Let’s get something clear: I support Wikileaks. I strongly encourage you, my reader, whoever you are and whatever you believe, to support Wikileaks, too. As an organization, Wikileaks has broken important new stories in the past. In 2008 and 2009, Wikileaks picked up awards for its method of distributing information. It’s only with Cablegate that Wikileaks, and Julian Assange, have become villains in the eyes of the mainstream.
However, the mission of Wikileaks has not changed. In continues to do the exact same things it has done before, releasing similar sorts of internal documents to earlier leaks. The only thing that’s different is the content. And the response.
Wikileaks has lost hosting, DNS, and key sources of revenue. You can check the news for that. It’s pretty common knowledge these days. But Julian Assange, the founder and voice of Wikileaks, has been arrested in England, where he may be extradited to face sexual assault charges in Sweden.
As some of you know, I’m a feminist. So how can I both support Wikileaks and condemn Assange for these charges? I make the distinction between the man and the folk hero. I support folk-hero Assange, who stands up to The Man and publishes classified documents. I support the Assange that founded Wikileaks and serves as its face and voice. I’m not so sure how I stand on Assange the man.
Like most people, I hate rape. And I admit, my natural instinct when it comes to rape charges is for juries to convict first and ask questions later. But that doesn’t work in the real world. Innocent people, whether accidentally or on purpose, are sometimes accused of rape. Sometimes, it’s not necessarily clear when something is or isn’t rape
I don’t subscribe to the theory that rapists alone are responsible for rape. Sure, sometimes they are, in those rare, cut-and-dry cases of stranger rape. But for acquaintance rape, date rape, spousal rape, and, though I hate the term “grey rape,” I feel like blame falls on both the rapist and the culture. Not the victim, but the surrounding culture.
You see, nobody talks about consent, and there’s no cultural acceptance for women to say yes to sex. As numerous feminist before me have pointed out, it’s a lot easier for men to not rape when it’s yes that means yes, and not just not-a-no.
From what I gather from the news, in both cases the women consented to sex with Assange if and only is he used a condom. He did not use a condom. According to the above statement, they did therefore not consent to the sex Assange had with them. Ergo, if the news is true, which it could be (we’ll see in the future.), Assange the man is guilty.
That’s not to say I place full blame on Assange. Part of this is because he’s still the folk hero I value, but part of it is because we live in a culture where the only way for women to say yes is by not saying no. And a conditional clause is not a no, my friends.
Do I have respect for Assange? Yes. But I hold that he is still quite likely guilty of sexual assault, so let’s be careful which pedestals we place him on.
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Ugh, I just wrote a page long response and wordpress dropped it. Now I gotta do it all again.
See, this is an interesting one. I see no evidence whatsoever that Julian Assange raped anyone. I firmly believe that the charges are bogus, part of a smear campaign to discredit Assange and his organization.
As far as I can gather, (and this is slightly different than what you gathered) Swedish rape law has a technicality where any unprotected sex can be considered rape. This is unenforced and largely unenforceable, just a strange little quirk of the law. Now, we have no evidence supporting any of the accusations made against Assange. We do not know if he did or did not use a condom. We do not know if protected sex was consensual. We do not know if unprotected sex was consensual. We do not know if any sex occurred. Now, Assange hasn't specifically denied anything, I think his official position is simply "I didn't rape anybody." which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. We'll see what his defense looks like if these charges go to trial. However, as it stands, we have no factual evidence to support the rape accusations. None.
Furthermore, Assange is a political target. Sweden would not seek extradition for a rape charge with no evidence without an ulterior motive. If they prosecuted this law evenly, they would be (and this is the most conservative definition of the law (yours,) I'm not sure which is correct) hunting down every asshole who had ever refused to use a condom while on Swedish soil or who had ever been accused of such, because it is pretty much impossible to make an accusation with less evidence than this one. Clearly, they are not doing this, which means that this charge is born not of the pain of a wronged woman, but of the international conspiracy to discredit Assange and, if possible, get him behind bars. The motive behind these charges is very definitely for them to be part of a smear campaign, and they must be treated as the politically-motivated character assassination ploy they are, rather than treated as a simple case of sexual assault law.
In fact, evidence that the charges are fictitious is already coming to light. One of the women who initially leveled the accusation has already withdrawn it, which as good as means that the charges were fabricated, or at least trumped up, and to my mind implies that the woman in question either got cold feet about cooperating with the conspiracy against Assange or realized that she was being used. I firmly believe Assange to be innocent.
Continued, 4096 Char limit. What is this, 1992?
God damn, I am not on a roll. First I double-post, then I accidentally overlap my continue... Anyway, continued.
Now, I am not a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and to my mind feminism is intrinsically opposed to this. Feminism by its very name seeks female empowerment for its own sake, rather than gender equality for the sake of all society. Only the fact that the feminist movement is the underdogs, to my mind, makes them even a shred better than the misogynistic patriarchy they are fighting.
As such, I see two separate, equally significant problems with rape law. On one hand, because it is so hard to find evidence of rape in most cases, and because of the stigma against rape victims, rape is a very hard crime to prosecute. On the other hand, because everyone knows how difficult it is to get evidence for rape, and knows how rarely rape is prosecuted, a person accused of rape can be convicted on small quantities of circumstantial evidence that would not suffice for any other crime. It is very easy for an innocent person to be accused of rape. If you'll recall, we have had exactly one rape accusation relevant to us personally, and it was false. This doesn't mean our one data point is representative of anything, but it does mean that false rape accusations happen, and that false rape accusations are easy.
Similarly, because of how hard it is to prove guilt or innocence in a rape case, society assumes the guilt of anyone accused of rape. If a man is accused of murder and he denies he killed someone, some assume he is guilty, some assume he is innocent, and some (I would even say most) wait to see what happens after the crime is investigated and goes to trial. A man accused of rape, on the other hand, is an instant social pariah.
Rape law in the USA actually encourages this. Someone convicted of rape serves prison time like any other felon, but once their time is up (and they presumably have either been punished enough in the eyes of society or have reformed, depending on what you think prison time actually does) they are released and placed on the Sex Offender Registry, where they can be tracked by anyone with an iPhone and stigmatized for the rest of their life in a way that no-one who commits any other crime, no matter how heinous, can be.
I also have a third, lesser objection to rape law. (These are all in addition to its' obvious flaws, wherein consent is as very vague definition and it is entirely possible to rape someone by accident.) My third objection is that female-on-male rape is possible, and many modern rape laws do not even acknowledge the possibility in theory. It is less prevalent than male-on-female rape, this is a provable and proven fact, but it does occur, and many rape laws do not account for it in the slightest. Beyond this, the social stigma against male rape victims is, if possible, even worse than the social stigma against female ones, and the social assumptions about guilt go the other way, to the point that it is effectively impossible for a man in America to win a rape or sexual assault case against a female aggressor.
Continued. I had to delete it a few times because I fucked up the continue. Wordpress wouldn't have an edit...
Now, I am not a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and to my mind feminism is intrinsically opposed to this. Feminism by its very name seeks female empowerment for its own sake, rather than gender equality for the sake of all society. Only the fact that the feminist movement is the underdogs, to my mind, makes them even a shred better than the misogynistic patriarchy they are fighting.
As such, I see two separate, equally significant problems with rape law. On one hand, because it is so hard to find evidence of rape in most cases, and because of the stigma against rape victims, rape is a very hard crime to prosecute. On the other hand, because everyone knows how difficult it is to get evidence for rape, and knows how rarely rape is prosecuted, a person accused of rape can be convicted on small quantities of circumstantial evidence that would not suffice for any other crime. It is very easy for an innocent person to be accused of rape. If you'll recall, we have had exactly one rape accusation relevant to us personally, and it was false. This doesn't mean our one data point is representative of anything, but it does mean that false rape accusations happen, and that false rape accusations are easy.
Similarly, because of how hard it is to prove guilt or innocence in a rape case, society assumes the guilt of anyone accused of rape. If a man is accused of murder and he denies he killed someone, some assume he is guilty, some assume he is innocent, and some (I would even say most) wait to see what happens after the crime is investigated and goes to trial. A man accused of rape, on the other hand, is an instant social pariah.
Rape law in the USA actually encourages this. Someone convicted of rape serves prison time like any other felon, but once their time is up (and they presumably have either been punished enough in the eyes of society or have reformed, depending on what you think prison time actually does) they are released and placed on the Sex Offender Registry, where they can be tracked by anyone with an iPhone and stigmatized for the rest of their life in a way that no-one who commits any other crime, no matter how heinous, can be.
I also have a third, lesser objection to rape law. (These are all in addition to its' obvious flaws, wherein consent is as very vague definition and it is entirely possible to rape someone by accident.) My third objection is that female-on-male rape is possible, and many modern rape laws do not even acknowledge the possibility in theory. It is less prevalent than male-on-female rape, this is a provable and proven fact, but it does occur, and many rape laws do not account for it in the slightest. Beyond this, the social stigma against male rape victims is, if possible, even worse than the social stigma against female ones, and the social assumptions about guilt go the other way, to the point that it is effectively impossible for a man in America to win a rape or sexual assault case against a female aggressor.
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