Steve King’s understanding of what gives women and people of color worth rests on how useful they are to his vision of civilization. zakcheneyrice writes
Representative Steve King. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Steve King believes that rape is essential to human survival. Speaking to members of the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa, on Wednesday, the Republican congressman defended abortion laws that lack exceptions for incest or sexual assault. In his view, such laws are needed because humans would’ve gone extinct had men not raped large numbers of women and impregnated them.
It’s about as unhinged to suggest that humanity would perish in a rape-free world as to use this claim to force women to endure rape’s consequences — including childbirth — in the year 2019, with no choice, and under threat of criminal punishment. Even so, no outcry from Wednesday’s audience seems to have greeted King’s remarks. But at least one attendee appreciated his explanation for another controversy: The fallout from his racist remarks earlier this year.
But even as King faces rebuke from his fellow Republicans at higher rates than ever before, it remains true that his views on abortion are fairly standard for a member of his party. Abortion bans passed this year by GOP-held legislatures in Missouri and Alabama, and signed into law by their Republican governors, contain no exceptions for rape or incest.
Simply put, in King’s view, the worth of both women and nonwhite people is measured, in large part, by their utility to what he calls “civilization.” And be believes that the truly civilized are white. King euphemizes this belief by framing it as a celebration of “Western” culture and the ideals over which it purports to hold unique providence — reason, freedom of speech, the principle that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.
And that’s to say nothing of how sexual violence against nonwhite women, perpetrated by white men, has advanced white supremacism. The rape of enslaved black women was a regular a feature of how “Western civilization” gained a foothold and expanded in what became the United States. Which is perhaps a more vivid demonstration than any of the primary impulse fueling the desire to control women’s bodies: The pursuit of power.
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