rape

Vaccine mandates are NOT rape – debunking another anti-vax trope

Anti-vaxxers love their ridiculous strawman arguments against vaccines – recently, it’s comparing vaccine mandates to rape. Yes, you read this right they want you to believe that vaccination is equivalent to rape.

COVID-19 vaccine mandates (actually, any vaccine mandate from before the pandemic) have caused the anti-vaxxers to use all kinds of false equivalence and disgusting imagery in tropes from rape to the Holocaust. Some are even more disgusting, giving us an indication of the filth that encompasses the anti-vaccine world. But comparing vaccine mandates to rape is possibly the most disgusting, though we could argue about that.

The trope that mandated vaccination is rape has been around for a while. And the usual suspects on the pro-science side have done their best to demolish it. The secretive Orac wrote about it – “there’s a disturbing amount of rape imagery, both subtle and not-so-subtle, in the language used by antivaccinationists to describe vaccination.”

I’m actually running out of adjectives and adverbs to describe the activities of anti-vaccine zealots lately. But claiming vaccine mandates are rape is going to test my knowledge of the English language.

Vaccination is rape – another disgusting and ridiculous anti-vaccine trope

It’s hard to keep up with all the warm bovine manure that emanates from the typing fingers of the anti-vaccine religion. Of course, like a zombie, various anti-vaccine myths and tropes keep returning, as if the anti-vaccine crowd thinks we forget about it from year to year. Some of these tropes are merely laughable. Some are disgusting, giving us an indication of the filth that encompasses the anti-vaccine world. But a returning claim that vaccination is rape is one of the foulest and most reprehensible conceits of the anti-vaccine superstition.

Generally, I take one day a week to read all of the Disqus comments on this website. Most of the comments from the anti-vaccine sect are the usual repugnant claims. I’m a Big Pharma Shill. Dorit Rubinstein Reiss is a Big Pharma Shill who apparently owns 97% of one or more pharmaceutical companies. We’re in collusion with the CDC to hide the truth about vaccines. Same ad hominem personal attacks, different day.

While drinking my favorite coffee, I ran across a comment so vile, so heinous, so disgusting that I wasn’t sure that I read it right – vaccination is rape. What?

Apparently, many of the pro-science side have dealt with this claim before – I must be naive because I never heard of it. But I was wrong, the trope that vaccination is rape has been around for awhile. And the usual suspects on the pro-science side have done their best to demolish it. The secretive Orac wrote about it – “there’s a disturbing amount of rape imagery, both subtle and not-so-subtle, in the language used by antivaccinationists to describe vaccination.”

I’m actually running out of adjectives and adverbs to describe the activities of anti-vaccine religion lately. But claiming vaccination is rape is going to test my knowledge of English language.Read More »Vaccination is rape – another disgusting and ridiculous anti-vaccine trope