Joe Benning Goes There — Again

What is it with Sen. Joe Benning and rape? He sure does love to use the word. And one of these days it’s going to blow up in his face. “Rape” is one of those words, like “holocaust,” that politicians should avoid at all costs. Because for millions of American women, “rape” is not just a powerful verb, it’s a soul-crushing personal experience. Nearly one in five women in America report that they have been raped or been the target of attempted rape.* So if you use the word in mixed company, chances are that someone in your audience will hear it very differently than you intended.

*For men, the figure is one in 71.

Back in mid-January, I pointed out Benning’s truly unfortunate use of “rape” in reference to Kingdom Community Wind on Lowell Mountain. It wasn’t in passing conversation; it was in an opinion piece at VTDigger.

And yesterday, during floor debate on S.30, he used it again.

“I don’t know any word in the English language to better describe what I see there,” he said, passing out pictures of the project’s construction on the Lowell Mountain ridgeline.

Well, Senator, not to be crude or anything, but if you’d ever felt something unwanted being rammed into your rectum with a knife pressed to your neck, you might get out your Thesaurus and find a better word. There are nine female state Senators; statistically speaking, chances are that two of them have been sexually assaulted during their lifetimes. Not to mention the women in the press corps and gallery, plus all those who heard or read Benning’s remarks.

I won’t even get into the question of whether Lowell Mountain truly experienced anything akin to rape. I’m just saying — again — that Joe Benning’s use of the word is offensive and inappropriate, and he needs to cut it out.  

16 thoughts on “Joe Benning Goes There — Again

  1. And I doubt she said yes.  I think it’s apt.  

    Strange to read that you are ‘concerned’ about offensive language.

  2. Katrinka, I agree with John Walters here.  Joe Benning should stop using rape as a metaphor.  It is a tempting, dramatic term to throw around; nonetheless, I, too, find it inappropriate and offensive.  Before I get too high and holy, though, I imagine I myself have used it wrongly in the past.

    If I were Benning’s speechwriter — and I am not — I might have had him use this comment by John Muir when the Hetch Hetchy dam was being proposed:

    It is impossible to overestimate the value of wild mountains and mountain temples as places for people to grow in, recreation grounds for soul and body. They are the greatest of our natural resources, God’s best gifts, but none, however high and holy, is beyond reach of the spoiler.

    At the same time, I personally find comments such as these offensive and demeaning:

    Paul Burns and his colleagues in the Vermont environmental movement have been ruthlessly pilloried by the Tinfoil Hat Brigade of the anti-wind crowd.

    John Walters wrote this in a prior diary, and he uses it from time to time in other postings.  

    Having lived in an urban area for part of my career, I have seen people wearing tin hats, draping themselves with aluminum foil, even during Mass.  They are generally paranoid and schizophrenic souls.  Maybe I am a little sensitive because I have had a family member who was a paranoid schizophrenic. For John to characterize folks opposed to mountaintop wind turbines as the Tinfoil Hat Brigade is, to me, tasteless and lamentable, as was Benning’s use of the term “rape.”  

  3. You’ve arrived. The comments in your diaries are now concerned with you personally, rather than the topic you write about.

    Ah, memories…

  4. Honestly I have no clue but…….It sounds to me like Benning has been bought and paid for by the anti-wind fruitcakes. I have heard this same old tired rape line for years now from the likes of Ann Morse, Steve Wright, Anette Smith et al. They have been using the term rape together with the other all to familiar ones “Flattening of the Mountain, windscam, windfail etc etc etc etc”. I would not be surprised the find that some of the same funds that payed for the “Lowell Occupation”have found their way into Benning’s pocket. Now if only Benning would start spouting off some of Willem Post’s TOTAL BS numbers we could really have a hoot!!

  5. METAPHOR?–Hmmmm…….

    Well, let’s remember that the R word primarily stands for violence against women.  Perhaps its use by people of the Republican persuasion, who are perhaps saying something subliminally when they use it, diminishes its real definition.  There are folks who say:  “SINGLE MOTHERS is a disrespectful term.  You should just say WORKING WOMEN.”  Uh-huh.  Working women who just happen to be getting (what’s that word?) by a system that continually looks to disempower and rob people while giving the Rich and the Corporate Reich (including the POWER COMPANIES) the spoils.

    When RAPE becomes a Politically Incorrect Word, I think that’s the day to pack in it all in and say: “Liberalism has won.  Nothing means anything anymore.  We stand for nothing.  Except our Right to TAKE AWAY the rights of others who won’t join the Key Club.  Go ahead North Korea.  Push them buttons.  We’re as good as dead here anyway.”

    Sad insidious shit.

       

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