“Nice” John Kasich has not-so-nice things to say about rape

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

This is @JohnKasich's entire answer to a female student who asked about "sexual violence, harassment, and rape" pic.twitter.com/cQOgpubrPv

— Ben Gittleson (@bgittleson) April 15, 2016

There are so many things wrong with what GOP Presidential candidate John Kasich said here that it’s hard to know where to start.

Well, I guess the beginning of it is a good place because that’s where Kasich tried to make an awkward joke about leaving the town hall right then. Because you know how Republican men have been scolded not to mention rape, tee hee. Then there’s the description of female college students, which make up more than half the people attending college at this time, as “coeds”. WTF, people, is it still 1965 in some of your worlds? But the truly appalling thing about Kasich’s answer is how he characterized sexual assault as something that is either the victim’s fault (because she went to a party and drank) or something she needs to “reflect on” (because you know how girls are apt to become hysterical and make up stories to get some nice boy in trouble).

I read the statement several times to be sure that I wasn’t seeing any reference by Kasich to the perpetrators of rape, but no, none was there. Rape is either something that just happens to careless women or a lie they tell to cover up consensual sex (because if you call women “coeds” like it’s 1965 there’s a good chance you also think we live under the same sexual mores where it was shameful for a young unmarried woman to not be a virgin). In fairness, it does seem that Kasich was trying to give a thorough answer and one that conveyed his caring to the young woman, but unfortunately he’s so wedded to anti-choice ideology that he’s incapable of anything approaching actual empathy for a woman, even one who has been raped. What you get instead from him is this demonstration of “benevolent” sexism, which is a thin cover for the uglier misogyny that undergirds many of his policies as Governor of Ohio. Such as when he signed abortion bans with no exceptions for rape and a law denying rape victims access to emergency contraception.

And he’s the “nice” Republican running for President.