#LiberalTips2AvoidRape: The Most Horrible Hashtag Of The Week Thus Far, Explained | Mother Jones
There’s this new hashtag #LiberalTips2AvoidRape that’s now on its second day of trending on Twitter.
For the uninitiated, this isn’t an example of right-wingers deciding out-of-the-blue to be insensitive to rape victims. They have their reason, and his name is Joe Salazar, a first-term Democratic state representative in Colorado. On Friday, Salazar spoke on the state House floor in support of House Bill 13-1226, which would eliminate “the authority of a concealed handgun permit holder to possess a concealed handgun on the campus of an institution of high education.” In other words, Salazar’s bill would ban concealed firearms on college campuses in Colorado. Opponents of the proposed legislation maintain that banning concealed carry on campuses would make it harder for students to protect themselves against mass shooters and rapists on school grounds.
Salazar came down on the side of those who believe that more loaded guns on college campuses is a terrible idea. (This isn’t such a radical opinion if you look at the data.) He delivered the following rebuttal on the state House floor:
It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, that’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at. And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around, or if you feel like you’re in trouble and when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop… pop a round at somebody.
There’s footage of the speech here.
It’s pretty clear what Salazar was trying to say: Frightened college kids carrying handguns might result in unintended casualties. You could argue that it was clumsily phrased, but there isn’t anything nefarious. The statement was so blah that the Colorado House Republican minority didn’t bother to issue a press release about Salazar’s statement. At least not until after conservative bloggers, seeking to brand somebody the Democratic Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, commenced their social-media freak-out during the long President’s Day weekend.
Salazar was labeled the new poster boy for the “real war on women,” and painted as someone who denies women the right to protect themselves against sexual assault. He was portrayed as an out-of-touch, gun-stealing lefty who promoted blowing a whistle over actually fighting off an attack. Many also latched onto Salazar’s “you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped,” upgraded the meaning to something around the lines of, “women can’t ever tell when they’re about to get raped/getting raped,” and voilà! New Todd Akin.
“It’s not ‘rape-rape’ until a male Dem gives his stamp of approval, you dumb broads,” an anonymous staff writer wrote at this website founded by conservative pundit Michelle Malkin. Her site has been at the forefront of the Salazar-related uproar. Dana Loesch, Glenn Beck, Herman Cain’s CainTV, folks at Fox News, and many others piled on accordingly.
Another reason why Mother Jones rocks!
Forty years after Roe v. Wade, the decision itself is intact, but in wide swaths of the country, safe, legal abortion looks more like a privilege than a right. Some 87% of U.S. counties lack a single abortion provider. As state legislators devise new ways to restrict women’s access, and physicians eschew the procedure to avoid threats and intimidation, the prospects for reproductive freedom can start to look bleak. But technology may yet hold a trump card.
Rachel Maddow on Obama’s Re-election
Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. And he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States. Again. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to oversample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing! And Benghazi was an attack ON us, it was not a scandal BY us. And nobody is taking away anyone’s guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as Communism.
Listen. Last night was a good night for liberals and for Democrats for very obvious reasons. But it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country we have a two party system, in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas, from both sides, about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican party, and the conservative movement, and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum sealed, door locked, spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good, and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived, as a nation, of the constructive debate between competing, feasible ideas about real problems.
Last night the Republicans got shellacked. And they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them, in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it even as it was happening to them. And unless they’re going to secede, they’re going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside, if they do not want to get shellacked again. And that will be a painful process for them, I’m sure, but it will be good for the whole country - left, right, and center. You guys, we’re counting on you. Wake up.
There’s real problems in the world. There are real knowable facts in the world. Let’s accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let’s move on from there. If the Republican party, and the conservative movement, and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations everybody. Big night.
I’m just gonna leave this here.
In this country, they would support the recriminalization of abortion with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and they would limit access to contraception and other services. But they have also promised to promote policies abroad that would affect millions of women in the world’s poorest countries, where lack of access to contraception, prenatal care and competent help at childbirth often results in serious illness and thousands of deaths yearly. And the wreckage would begin on Day 1 of a Romney administration."
