Rape Fatigue and You: When There’s Just No Anger Left

I appreciated this article, since the wave of Akin-Assange threads have left my face aching from the facepalms.

http://jezebel.com/5936679/rape-fatigue-and-you-when-theres-just-no-anger-left

Since around 2pm on Monday, I've felt like a contestant on a sadistic Japanese game show, donning an American flag bikini and a blindfold, covered in glue and standing in a phone booth, trying to catch dollar bills with my flailing arms as an industrial strength blower propels cash around me at high speeds. But instead of cash, I'm trying to process and react to a veritable blizzard of ignorant, rape-related bullshit flowing unabated from the mouths of conservative lawmakers in America. Reading story after story of how, say, a cranky old coot of a doctor peddling medically dangerous misinformation has somehow informed half of the American public's views on women's health care, or how, say, another dude — always a fucking dude — is saying that he doesn't think that pregnancy from statutory rape or incest is really A Thing since he personally doesn't know any pregnant kids or how, say, the GOP is condemning this sort of Wingnut Real Talk while quietly inserting a mandatory ultrasound hat tip/constitutional amendment that would force all rape victims to carry their assailant's child to term into their official party platform has worn me down.

I am at full rape capacity. I am officially in the throes of rape fatigue.

The first time I had to get up and walk away from my computer, shaking my head in disbelief, was when I first found out about Akin's morning show shenanigans. Really!? "Legitimate rape" victims don't get pregnant because of some unknown mechanism in the female body that "shuts that whole thing down?" My Twitter feed exploded with jokes about how Akin envisions that the female anatomy contains an army of scrubbing bubbles, about how legitimate murder shouldn't cause death, how the doctors Akin spoke with must think that the uterus has the personality of a Schutzhund champion. A uterus dentata, if you will. But rather than sharing in the embarrassment and chastising Akin for talking yang about crap he had no business talking about, the knee jerk reaction from the conservative loudmouths I hatefollow for their entertainment value was to defend Akin, or point out how Biden saying that dumb thing about chains was SO MUCH WORSE. Yes. Let's protect our own fragile illusion of perpetual correctness above all else. BEING SHOUTY IS ALL WE HAVE! NEVER STOP SHOUTING!

~snip~

But even though I wish it would, it doesn't stop. Rep. Todd Akin still leads Claire McCaskill in the polls by a point and refuses to drop out of the race. Voters — millions and millions of them — will still cast their ballots for people like Akin and Iowa Rep. Steve King this election, even though they've made it their business to deregulate the hell out of banks and regulate the shit out of women. I hate to sound like a crotchety YouTube commenter who just watched a clip of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo for the first time, but what is wrong with this country? We have so far to go before we're even close to where we need to be for human beings to coexist in a state that is not terrifyingly precarious for one or more historically disenfranchised groups. This story and the garbage avalanche that has followed feels like stepping outside of my apartment one morning and realizing that I had traveled through time to 1955. Or 1200. I feel like a teacher who just gave a long division test only to discover that most of her students don't know how to subtract.