Words and Their Legitimate Meanings

Dear Lulli Akin,

Does anybody in your family have even the simplest of basic understandings about rape?

Today you said that the GOP’s decision to distance itself from your husband’s campaign for Senate was just like rape. Of course, the organization took a step back after your husband decided, science be dammed, that every woman has magic sperm-ninjas in her vagina that can mystically comprehend the intent with which the sperm was placed in the cavern of dark magic and thus prevent pregnancy if the rape was “legitimate.” Which leads me to believe that a) not one single person in your family knows what the word rape means and b) not one single person in your family owns a dictionary.

Dictionary.com (see? You don’t even have to own a dictionary. It’s all right there, free, on the interwebs) defines rape as “the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse… any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.” Very rarely do you ever hear a rape victim on the stand saying, “He was really supportive at first. And then I said something monumentally stupid and he never called again.” Because that is not rape. That is the abandonment. And I’m willing to bet 10 out of 10 rape victims wish their assailant took the GOP’s course of action.

In the end, I think it is you and your husband that are more attacker than victim in this instance. Because every time somebody in your family opens their mouth and says something that trivializes the horrific act of one person forcing themselves upon another and violating them in a brutal attack that takes away choice, dignity and any semblance of a sense of security, you are victimizing them yet again. By telling 5% of rape victims that, if their rape was “real”, they wouldn’t have gotten pregnant, you are assaulting them all over again. By saying that your husband’s campaign not getting as much money as it used to is the same thing as being held down on the ground while somebody penetrates you under threat of violence, you are diminishing the horror they were forced to experience. Because, remember, nobody’s holding a gun to your head, forcing you to stay in the race. Unlike a legitimate rape victim, you can walk away whenever the horror gets to be too much.

Hugs and Kisses,

Lindsay