US Politics and Rape Culture Fatigue

Nine Deuce reappears with shit that hits the nail on the head:

[…] I, like Lissa Harris, don’t see a huge difference between the way the world works today and the way Ryan Aiken would like it to operate, at least with regard to the prosecution of sexual assault. I suppose my lack of rage at reading and listening to arrogant, presumptuous quotes from smug phallocrats who are at best indifferent to the effect rape has on the individual woman or girl and on women and girls as a whole might be a symptom of rape fatigue, but I suspect I’ve been suffering from it for far longer than a few months, and that it has something to do with the paucity of posts around here. If the Kübler-Ross model is correct, then I suppose I’ve passed through the denial and anger phases and entered the acceptance phase in grieving the loss of the idea that men give a shit about women.

The Kübler-Ross model is more or less bullshit–and lol could I ever provide anecdata to that effect–but that really gives shape to this amorphous fatigue I’ve been sitting in since I gave up on the 2011 abortion legislation post halfway through the year.  I don’t write a lot about the specifics of US politics (particularly elections) for a number of reasons, and the fact that virtually nothing ever really changes is a major one.  Right-wing bodily autonomy laws certainly have material effects for the people who live under them.  There is no question of that.  But we still lived under a victim-hating rape culture, we still had hidden and dangerous abortions before this whac-a-mole legislation became all the rage a couple of years ago, and it’s extremely tiresome to see (and, yes, participate in) so much look-what-the-bad-man-said-this-time internet keymashing as if they haven’t been saying this shit and doing damage to us for thousands of years, as if our shame-fingers are going to do a damned thing to stop it.

I don’t have anything eloquent to say.  I don’t really have a one-stop solution to offer, other than radical revolt, and all that. I just wanted to toss a little bit of solidarity into the internet for anyone else who’s in the same landboat.

Feel free to vent in comments or in an email to the address on the right.