Julian Assange, Feminism, and Rape

[FreakinDJ]

Julian Assange, Feminism, and Rape

How the WikiLeaks founder shined the spotlight on the debate over sex, rape, and consent.

One unexpected consequence of the WikiLeaks saga has been to turn the spotlight on the debate over rape, sex, and consent. Julian Assange, journalism's misbegotten enfant terrible, has been hounded by accusations of sex crimes after he vaulted to fame by releasing leaked classified documents on the Internet. The charges were dismissed but then reinstated; Assange was arrested in London earlier this month and was released on bail last week while he fights extradition to Sweden. The nature of these charges has revived questions about where the law should draw the line between bad behavior and criminal acts, and whether the feminist rethinking of rape has made it easy for any man to be targeted.

As is widely known, Assange is accused of sexual offenses against two women: Anna Ardin, a left-wing activist who helped organize his speaking tour in Sweden last August, and photographer Sofia Wilen. The prosecution asserts both encounters started out as consensual but later turned into assaults—partly, it seems, because of Assange's failure to use a condom despite the women's wishes. The triviality of the offenses is compounded by the women's un-victim-like behavior afterward: Ardin had sex with Assange again and threw a party for him; Wilen made him breakfast. It was only when the women learned of his two-timing that they went to the police—initially intending to force him to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

In the United States, the sex charges have been met with near-unanimous derision across the political spectrum. Conservative media personality Glenn Beck and feminist writer/activist Naomi Wolf have both satirized the case as one in which the man acted like a jerk and the women are seeking payback for hurt feelings. This unanimity is no doubt partly due to the fact that, on the left, the instinct to back women claiming sexual abuse by men has been blunted by Assange's status as a rebel fighting the power—while on the right, scorn for feminist sexual ideology has proved stronger than distaste for Assange. Along with the Assange prosecution, Swedish sexual assault laws have also come under ridicule for defining the offense so broadly that half the male population could end up in the slammer.

Some feminists are not amused. MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann decided to suspend his Twitter account after being slammed as a "rape apologist" for tweets expressing skepticism about the charges. In The Washington Post, Jessica Valenti, a star of the feminist blogosphere, has lashed out at what she considers distorted accounts of the case while offering her own highly selective summary of the facts. Valenti thinks the real problem is "our country's overly narrow understanding of sexual assault," which falls woefully short of Sweden's far better standards.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/22/julian-assange-feminism-and-ra

[EFerrari]

1. Marking to read a little later.

Thanks for posting this.

[treestar]

2. Wow, that writer is willing to twist Swedish and all law

and the entire history of rape law to make it look like Julian did "some good."

It's up to Swedish law. Julian's fans don't get to decide Swedish law.

[FreakinDJ]

3. when rape law is used to regulate "sexual manners"

when rape law is used to regulate "sexual manners" rather than sexual violence, it has seriously strayed from its purpose.

[David__77]

4. Swedish law may be an arbiter or power, but not of morality.

It is not up to their law to decide people's conclusions on the morality of this case.

[EFerrari]

8. "Swedish law" threw out the charges and a political appointee re-instated them.

Fail.

[grumpyoldfart]

5. Who was Raped?

Two women scorned after having consensual sex with Assange so both scream Rape but withdraw complaint because they both filed false charges in the heat of the moment. Now steps in the Politicians and Government agencies to have the Rape charges reinstalled in the hope of either blackmailing Assange to cease or to have him deported to the land of free USA. So who's getting Raped and how bent is the America Government

[xchrom]

6. Recommend

[Hydra]

7. As the event showed

Good point, bad place to have the point.

Naomi Klein already showed how insulting this is in the face of real crimes that go unpunished in favor of a politically based attack with sketchy evidence.

As an advocate against sexual crimes myself, I'm often awed/cynically amused that we as a society don't give a damn unless it affects us or someone we love, unless we are told we're supposed to be outraged.