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

I have not seen this on DU yet, and I apologize of this is a re-re-re-re-post...but of all the stuff that has been written about Akin, "legitimate rape" and the rank insanity of the modern GOP, this article is (in my opinion) head and shoulders above the rest. Jezebel has had amazing coverage of the whole fiasco, but this article is without peer...and the last paragraph is what makes it art.



Rape Fatigue and You: When There’s Just No Anger Left
By Erin Gloria Ryan
Jezebel

(snip)

Akin's statements didn't surprise me, but the depth of his ignorance and the extent to which people with a lot more power than I have back him up did, no matter how many times it's reiterated to me (Remember this? Or this? Or this?). I'm not jaded enough to accept this as par for the well-manicured, men-only course, but should I be? Sure, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, John Cornyn, Sean Hannity, and a host of "unnamed GOP officials" paid lip service to disapproving the sentiment, but then went ahead and ratified an official party platform that promotes a constitutional amendment that would outlaw abortions with no exception for rape or incest and wrote in an Official Bro Fist Bump for states who require women seeking abortions to receive a (penalty dick) mandatory ultrasound before terminating their pregnancies.

(snip)

When part of your job is delivering bad news, part of your job is constantly reading bad news. And, implicitly, occasionally drinking an entire bottle of wine on a Tuesday or taking a long, aimless walk that takes you all the way across the Manhattan Bridge and into the section of Chinatown that smells like an army of zombie fish. It's sitting at your family's dinner table during your summer vacation, unable to think of things to talk about with your own father that don't involve female anatomy or the regulation thereof. It's falling asleep in front of an episode of Arrested Development you've already seen 1,000 times because the scene when Tobias ascends the hill dressed as a mole makes you temporarily forget the cloud of ugh.

(snip)

Paying attention, digesting, and reacting to every dismaying War on Women news item that hits my inbox or reddit or endless alarming "PLEASE SEND MONEY NOW. WE NEED YOU - Michelle" emails that I still get from the Obama campaign after donating during 2008 can start to wear down on a person after awhile. Earlier this year, I pitched a "depressing new state laws governing or related to your ladybits" post to my editor, thinking it would take me about a week to research. There was so much shit to wade through that it took me almost a month. Along with scores of other women, I watched, agape, when Congressman Darrell Issa hosted a panel on birth control featuring all religious men whining about how allowing women to purchase birth control with their health care plans violated the men's religious freedom. I watched the entire multi-hour web stream of the hearing, thinking that maybe these men were just being deliberate assholes, that this was the newest realm of the urban hipster. Choosing to be religious and using that choice to interfere with women choosing not to be pregnant. Hipsters love irony. And when Virginia lawmakers pushing for mandatory transvaginal ultrasound laws were quoted saying, basically, that pregnant women had already been penetrated vaginally once, so it makes perfect sense for the state to require they be penetrated again, I winced so hard I think I strained something. Remember the time when Terry England of Georgia justified his support of a bill that would force women pregnant with nonviable fetuses to carry them to term with the fact that he was a farmer and sometimes livestock delivered stillborn baby farm animals and it was very, very sad? I did, until the memory was temporarily displaced by the next crappy thing a man who is actually in charge of stuff said. I was so fed up with Todd Akin's assholery yesterday and so distracted by the fact that he used a picture of a backlit fetus on the page he used to panhandle for signatures supporting his decision to stay in the race that I missed the fact that he misused YOUR, which is the sort of thing that pedants like me typically receive with gleeful schadenfreude.

(snip)

Eventually a person gets to the point where they can longer withstand the constant blitzkrieg of bullshit. So, Steve King, Todd Akin, and shouty Twitter conservatives: you win. Rape outrage limit reached. I have given this all of my fucks, and the fucks I have given are still not enough fucks. So many more fucks need to be given, and I have exhausted my fuck supply. The fucks are on backorder. Employees are working overtime to restock my fucks, but in the meantime, please accept this 10% off coupon while we wait for the fucks to arrive via FedEx. I'll be over here, drinking wine from a Pac Man mug and watching cartoons.

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