’s no Trump on here at all. (That was a rabbit hole far too deep to even venture down.) So enjoy! Or actually, don’t enjoy the list at all. Get angry! And if you can think of anything important that we left off, let us know!
Ben Carson (R):
Women Need to be Re-Educated
“There is no war on them, the war is on their babies. Babies that cannot defend themselves. Over the past few decades, we have destroyed 55 million of them. And we have the nerve to call other societies of the past heathen...What we need to do is re-educate the women to understand that they are the defenders of these babies.”
(Source)
Black men are being killed by police because of Feminism
“Certainly in a lot of our inner cities, in particular the black inner cities, where 73 percent of the young people are born out of wedlock, the majority of them have no father figure in their life. Usually the father figure is where you learn how to respond to authority. So now you become a teenager, you’re out there, you really have no idea how to respond to authority, you eventually run into the police or you run into somebody else in the neighborhood who also doesn’t know how to respond but is badder than you are, and you get killed or you end up in the penal system.”
Then, when American Family Radio host Lauren Kitchen Stewards broke in to tie his remarks to young people’s “sense of entitlement,” Carson traced it all back to the women’s liberation movement: “I think a lot of it really got started in the ’60s with the ‘me generation.’ ‘What’s in it for me?’ I hate to say it, but a lot of it had to do with the women’s lib movement. You know, ‘I’ve been taking care of my family, I’ve been doing that, what about me?’ You know, it really should be about us,” he said.
(Source)
Jeb! (R):
He Would Know
At a 2015 Southern Baptist Convention event in Nashville: “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.”
(Source)
Lindsey Graham (R):
Single Life
He’s single, and when asked about a potential first lady, he said:
“Well, I’ve got a sister. She could play that role if necessary. I’ve got a lot of friends. We’ll have a rotating first lady,” he added.
In response to this, Rep. Mark Kirk gave him some “light hearted grief” and called him a “bro with no ho”.
(Source)
Good Things Will Happen
He also introduced legislation to ban abortion after 20 weeks in every state, and when asked about it he said: “If we can convince the American people to provide assistance and prevent abortions at the 20th week, nothing bad is going to happen. Good things will happen.”
(Source)
Carly Fiorina (R):
Fiorina on Feminism
It’s a “left-leaning political ideology where women are pitted against men and used as a political weapon to win elections.”
(Source)
Apparently, it’s...
“It is time to declare the end of identity politics.”
But would someone who wants to “end identity politics” go to the National Federation of Republican women and say/do this: “Ladies, look at this face. This is the face of a 61-year-old woman. I am proud of every year and every wrinkle, adding “look at all of your faces—the faces of leadership.”
(Carly For America PAC then turned these remarks into a decidedly feminist video, with the voiceover of Fiorina’s remarks playing against a slideshow of proud-looking ordinary American women.)
(Source)
Ted Cruz (R):
Questionable Humor
From a New York Times piece about the Republican presidential contender’s time on the Princeton University debate team and his questionable sense of humor:
“In one debate, he proposed a method to detect infidelity, in which God should ‘give women a hymen that grows back every time she has intercourse with a different guy, because that will be a ‘visible sign’ of the breach of trust.’”
(Source)
Health Consequences
At a Senate hearing on a bill to protect women’s access to abortion services:
“This legislation is a very real manifestation of a war on women,” Sen. Ted Cruz said at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “given the health consequences that unlimited abortion access has had on many woman.”
(Source)
Mike Huckabee (R):
Uncle Sugar
"Women are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do."
But women believe that we are "helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government."
(Source)
Trashy
After leaving Fox News in January to hit the presidential trail, Huckabee complained of “culture shock” while working at Fox News’ New York office and singled out his former female co-workers:
“In the South, or in the Midwest, there in Iowa, you would not have people who would just throw the F-bomb or use gratuitous profanity in a professional setting...In New York, not only do the men do it, but the women...My gosh, this is worse than locker-room talk. As we would say in the South, that’s just trashy.”
(Source)
Sasha and Malia
in his 2013 book, God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, Huckabee criticized the Obamas for allowing their daughters, Sasha and Malia, to listen to Beyoncé and wrote that the superstar's husband, rapper Jay-Z, may be "crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a sex object."
(Source)
Victims of Their Gender
“I think it’s time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a 'war on women,'" Huckabee said during a speech at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in Washington. "The fact is the Republicans don’t have a war on women, they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”
BONUS: Famous Misogynists Huckabee Has Defended
Todd Aiken (post legitimate rape comment)
Jim Webb (D):
*We're aware that Webb JUST dropped out of the race, but we couldn't resist including a few quotes from his infamous screed on why women shouldn't be allowed in combat.
From his 1979 article “Women Can’t Fight”
“There is a place for women in our military, but not in combat. And their presence at institutions dedicated to the preparation of men for combat command is poisoning that preparation. By attempting to sexually sterilize the Naval Academy environment in the name of equality, this country has sterilized the whole process of combat leadership training, and our military forces are doomed to suffer the consequences.”
“These advocates march under the banner of equal opportunity. Equal opportunity for what? They should first understand that they would not be “opening up” the combat arms for those few women who might now want to serve in them, but rather would be forcing American womanhood into those areas, en masse, should a future mobilization occur.”
“And I have never met a woman, including the dozens of female midshipmen I encountered during my recent semester as a professor at the Naval Academy, whom I would trust to provide those men with combat leadership.”
“Introducing women into combat units would greatly confuse an already confusing environment and would lessen the aggressive tendencies of the units, as many aggressions would be directed inward, toward sex. rather than outward, toward violence. “
(Full text here)
Also, check out this look at Jim Webb’s creepy, mysogynistic novels:
http://www.vice.com/read/weird-wild-novels-of-democratic-presidential-candidate-jim-webb-1121