Unbelievable: Todd Akin’s Wife Compares Her Husband’s Treatment By Party Establishment To Rape

I’m not a politician. I’ve never run for an election, other than class president in high school. I’m pretty sure that no one even ran against me my sophomore year. I’m not going to pretend that I understand the pressure and the stress of campaigning for months on end. I’m sure it wears on a person. And for a woman like Lulli Akin, a woman whose husband Todd Akin made such a huge spectacle of his incompetence and misogyny, I’m sure the road has been especially rough. So maybe that’s why Lulli said the one word that I’m pretty sure she shouldn’t have said. Maybe that’s why Lulli compared her husband’s treatment by GOP party establishment to rape.

Yes, rape. The woman whose husband said that a “legitimate rape” would almost never result in an actual pregnancy because women have magical uteri that can “shut that whole thing down,” made another statement about rape. In an interview with the National Journal, Lulli explained her husband’s persecution by GOP party establishment like this.

”Party bosses dictating who is allowed to advance through the party and make all the decisions””it’s just like 1776 in that way.”

She cited colonists who ”rose up and said, ‘Not in my home, you don’t come and rape my daughters and my ”¦ wife.’ But that is where we are again.”

Listen, I think we can all agree that these statements weren’t nearly as incendiary or out-of-line as Congressman Akin’s comments. In fact, I’m not even sure why rape is throw in there. It’s almost as if she just kept thinking, “Don’t say ‘rape,’ Don’t say ‘rape,'” and therefore couldn’t help but say it. Honestly, I feel a little bad for the woman.

That being said, I still think it demonstrates just how extreme the lack of understanding about rape is. It shows that some people don’t understand the true seriousness and severity. Colonists rising up against soldiers who raped the women of their families should not be compared to a political campaign bucking the establishment after an enormously irresponsible quote. That comparison doesn’t make Akin seem heroic, it makes him sound delusional.

It’s possible that Lulli was tying to equate her husband with the defenders of rape victims because he’s spoken poorly of them in the past. Remember when he suggested that some supposed victims were faking it when he was supposed to be apologizing? Maybe her goal was to make him seem like someone who fights for rape victims by mentioning colonists protecting assaulted wives and daughters.

That didn’t work. In effect, Akin said that fighting for her husband to stay in a race he badly botched is like fighting off a soldier brutalizing your family. Those things aren’t similar. And if you think they are, you don’t understand your own scope and influence, and you don’t understand the damage done by sexual assault.

Lulli and Todd Akin should never say the word “rape” again until they’ve spent time sitting down with some victims and understanding the situation they’re talking about. By the way, they will not be able to get that perspective before the election cycle is over. So for the next few months at least, just do not talk about rape or sexual assault or protecting women in general. You have already proven your extreme ineptitude in these areas.

(Photo: Galina Barskaya/Shutterstock)

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