By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 11 years ago

Quote of the Day: State lawmaker calls women “vaginas”

Here’s what New Hampshire State Rep. Peter Hansen wrote in an email to the official legislative listserv in response to a debate on a gun bill earlier this month.

What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels of Amsterdam? Why children and vagina’s of course. While the tales relate the actions of a solitary male the outcome cannot relate to similar situations where children and women and mothers are the potential victims.

I’ll just echo Hansen’s colleague State Rep. Rick Watrous: “Are you really using ‘vaginas’ as a crude catch-all for women? Really?”

But seriously…

Amy and Seth on SNL saying "Really?!?"

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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