Rick Santorum, Boy Gender Fascist
©2012 by Dallas Denny
Rick Santorum, Boy Gender Fascist
Over the past few weeks it seems Rick Santorum has accused anyone who even remotely gets under his skin of being a bully. He called Mitt Romney a bully back in February. Earlier in the week, at a campaign event in Wisconsin, he called unions bullies. And he accused New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny of trying to bully him.
But an incident at a campaign stop at a bowling alley yesterday betrays that Santorum is so obsessed with bullies because he looks at one one every morning in the mirror.
According to Reuters reporter Sam Youngman, who tweeted what he heard, Santorum had some advice for a little boy who was reaching for a pink bowling ball: “You’re not gonna use the pink ball. We’re not gonna let you do that. Not on camera.”
— Michelangelo Signorile, 2012
Dwight David Eisenhower wouldn’t recognize the Republican Party of today. It has devolved into a crass political theater, nationally and state-by-state blaming Barack Obama for everything, even his birth; robbing working men and women of hard-won collective bargaining rights; dismantling environmental protections by limiting the EPA and denying global warming; playing brinksmanship with foreign policy; attempting to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, and other social welfare programs; eliminating regulations on the nation’s corrupt megabanks; keeping taxes on corporations and American’s wealthiest men and women low while punishing the middle class; promising to dismantle the entire national government; and making up the most outrageous lies — for instance that there were no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during George W. Bush’s administration.
It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. But worse are attempts by Republicans to roll back a half-century of social progress by women, gay men and lesbians, and transgendered and transsexual Americans.
Flying under cover of the Bible, Republicans are stripping women of their reproductive freedoms, requiring them to have humiliating and invasive medical transvaginal ultrasound procedures; empowering rape and rapists by requiring women to carry rape fetuses to term; and even attempting to require women to stay in marriages to abusive husbands. Then, when called out on their war against women, they blame Democrats, claiming negative attention called to their antics is the actual war on women!
All Republicans aren’t like this, of course, but most of those who aren’t are marching in lockstep with the craziest and even trying to outdo one another by ratcheting up the insanity. It has become a national tragedy, a circus of lunacy that needs a few courageous Republicans to step forth and say, as Joseph Nye Welch said to Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954, “Have you no decency sir, at last? Have you no sense of decency?”
In terms of fake piousness, Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is one of the worst offenders. He has likened sex between gay males with bestiality and pedophilia and sex with inanimate objects and has even blamed the economic crisis on gay Americans. If elected President, he promises, he will annul all same-sex marriages. He has promised to appeal all federal funding for contraception and wants the state to outlaw birth control. He has claimed abortion exceptions like incest and rape are phony, thinks health insurers should discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, and advocates profiling of Muslim Americans (see this).
In 2003 Santorum’s homophobia caught the attention of writer Dan Savage, who held a contest to define the word santorum. Here’s the winner: “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of gay sex.” Savage created the website spreadingsantorum.com, and for years it came up first in search engines when Santorum was input. It still comes up first after the paid placements.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that Santorum is a gender fascist. He showed his true colors last week in that bowling alley when a young boy started to pick up a pink bowling ball and Santorum said, “You’re not gonna use the pink ball. We’re not gonna let you do that. Not on camera.”
One can only imagine what went through Santorum’s fundamentalist head. ZOMG, it’s a dreaded evil pink bowling ball! Pink is a color associated with girls, and the boy might get cooties or something if he touches it. And cooties are horrible! Girls are weak and inferior and the boy might get infected and lose his masculinity. He might even become a fag. And what could be more horrible? Nothing! That’s the most horrible thing in the world, except for losing his penis. And speaking of that, the poor boy might even want a sex change or something after touching that ball. So for god’s sake take that frigging bowling ball out of here and paint it black and disinfect that kid with Lysol!
This is amazing reasoning from a man who wears sweater-vests. I mean, Santorum looks and acts like a three on the Kinsey scale, and that unfortunate choice of clothing they make Santorum bumps him all the way up to six!
The misogyny and homophobia Santorum showed with those few words is just overpowering: he said by his words that a boy who is associated with anything even remotely feminine (even a neutral object like a bowling ball if it’s painted a color associated with femininity) is somehow contaminated, demasculinized, derailed from his god-appointed right to be a man, sissified, demeaned, diminished, possibly forever.
There is, of course, nothing inherently feminine about a pink bowling ball. After all, less than one hundred years ago pink was the color associated with boys and men and blue was the color for girls and women. Nor, of course, is there anything wrong with a boy being feminine. In fact, some people think it’s a good thing — a boy is a better boy for embracing his femininity.
Most likely that young boy just made an unfortunate choice of bowling ball. He’s probably not gay or trans. If he were, Santorum’s words would have been soul-crushing. And if he’s not, I can only imagine how shamed, frightened, and angry he must have been to be so publicly humiliated by a Presidential candidate, no less.
Michelangelo Signorile got it right. Rick Santorum is a bully — and he certainly showed it in his unnecessary public scolding of that child!
Sources
Signorile, Michelangelo. (2012, 29 March). Rick Santorum and the pink bowling ball: A man with a bully complex.
Editor’s Note: Some reports have said that the “young boy” was a member of a young Republican’s group and may have been a teen or young adult. Some stories say he is a college student.
Category: Legal, Transgender Community News, Transgender Opinion
About the Author (Author Profile)
Dallas Denny’s contributions to transgender activism, knowledge, and history are legendary and span four decades. She was the first voice thousands of desperate transpeople heard when they reached out for help, and she provided the information and referrals they so desperately needed. She is a prolific writer. Her books, booklets, magazines she has edited, and articles fill an entire bookcase and are in danger of spilling over into a second bookcase. She has created and led several national nonprofit organizations, been present at the creation of at least five transgender conferences, and led two long-lived support groups, She created the first trans-exclusive archive of printed and recorded literature, which today is available to the public at Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan. She has been a fierce advocate for transgender autonomy and access to medical care. Through it all, she has stayed on task, and made it all about the task at hand rather than about herself. Now, in her mid-seventies, she maintains the same frenetic pace she has kept up since the 1980s. Dallas’ work is viewable in its entirety on her website.Subscribe
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