So, two weeks after the election, out of a weird curiosity, I decided to run a Google search to see whether the GOP Rape Advisory Chart was still floating around.
I knew about the 19,000 Tumblr reposts from SexGenderBody alone, and have learned of another 23,000 from Hearth Cricket.
I knew that the original version had been shared over 23,000 times from dKos and had well over 21,000 Facebook Likes.
I knew that the 4 volumes, combined, have received nearly 32,000 visits at Eclectablog.
I knew that it had shown up on Alternet, the Democratic Underground, Dan Savage, Richard Dawkins and even Balloon Juice.
From there, I knew that the original (and the second, third and fourth editions, to a lesser extent) started popping up everywhere:
The Blue Door
NewsVine
SystemWars
Essays & Effluvia
A Piece of My Mind
In A Gist
eWallStreeter
TruthHugger
Topsy
All That I Can’t Leave Unsaid
AZ Central
Democratic Diva
The New Civil Rights Movement
Trees and Flowers and Birds
Daily Kos’ own Rachel Colyer sent it out to all 200,000+ of you guys as a fundraiser email blast.
Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think that something that I wrote would be reposted by Wil Wheaton and, incredibly, Neil Gaiman.
I also knew that it had hit YouTube...repeatedly:
The Young Turks
The David Pakman Show
Mike Malloy
Unknown 1
Unknown 2
This one is just surreal.
...as well as at least one podcast: The Left Show
I knew that it had made the print (and online) edition of the Pekin Daily Times of Illinois, syndicated to numerous GateHouse Media papers nationwide.
I knew that it had been translated--en masse--into Greek.
Since the election, it's continued to get reposted at a range of sites:
http://www.anarcho-punk.net/...
http://www.theliberalgunclub.com/...
http://thefivefoldpath.wordpress.com/...
http://www.politicaldog101.com/...
http://alwaysquestionauthority.com/...
http://awaypoint.wordpress.com/...
http://plumstchili.blogspot.com/...
Another video version: https://www.youtube.com/...
However, what I didn't know until yesterday was that Melissa Harris-Perry apparently used the first version of the chart as the introduction to this incredibly powerful 5-minute tirade on MSNBC against Richard Mourdock, the failed Indiana Senate candidate, just 4 days after his "Gift from God" statement (and just 3 days after I posted the original version).
Yes, the election is over. Yes, Mourdock got his ass handed to him, as did Todd Akin and many of the other assholes in the charts (others, sadly, continue to have the power to write legislation that impacts women at the state or, in some cases, federal level).
However, I'd still strongly advise EVERYONE, male or female, to watch this:
To which I respond:
Thank you, Ms. Harris-Perry. I'm honored and humbled to have been a part (however small) of your "Dear Mr. Mourdock" video letter.
And for those curious about how all 4 volumes look when placed all together, here it is...I had to shrink it down to 1/4 size to keep the diary even close to readable; click on it to open the full-size version:
Update: Since this has obviously re-opened the discussion about all things revolting in the GOP when it comes to rape, pregnancy and abortion, here's another gallon of gasoline to throw on the fire:
Huckabee: Rapes Create Some Amazing People
Rapes are "horrible," but sometimes they produce "extraordinary" people, one-time GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told Missouri Rep. Todd Akin during his radio show yesterday. “Ethel Waters, for example, was the result of a forcible rape,” Huckabee said of the late singer. “I used to work for James Robison back in the 1970s. He leads a large Christian organization. He was the result of a forcible rape," Huckabee pointed out to Akin.
He added: "I know it happens, and yet even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, those people are able to do extraordinary things.” Huckabee, who will be a speaker at the GOP National Convention, was attempting to provide the "softest possible landing" for Akin following the congressman's "foolish comments" about "legitimate rape" not resulting in pregnancy, notes the Los Angeles Times. Asked if his comments could destroy his Senate bid against incumbent Claire McCaskill, Akin shrugged off the question, saying he was not the first politician to suffer from "foot-in-mouth disease."
Also, while I'm on the subject, here's another incredibly disturbing bit of news which isn't even necessarily Republican-specific:
31 States Allow Rapists Custody and Visitation Rights
In the wake of Todd Akin's comments about pregnancy rarely resulting from "legitimate rape," lawyer Shauna Prewitt highlights a reality for women in that situation in a column on CNN: In a majority of states, attackers are afforded the same rights as other fathers.
Prewitt, herself a rape survivor who gave birth to a daughter as a result of her attack, explains that 31 states have no laws that bar rapists from seeking custody or visitation rights. For Prewitt that astounding fact is personal. Her rapist attempted to get custody of her daughter, "but thankfully I got lucky and his visitation rights were terminated," she said, according to a profile of her by The Am Law Daily's Brain Baxter. She added: "I'm not sure I would have made the decision I did had I known I might be tethered to my rapist for the rest of my life."
In a paper published in the The Georgetown Law Journal in 2010 — when the number of states without such laws were even greater — Prewitt argued that the absence "stems from the images and other societal rhetoric that depict the prototypical raped woman as hating her unborn child and as viewing her rape pregnancy as continuing her rape trauma." In her CNN piece, she blames it on "ignorance": Some believe that women don't raise children conceived from rape, others can't fathom a rapist wanting parental rights.