“Rape me, go ahead, rape me, beat me.
You’ll never kill me.
I’ll survive this
and I’m gonna f/n rape you
one of these days
and you won’t even know it.”

Todd Akin said what he said. He claimed that women who are “legitimately raped” [two words that in no way go together in any decent world whatsoever] have, you know, ‘ways’ that ‘their bodies,’ um shut down and thereby the women prevent pregnancy during rape.

Aside from this mature man who has gone to Covenant Theological Seminary and been a shoe-in GOP candidate for several state elections, his imagining about how women somehow immaculately ‘avoid’ becoming pregnant from being raped, is right up there with the concept of immaculate conception.. gave birth, but hymen remained magically intact after, and one became pregnant to begin with without ever having sex. I swear there should be a DSM diagnosis for such projection onto women, making them less holy if they are sexual beings, and making them less than human if they are raped.

But also, this is not the first go-round in the press and culture about ‘rape.’ And what a person ‘reallly’ meant when they spoke about rape.

Once there was Kurt Cobain.

“Rape Me” was written by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana first performed the song live that year. Some people couldnt figure out what it meant. Like it’s good to be a rapist, bad to be a rapist, that the raped turn into rapists, or what?

To add controversy to controversy, Nirvana wanted to play “Rape Me” at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. MTV initially told the band it could play any song. But later MTV insisted the group play “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

Hours before the show, Nirvana refused to play. However, due to concerns that the network could boycott other artists on the group’s label if the group refused to play the show, Nirvana ultimately settled on performing its then-latest single “Lithium”.

[But,] at the start of the performance, Cobain started playing and singing “Rape Me” instead… he said he did so “just to give [MTV] a little heart palpitation”. Panicked, MTV was moments away from switching from the live performance to a commercial when the band segued into “Lithium”.

Kurt Cobain conceived “Rape Me” as a life-affirming anti-rape song. He told Spin, “It’s like she’s saying, ‘Rape me, go ahead, rape me, beat me. You’ll never kill me. I’ll survive this and I’m gonna fucking rape you one of these days and you won’t even know it.'”

Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad stated that “Rape Me” seemed to deal with Cobain’s distaste of the media’s coverage on his personal life. …Cobain said the song was written long before his troubles with drug addiction became public

So, there were several interpretations about what the use of the word ‘rape’ and ‘me’ meant in the song, with Cobain’s ‘explanation’ to Spin likely being the most cogent and true.

Thus, there are at least two people who seemingly meant the opposite of what they actually said/wrote…or what others thought they said/wrote. Akin and Cobain. Similar, sort of… in different same ways.

But oddly, Cobain’s lyrics describe pretty much what Akin is experiencing from his own party, for Akin, like shades of Tom Tancredo (R Colo) is clearly not a ‘favorite son’ of his own party…

Looking at his sponsored legislation and his voting record some would say Akin overwhelmed and intruded on many people who seem ‘not of his kind nor his affiliations’, and now he’s the one who is being ‘overwhelmed and intruded upon… forced’… “invaded”, threatened… told his own party doesnt care what Akin wants… to just stop carrying on and to do as he is told…

We shall see…
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The image is of Todd Akin and his wife.

NOTE: An earlier version of this post said Akin attended ““a Covenant Bible College” which gave an incorrect impression of where he went. The full correct name of his college has now been added. We regret the misunderstanding.