For a good number of years, I have been pursuing the art of a wordsmith. But all of that has now gone by the wayside as we have seen the Republican primaries take place.
Much to my dismay, the aspirants to Barack Obama’s job have brought up a collection of terms of which I am only vaguely familiar.
A few years ago, I produced a small essay having to do with a woman in Greenwich Village who claimed that she had been raped.  In point of fact, she had gone through the East Village telephone directory and simply pulled out a name and charged him with rape.  As it turns out, this gentleman was a homosexual with a history that extended back more than 25 years.  When the case came to trial, the defendant offered an incontrovertible defense of his actions.  After his recitation that he had had no contact with any females in Greenwich Village, he went on to proclaim that “I have never met a vagina personally.”  Now I thought that his remark was so unusual that I devoted an essay to it.  Oh, by the way, the judge dismissed the case.
But that remark pales in comparison with the disclosures and arguments among the Republican aspirants to Mr. Obama’s job.  Apparently there was a provision in a proposed law in the great state of Virginia that persons who wish to have an abortion have to undergo an invasive medical procedure.  The proposed law does not state that only females may be the subject of this discriminatory fact.  Perhaps that is an oversight.
In all of the years that I have been writing essays, I have only referred to the vagina once in the case of the Greenwich Village man who was accused of raping a woman.  This is not a matter of squeamishness on my part, but if the contents of an essay or a letter do not require the use of that term, I see no reason to employ it.
But now the Republicans have ripped the seams off of our attempts at being rational and proper.  In the great state of Virginia a bill was introduced that provided that a woman could not undergo an abortion until she has had a trans-vaginal inspection of one kind or another.  I apologize for not getting the precise term.  When I go to writing about subjects such as this, words tend to escape me.
The Governor of Virginia said that he would sign the bill into law immediately.  Then he backed off and introduced a measure which would not provide for the intrusive nature of the female private parts.  As one female commentator testified, this would involve being completely undressed and having jelly on the outside of the woman’s body, and I suppose an x-ray of some kind or another.
In both cases, it would involve the female wishing to have an abortion becoming undressed to undergo a procedure that is not called for in her medical history.  The simple fact is that the Republicans, in their desire to do away with Roe v. Wade, are attempting to make it as difficult as possible for those seeking an abortion.  And of course those seeking an abortion are almost always females.  Furthermore, the women will have to pay for this unwanted and unnecessary procedure.
I have now been advised that the proper term that aroused my curiosity is a “trans-vaginal ultrasound.”  I suspect that most of the aspirants will be thoroughly inclined to have the woman humiliated.  But it is not my intention to get into the politics, particularly Republican politics.  From what I have observed, the Republican candidates will be submerged in holes that are so deep that they will never escape from them.
What I am commenting on is that the word vagina hardly ever was used by people such as myself writing essays or in normal conversation.  Ah, but that was yesterday.  While I thought that the homosexual man from Greenwich Village saying that he had never met a vagina personally was so unusual, it appears that now the Republicans are insisting upon this precise terminology.  But I suspect that my indignation will be acted upon in the voting booth by the females who are offended by the Republican’s proposed medical practices.
But as we go forward, I would like for my readers to remember that it was the Republicans who brought you the trans-vaginal ultrasound inspections.  For my own part, I will automatically vote against any person who promotes the trans-vaginal inspection business.  I would hope that the sponsors, completely Republican, will soon be out of business.  But unfortunately that is up to the voters in this great American enterprise.  I may be out of step with those who speak of trans-vaginal inspections, but I doubt it.  In any case the trans-vaginal business has now provided a few new words for your vocabulary.
I long for the days of the past when we were surprised by the Greenwich Village man who said that he had “never met a vagina in person.” I liked it better when we were surprised by the use of the word vagina.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I suppose that we will have to be accustomed to the use of the word vagina in news reports, all of which will come to you courtesy of the Republicans aspirants to Barak Obama’s job.
 
E. E. CARR
February 24, 2012
Essay 638
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It baffles me that Republican women exist.  Same goes for the fact that decisions that will only regulate women are decided overwhelmingly by men. Or that prominent politicians can throw around the term “legitimate rape” and not have their careers instantly obliterated.
There are a lot of things wrong here.
Pop’s essay “Reflections on the Wahhabi” covers more of this type of material. Ugh.