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"Republican Rep. Todd Akin taught us a little something about what he called "legitimate rape"-a term we weren't previously familiar with-on local TV this week, saying women don't usually get pregnant from rape because "the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down." Thankfully, he stopped there, but the comment kicked up enough that controversy that it may cost Akin his bid for the Senate. Unfortunately for women, that shockingly ignorant and offensive statement is just one more entry into the Rape Statement Hall of Shame. The Daily Beast presents seven more crazy ideas about rape that have been propagated by politicians and frat boys over the years. "

If there was a word that kept popping out at me this entire year, it was 'obliviousness'. It just felt to me that so many people spent 2011 being completely oblivious to what was happening around them. Whether it was Middle Eastern dictators who refused to understand why their people were taking to the streets, to Wall Street bankers who kept awarding themselves humongous bonuses even after their banks had gone bankrupt and people had lost their homes, to the politicians who refused to connect all the many floods and other extreme weather to climate change, so many people at the pinnacles of power remained oblivious to changes going on in the world.