Naomi Wolf Misrepresents the Facts of the Julian Assange Rape Allegations. Again.

I share you concern about these comments and the tenor of this defence of Assange. Frankly, I don’t know why any progressive would allow themselves to get distracted from the real issues (ie. American politicial manipulation of a foreign legal system) by defending Assange against the actual allegations. Frankly, whether or not consent was established, should be a matter for the courts to decide. These women, should they pursue their allegations, have the right to do so. The Swedish courts should pursue each and every incident of sexual assault – so it is bullshit that some Wikileaks supporters (of which I am one) have chosen to dismiss the allegations and call for the charges to be dropped. Whether or not it is hypocritical that the Swedish courts are pursuing these allegations while ignoring others is not an argument for ignoring these as well. (Remember, Sweden has a more progressive definition of consent than we do in North America.)

However, none of this is not a matter of international interest, nor should it be tried in the court of public opinion. This manipulation of the legal system – by governments, not by alleged victims – is what should be offensive to us. There is little doubt that the allegations lodge by these women are being exploited as part of the multi-national campaign to bring Wikileaks down. However, attacking these women, questioning the definition of consent and belittling the nature of their allegations does nothing to advance the or defend the rights of women. In fact, it sets us back.

As feminists, let’s respect the alleged victims and focus our attention on the real issues: governments that are afraid of scrutiny and accountability, that manipulate the courts and that manipulate women.

Gah. Please ignore the accidental double negative in the second last paragraph.

it is simply not possible to wake up and realize that someone is already started penetration given that she was not drugged.

foreplay is enough adrenalin to wake one up cos it stimulates the body for sex. so either she woke up and did not stopped him, or he directly started penetration w/o foreplay. but the latter is also very unlikely cos then the vagina is not vet, penetration becomes enough painful to instantly wake one up and react.

so “he fucked me in my sleep” is a very unlikely situation.

Hey tayga, ever heard of lube?

… And if we assume it to be accurate, leaving everything else out of it, Wolf is out of her mind.

To call it rape is excessive. To call it fully consensual is also wrong.

Had the issue of a condom not been a part of the exchange, would the half-asleep sex been rejected? Was there objection to the act itself aside from the condom issue? It seems not.

This situation seems more ambiguous than simple black and white rape or not rape. The sex was consensual, the “barebacking” was not. And, as you have admitted, she ultimately conceded (though evidently not happily with it).

There are laws that treat knowingly infecting someone with AIDS as a sexual assault, even if consent is given – because the person is not aware of the STD, but this is a statutory interpretation, because otherwise consent was given. A similar legal interpretation likely applies in this case.

Let’s not all forget here, people, that this is ultimately a petty charge, with a maximum penalty of a FINE. It’s a paid off “oops” apology, not even any kind of jail time. Who would be the criminal had the condom simply broken?

*immediately AFTER she woke up….

For it to be the crime of rape he must be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of knowingly committing non consensual sex at the time it actually occurred.

Here what evidence wholly from the women as presented by the Guardian, doesn’t even make a prima facia case.

[W] effectively consented to condomless sex in the morning as it was going on, exonerating him from having begun it even if she was at first asleep or partly asleep, which is hardly proven.

Women are allowed to, and do all the time, change their minds on such things.

They shouldn’t be allowed to charge rape if they don’t communicate a clear and unambiguous “NO!”, or “STOPL!” or “this is RAPE” at the time intercourse is occurring, rather than only the evening before.

QED.

Angus Johnston–

Brian, if you had sex with a woman consensually, and she tried to do something you really didn’t want to do — something that could cause you physical harm and emotional trauma — and you told her no over and over again, and she waited until you were asleep and did it to you without your consent, would you call that ambiguous? Or would you call it sexual assault?

No it wouldn’t be sexual assault on Brian or anyone else if when he woke up in the morning he didn’t say “no!!” or “stop”, but something like “you’d better have washed that thing before you put it in me”. That would change the terms completely and constitute consent.

I disagree with Brian that this case is ambiguous. I think Assange was clearly entitled to interpret how she acted and what she said in the morning as constituting having changed her mind and being consent.

Angus, the analogy is lacking I’m afraid. A fuller one would be if you instruct someone to leap out of the bushes and attack you Monday and they do so, and then they do it Tuesday, this time without your foreknowledge. Frankly, such a case would stutter if all the facts were taken in. But even this analogy betrays reality, as even the best often do.

It’s just not that simple.

Angus–

“We are taking it as a given, for the purpose of this discussion, that he asked numerous times to have sex without a condom, and she said no each time. That’s the situation that’s alleged. It’s alleged that he then entered her while she slept without using a condom.”

That’s what’s alleged yes. That she did ask that several times THE NIGHT Before.

It’s also alleged that she let him continue without a condom the next morning even after she woke up, once he’ assured her he didn’t have HIV. She evidently changed her mind. Sure how he’s entitled to interpret her reaction when she was awake that morning.

At no time in the morning after she was awake and knew he was continuing without a condom did she say “stop” or “no” or similar.

That’s not rape, period, end of story.

To say it is, is wholly unfair to men, and trivializes what’s supposed to be rape.

Women are entitled to change their minds in both directions. From yes to no, and from no without a condom, to ok without a condom so long as you assure me you don’t have HIV. They’re not entitled to charge rape unless they make the ongoing no clear as day to any reasonable man.

W didn’t in the AM.

Angus, yes it’s alleged that he entered her without using a condom while she was asleep though the framing in the Guardian is strange, as it’s fair to assume it was the sex itself that woke her, and Assange would have expected her to awaken.

While I agree consent for one act is not necessarily consent for another, it does not amount to sex without consent when you agree to sex, but he begins sex under a condition she had not agreed to, and she, having opportunity to refuse, continues to have sex with him. If consenting partners can use pressure and manipulation to gain sex or a certain kind of sex, that could be the case here too. It’s wrong I think, depending on the circumstance and probably in this one, but not either rape or non-consensual sex, I don’t think.

And a point I think Naomi Wolf was getting at is the flip side of consent for sex at one point or under one condition not being consent for sex another time, in a different condition, is that non-consent at one point, even if repeated, does not mean consent under the same condition, later, cannot be given, and that at this point it’s only speculation on the part of Jaclyn Friedman and others that it must have been fear on the part of Miss W “giving in”.

Anne–

” Aww, poor widdle men! Sometimes they get accused of rape when they do things that are tantamount to rape! ”

Asinine feminist snark. It’s not tantamount to rape when she allows it to proceed on the condition that he tell her he doesn’t have HIV. Pretty damn simple, and how things really work.

I <3 "asinine feminist snark". That's sort of what I was going for.

Angus–

He did something sexual to her that she’d explicitly denied him consent to do. You yourself said that if she’d said no, it could have been plausibly described as rape.

Yes I did, because I’m being fair, balanced and honest here.

She’d explicitly conditioned his having sex with her on his wearing a condom, many hours before.

Her state of mind in the morning on that had evidently changed. Why do I say that? Because from the first moments she admits to being awake as sex is continuing, she DOESN’T say “no” “stop” “not without a condom, period” or anything similar. She seeks reassure that he doesn’t have HIV, and then lets him proceed, perhaps enthusiastically. She doesn’t say to the contrary.

Something else which will piss off the radical feminists and their mangina’s is this, though true. Note even if she did continue to say not without a condom, while I’d agree it’s rape, it’s not a very serious variety of it. After all, all her actions indicate she’s big attracted to him, wanted him to visit her to have sex with her in her house in a town outside Stockholm, was fine that he slept in her bed, and was plenty willing to have sex with him if he wore a condom. So this was hardly the violation of the core of her sexual being and identity by a man she’s repulsed by or feels no attraction to, or any of the rest that we ordinarily associate with serious “real” rape. But sure, I agree it’s some kind of violation of her will and shouldn’t be perfectly ok. Of course if the things she’s almost certainly worried about maybe occurring in the case of sex without a condom occurred — pregnancy or an STD not to mention HIV (which is rarely passed between heterosexual Euro origin whites who aren’t IV drug users), then it would or could be much more serious and a much bigger violation.

But yes, even if nothing like that happened, it’s not just perfectly okay to non violently proceed to have sex with her without a condom when she continued to say no he couldn’t do or continue doing that.

Angus, I don’t think I disagree with you on the definition, but that sex itself IS an “overt action” by someone indicating an agreement “to perform a particular sexual act with the actor”. Again, realistically this is the way most people consent to having sex, simply, by having sex, particularly if there is some sort of prior or current relationship. But I don’t rule out, in this instance, mental manipulation or extreme pressuring on the part of Assange, or even violence of some sort.

Angus–

“By the way, on the question of whether she was enthusiastic — she told a friend it was the worst sex of her life, and violent. So much for that theory.”

Keep your facts and women straight. That was said some days after the fact by the first woman, whom the Guardian identifies as A. The one who claims its rape because the condom broke and he continued, and suspects he might have wanted it to break, without demonstrating that or even that he knew it had before the sex was over.

As for degrees of seriousness of rape, yes I think there’s a good wide variety. Even Swedish law says that.

Being so enthusiastic about having sex with a guy you’ve become a political groupie for, that you pay for his round trip train ticket to your home town for him to have sex with you, but then saying and sticking to “not without a condom” — IF none of the risks she feared in condomless sex came a cropper — yes that does seem like technical rape, but among the least serious variety of it.

No not all rape is the same and no it doesn’t all deserve or get 20 years of hard jail time. Doesn’t mean the least serious varieties are perfectly ok either, as I made plain was my view when I first talked about it.

You’re simply working to exit an argument you’re obviously badly losing on what you imagine, as a thorough mangina, is the moral high ground.

What amazes me about this debate is the air of certainty of Assange’s apologists, as though they were in the room and can offer speculation on the woman’s state of mind, intent, and enthusiasm. It would be one thing to say, ‘I am skeptical of these charges and here are my reservations and I am hopeful this will all be sorted out in the court proceedings.’

Instead, it would seem some believe that mere speculation is enough to completely disprove and discount rape allegations.

Never in my life have I heard someone say ‘There is never any violence in that part of town so that person is making up being mugged.’ I think, even when people are skeptical of a claim, for the most part, we all agree that investigating crimes are worthwhile and that (hopefully) truth will prevail.

I’m a lawyer, educated at Stanford and a top five law school.

The portions of Minnesota’s rape law which you quote are very unusual but still don’t say way you seem to think they do.

“Consent” means words or overt actions

This is NOT a “yes means yes” standard, though it’s edging there a little perhaps. It doesn’t change the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt on the prosecution.

Yeah, like paying for his train ticket for the purpose of having sex, sleeping in the same bed together freely and willing, moaning and panting, etc.

Consent does not mean the existence of a prior or current social relationship [e.g. being married or his girlfriend] between the actor and the complainant or that the complainant failed to resist a particular sexual act.

I.e. she doesn’t have to put up a struggle for it to be rape. That’s been the law about everywhere in the US beginning in the 1970s and a little earlier some places.

Angus,

Thank you for your patience and persistence in responding to daniel and Doug1. I completely agree with you and your arguments. I find both daniel’s and Doug1’s positions very offensive and quite scary, actually.

Some of their own words that strike me most:

daniel says, “It’s wrong I think, depending on the circumstance and probably in this one, but not either rape or non-consensual sex, I don’t think.”

Dear daniel, if it’s wrong, then guess what? It’s rape. You wouldn’t say that any sort of consensual sex is “wrong,” would you? No, because BOTH parties are agreeing to it – no matter what “it” constitutes.

Doug1 says, “It’s true that Assange too [sic] a risk penetrating her when she was asleep given what she’d said the night before.”

Dear Doug1, guess what? That’s rape. If you even have to mention that it might be “risky,” then what are you implying? You’re saying it’s a risk that she would say it’s rape. Boom. Lack of consent for the act. That equals rape.

And also, Doug1, can you please defend “mangina” or whatever the hell you are writing. I’m a feminist. I’m a man. I see that term as nothing more than an ignorant, offensive attempt to use traditional masculinity to marginalize Angus’s arguments and points that clearly run contrary to yours and the traditional, harmful male culture at large that leads to a rape culture in which we all live. That must change.

I consented to read this article because the title claimed it was about representation of facts, but instead while I slept through the boring text, you inserted your rape claim into me. What an atrocity!

Also, since you are striking the accusor’s names from the record, perhaps we should strike the accused’s as well, right? Or could it be that the person being accused is really the undercurrent of this whole topic? How else would a debate on the legal aspects of the case be so quickly be labeled “Assange Apologist”?

This comment thread grosses me out.

Rhett Walker–

“And also, Doug1, can you please defend “mangina” or whatever the hell you are writing. I’m a feminist. I’m a man. I see that term as nothing more than an ignorant, offensive attempt to use traditional masculinity to marginalize Angus’s arguments and points that clearly run contrary to yours and the traditional, harmful male culture at large that leads to a rape culture in which we all live. That must change.”

First of all I don’t give a rat’s ass that my using the term mangina offends you. Plenty of things rad feminists say offends me and they don’t give a rip. Things like “all men are inherently rapist” or “male penetrative sex with women is rape” or the “the “patriarchy” remains and has always been deeply oppressive of women and thorough unfair and unjust” and so on.

Mangina’s are feminist men who deeply suck up to and curry favor with even radical feminists, feeling a need for their general approval. They are men who don’t reasonable weigh the many instances where feminists and particularly radical feminists seek advantages at the expense of men and over men, or when they pretend sex differences don’t exist on average when they do, or anyway pretend that when it advantages a feminist women over men agenda to do so.

I wouldn’t describe as a mangina a male who supports basic feminism such as the right of women to enter into virtually any career without artificial social or legal prohibitions.

“Once again, the charge is NOT rape. It’s “sex by surprise,” and it has already been thrown out once.”

No it is not, the allegation is rape and coercion. This has been documented a number of times, including in the New York Times last weekend.

Doug – You’re wrong. Rape occurred the moment sexual activity commenced without consent. What happened after doesn’t change that violation. Reactions that occurred later are just that, reactions. They do not change the crime.

also, please picture this: the cool dude you idolize is hanging out at your house. You wake up from sleep with his dick in your ass. He’s been pestering you all night and you kept saying no, but when you fell asleep he started to fuck you anyway. He’s on top of you, he’s bigger and stronger than you are. You wake up and have limited options. If you start yelling he may get mad. if you try to fight he could seriously hurt you. Or you can lie there and hope it’s over fast so you can get away.

Strangely enough, rape doesn’t follow some convenient pattern you’ve see on “Law and Order” – every scenario is different, every rapist and every victim are different. What stays the same is violation of consent – and consent is never implied. It must always be given. Every time. Every act. No exceptions.

Good grief.

May I never, ever get near a man with views on sexual assault like Doug, “lawyer, educated at Stanford and a top five law school.”

Ugh.

If you think there’s even a slight risk that it might be non-consensual, then don’t have sex with that person until you’re sure. Just make sure. Why is this such a hard concept to grasp?

Don’t rape. Don’t even be uncertain about whether you’re raping someone. There is no margin of error there.

@Les:

When someone comes to your house, do you explicitly with words invite each person to come in before they cross your door threshold, or are they trespassing?

If your girlfriend reaches for your milkshake and takes a sip, and you do nothing, but you didn’t tell her she could have some, is she stealing?

When your mother used to spit on a napkin and wipe your face as a child, but you said nothing, was she assaulting you?

When you go to the mall, do you always phone the management first and ask permission to enter their premises to make sure you’re not illegally trespassing on private property? Do you do the same when you drive your car to the gas station?

“When someone comes to your house, do you explicitly with words invite each person to come in before they cross your door threshold, or are they trespassing? ”

Well, yes,I would invite them in explicitly and yes, I’d consider it a tresspass if they came in without waiting to be invited. Unless it was someone to whom I’d said “By the way, you don’t need to be invited in when you come over, just come on in.” That right there is consent. I’ve consented for this person to come in without asking first in the future. See?

But a woman’s body isn’t a building (and it’s not a car or uh, a shopping mall), it’s her living, breathing person. So your analogy is a bit weird.

To put it in more physical terms: If a woman said ‘By the way, if I’m asleep and you want to have sex with me, go ahead, I’m cool with that.’ That’s consent. If she hasn’t said anything like that, then guess what? You’re raping her.

Dear Angus,

Maybe you shouldn’t ban Doug1. While I could not disagree with him more, and his comments are offensive and border on hateful, he needs to hear this discussion. He needs to see other men standing up to him. Otherwise, he’s going to go through life assuming that all men think like he does and that his behaviors and attitudes are the norm and are implicitly encourage by the men around him. Let him expose his ignorance and maybe he’ll read the words coming out of his mouth, in this case typing, and realize how they sound.

Les,

Just want to say I agree that their comments are “Creepy as f*ck,” because, yeah, why else are they so vehemently defending this “gray area” that they say exists. It doesn’t. Thanks “breaking it down” for them when it comes to consent.

Consent: If there’s a “gray area,” you’re not sure (just ask) and you continue anyway, or you’re “taking a risk,” guess what? YOU’RE DOIN’ IT WRONG. Very, very wrong in that it’s rape.

“No one thinks that, bro. I’m a feminist man. I’ve worked with more feminist—men and women—than I can count, and I’ve never once heard anyone talk like that. Who have you been listening to?”

He’s going to say Dworkin. She is a favorite strawfeminist of jerks who have never actually read any of her books.

Rhett–

First of all, just because the woman didn’t stop him when she woke up and he was already inside her, doesn’t make it consensual. Like Angus has already established, at that moment, it’s already rape because she didn’t consent.

She doesn’t have to resist him with all her might and strength and efforts to get away, to make it rape, but she does have to tell him “stop” or “no” or “really I don’t want this, I still don’t” or something similar, else she hasn’t carried her burden of communicating non consent to him at the time intercourse is going down. Some pronouncement 8 or 12 hours ago doesn’t cut it if she’s acting differently at the time.

And yeah DAMN RIGHT she should have some burden when she’s fully consensually lying in bed in some state of undress next to him, has paid for him to come to her so they could have sex, as been an adoring groupie with loads of flirting and indications of sexual interest in the run up, and so on. I’m getting some of this from outside the Guardian article reporting on the Swedish prosecutor’s office leaks, but it comes from Assange’s side or undisputed facts and making minimal inferences.

@Rhett

While your suggestion that people “just ask” if there is a grey area is entirely sensible, it’s also also entirely impractical in law. While a majority of people successfully employ your technique, the lion’s share of civil law and probably a fair amount of criminal law exists solely because of instances where this sensible approach has failed to take place, sometimes by well meaning individuals – believe it or not! Otherwise there would be no need for such laws, and we would all live in a utopian paradise.

When I was a young man, a woman who was attracted to me despite having a boyfriend persistently hit on me for a sexual encounter, which I resisted, politely I thought, not telling her boyfriend. I did find her attractive but respected the boundary and figured they would work things out.

Finally one day he dropped her off at my place, practically begging me to take her in for the night as his parents didn’t want her there anymore. After he left, she told me their relationship was over, and made sexual overtures towards me again. Being young and full of hormones, I decided to take her up on her offer, and we went at it all night, repeatedly – each repeated time at HER urging.

The next morning, she kissed me goodbye with a pat on the bum as we went about our business. Later on while I was at the mall, I was approached by her boyfriend and a police officer. You see, she had changed her mind about the whole thing and wanted to avoid embarrassment for sexing me, so she went back to her boyfriend and said I had raped her.

My mother and friends where aghast with horror. And some of my friends even believed I was capable of such crudeness. My mother took her aside in the women’s bathroom and spoke to her about it, finally coming out to admit to the police that it was not true, that the sex we had was consensual, and I was released.

There is a knee jerk reaction in society whenever a woman even implies “rape” and it’s reinforced by the media in social cliches as early as old cartoons with Popeye’s Olive Oyl tied to the railroad track. These are of course two dimensional views of the world and situation, and are not a master template for anything except more cartoons.

What actually happened with Assange and these ladies will forever be largely conjecture and word against word. Were any of the people writing on this blog post witnesses to anything that took place there? Are we fully aware of the broken telephone that has been happening since the beginning of this incident? And yet we still take sides, thinking we can rightfully accuse Assange of RAPE with all capital letter, going so far as to call questioning of the event “Apologist” simply because we all want to be Popeye protecting his dear Olive.

After all, who ever sides with the bad guy, even if we don’t really have a clue that he really is one? Better to run with the pack, right? To argue there was no consent is a short cut. Consent was present but conditional, and eventually conceded. If what is described is true, then Yes, he broke the condition, but not necessarily the underlying consent.

But what if she just resented him, and wanted to play power politics with the “RAPE” allegation? “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” and I’ve read accounts where one accuser complained that he paid more attention to his computer than her. Can’t you smell at least the potential for resentment?

I’ve had the misfortune of knowing, and knowing OF too many women that are not above such petty nonsense, which undermines all of the objectives of feminism by using victimization as a power play.

I am fully aware that she was a real person. That doesn’t change the fact that people constantly attribute misandarist beliefs to her that she did not hold.

This last leads to Sweden having the highest rate of women claimed rate in the developed world, but one of the lowest conviction rates.

Anyone who thinks that Swedish men actually commit same definition rape at the highest rate in the developed world is on serious drugs.

Muslim immigrants are another matter however. But still largely confined to a few southern Swedish cities, such as Malmo. Where I’ve done international business, some time ago.

In miss W’s own words, “they had already started having sex” – with no mention of condoms at all. Meaning she had already agreed to, allowed, and was even enjoying sex without a condom with her chosen sexual partner. To suddenly and unilaterally change the terms of such an agreement mid-execution, is firstly, unethical: because you’re breaking the terms of agreement; and secondly, not possible: because it takes both parties involved to change and agree on new terms. The other party could quite rightly either agree to the new terms or call the whole thing off due to “breach of contract”, as it were.

She had broken the “contract” and the deal was off, only to apparently be renegotiated a few hours later with both parties agreeing to the new terms. No harm, no foul. Notice how miss W is in complete control not only of her body, but of the entire situation, essentially forcing her partner to submit to her will. You see now how real rape victims will be extremely infuriated and demoralised by this mockery of their genuinely life destroying and violent body, mind and soul invasions and suffering. If rape is about power, who had the power in the above negotiation? Who got what they demanded?

Now, before I address the “She had awoken to find him having sex with her” part of her statement (and since none of us were there, only personal prejudice can determine whether one chooses to believe her or not), I will say this: I too have awoken to find a woman having sex with me; she hadn’t put a condom on me before screwing me without my express consent. And just like miss W, not only did I let her carry on, I fucked the shit out of her. Any objections I had were thoroughly obliterated by the reality and strength of the sexual feeling. Especially since we had already had sex several times throughout the night already. But I digress…

To address miss W’s statement more directly, is it reasonable to believe that a woman as capable of being in as complete control as she was during the entire initial sexual intercourse that night – to the point of making her partner submit to her will or NO DEAL – upon waking up and discovering him inside her (if she is to be believed) without a condom, couldn’t kick him out of her bed and assert herself as she had done previously, just a few hours before? Instead, what did she do? Yes, she fucked him right back, talking about she couldn’t be bothered to get him to put on a condom again. You’re damn straight she couldn’t be bothered, it felt too good. THIS, is what you call rape? REALLY? How do you lot sleep at night knowing that there are real rape victims out there. Why would you seek to enable sick, vindictive, insecure, mis-guided, egotistical, power-hungry, morally twisted, character rapists such as miss W and miss A, who, it just so happens, felt so raped that she kept him in her bed for a further 4 days and threw a party for him, after the “fact”?

As for the Democracy Now interview itself, Jaclyn Friedman just looked like she was reliving a personal and seemingly traumatising experience on Amy Goodman’s show today. Completely submerged in her own emotions and saying nothing to do with the actual case she was there to talk about. Repeatedly asserting that miss A was scared. What? Even miss A has not made such a claim. What she had done however, was write a 7-step how-to guide on how to take legal revenge on a cheating lover. A guide that she seems to be executing with precision at the moment on a lover who…wait for it…cheated on her. She is a fully “empowered” representative of the dark side of feminism, and fear, I would surmise, is the furthest thing from her mind. Oh no sirry bob, this one is a live one – conscious and confident and determined to get her way; both of them.

Final thought: in cases of real rape, Jaclyn Friedman would be exactly right of course. In this devilish, wicked character rape of an innocent man however, shame on anyone who cannot tell the difference and by so doing, mock the victims of real rape by supporting the girls who cried wolf – making it exponentially harder for real victims to come forward and be taken seriously.

“saying that ideas of enthusiastic consent are oppressive to men is just silliness…If you have to resort to coerced sex like that you have serious problems”

Exactlly! If you’re not doing it wrong, then you don’t need to rely on implied consent. If she’s actually into you and you ask, “want to have sex?” she’ll say, “yes!” It shouldn’t be a mood killer. Although clearly there are people here that have never had this experience, hence all the whining about supposed unfairness.

“Brian, if you had sex with a woman consensually, and she tried to do something you really didn’t want to do — something that could cause you physical harm and emotional trauma — and you told her no over and over again, and she waited until you were asleep and did it to you without your consent, would you call that ambiguous? Or would you call it sexual assault?”

It’s completely superfluous what one calls it, unless you’re talking about whether or not it should be considered a crime. In the event that some physical (“emotional trauma” is unfalsifiable and useless) trauma left residual evidence, a jury may possibly be able to convict. If there’s no physical evidence, it means a person is being sentenced based on another person’s word and that leads to terrible consequences when it comes to the principle of innocent until –proven– guilty.

Few judges or juries will convict based solely on the testimony of the prosecutor. I’m arguing that if the only evidence is in fact that testimony, a successful prosecution is nigh impossible, and rightly so. In a case of theft, the odds that this situation would occur are even slimmer because often the defendant has an alibi.

Consider that murder is a crime, but people trying to devise the perfect murder wipe the slate clean; gloves, no prints, dispose of the weapon, etc. etc. It’s because regardless of whether or not what you did was a crime, so long as there is not evidence sufficient enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you did said crime, the system of law in place in the First World will not be able to prosecute.

“in a text message to a friend, she never suggested she had been raped and claimed only to have been “half asleep””

So which was it, asleep or half asleep?

Very few allegations of ‘date rape’ actually reach a jury, precisely because of the issue of standards of evidence that I’ve asked you to address repeatedly. Those that do are more substantial (and approximate what we once would define as “rape”) and conviction rates are similar to those of any other crime. That implies that what I’m saying is completely in concurrence with the reality of rape prosecution. Assange’s case is one of those that would never reach a jury were it not for his unusual person, because no court could convict him of not wearing an intact condom or “withdrawing consent” or whatever. That’s why I’d like for you to tell me exactly how one could prosecute Assange and not pervert the notion of being innocent until proven guilty.

How can anyone say definitively that there is or is no case based on spotty information in the news? What’s so hard about waiting and seeing without hurting the rape survivors in our society by invoking age-old rape apology right and left? This case might not even be charged, but it’s not on us to decide whether or not it’s a chargeable case. Never before have there been so many experts with so little evidence to go on. Geez.

Er, I’ve addressed this already, and you appear to be significantly confusing the chain of events as well as what I’m saying when it comes to a prosecution. I didn’t say it was “impossible […] to prosecute”. I’ve asked how it’s possible to allow a jury to convict a defendant (in this case, Assange) when the only evidence of wrongdoing is another person’s word (in this case, that of the two women). There are no outside witnesses or testimonies involved; there is no way to “corroborate” anyone’s claims.

I’m not asking by what standards the police should begin an investigation — which, by the way, has nothing to do with the trial as presented to a judge/jury; evidence is gathered based on whether the police are willing to commit to an arrest, an essentially meaningless act and one that comes down to the cops’ judgement on a case by case basis.

The misguidance on your part in constantly attempting to compare this scenario to a case of theft is belied by the fact that you need to make reference to “build[ing] a case”, “[outside] corroborat[ion]”, “all the evidence”, etc. None of these apply to the case of Julian Assange (hence why it’s taking so long to bring him to court; no prosecutor would want to fight this case), and none of these apply to the scenario I’m asking you about.

Again: we only have the testimonies of these women that a crime has been committed. There is no other evidence that has been brought to trial. How do you convict?

“How can anyone say definitively that there is or is no case based on spotty information in the news?”

To be quite honest, I’m not really interested in what the facts are when it actually comes to Assange’s case. I’ve seen people defend the notion that he could be convicted based on what *is* public knowledge, however, and that hypothetical both disturbs and interests me. I want to know under what basis those people would consider such a conviction a victory for justice.

But that hasn’t apparently stopped you from surmising that Assange committed a crime, despite your protestations to the contary in the original post? What evidence could even exist that would prove Assange penetrated her during her sleep, bar outside witnesses?

Texts or phone messages? So now the issue is not whether consent was given or withdrawn at the exact time of the act — which would appear to be the point of contention in the scenario you consider a crime — but whether or not there’s probable cause that the defendant is lying? Or is consent some kind of spectrum process that can take place over days or weeks?

Why would text messages have any bearing on a woman’s claim that consent wasn’t given at the time of the act?

I don’t understand why Naomi or Jaclyn veered away from debating what ‘facts’ are presently at hand and ended up in a ‘pissing match’ or a ‘cat fight’ that represented both perspectives poorly. Take your pick of either stereotype. I’m tired of stereotyping male and female behaviors when arguing over power issues in relationships. Acknowledge they exist in varying degrees within both sexes, or extreme social orders, ok. Using blanket blame games to debate an argument, not ok.

It’s disappointing that all opinions here so far follow along these same fault lines.

What’s clear to me is speculation or what ‘she said/he said’ is all we know right now. Until this is examined in court as to when and what actually transpired, we should all calm down. I respectfully agree that these women should have their day in court and in turn for Assange.

I also agree that Naomi shouldn’t have pulled the political card in this debate, but Jaclyn shouldn’t have pulled the victim card either. What needs to be shown is whether “Miss A &/or W” are disgruntled lovers, or that Assange took physical sexual advantages at times and the women compromised for what ever reasons, or that had he had nonconsensual sex at one point.

Here are are a few of the possibilities from what has been rumored so far:

Asange is a seducer, Assange committed ‘soft rape’, Miss A &/or W want revenge, Miss A &/or W want renown, Miss W wants reassurances she has not been contaminated and compensation for unprotected sexual contact. None of them felt endangered at the time of sex (if initial nonconsexual sex is proven true, Miss W understandably would have physical/emotional damage of STD transmission from unprotected sex after the a-hole entered her without permission, AND then foolishly let him continue).

Here’s some of my speculations:

Given the reputation/education of both women, it’s hard for me to believe that they would have continued contact as long as they did with Assange if they truly felt overpowered or threatened. Now it’s less hard to believe that they compromised themselves to be associated with Assange. Or it’s not hard to believe that they made assumptions that Asange was exclusively having sex with each of them while in Sweden. It’s also not hard to believe that Assange was persistent to have unprotected sex, or that he entered ‘Miss W’ in her sleep and then she woke up.

Let them have their day in court.

I’ve addressed everything you’ve said and I even followed you down your own path of inquiry. You on the other hand, constantly drew comparisons to some kind of theft (when a case of theft involves determining whether or not the defendant was in the place the prosecutor claims he was, whereas in the case of non-forcible rape both parties usually agree that the act took place but under differing terms), ignored repeated questions about how one could convict *in the absence of extraneous evidence* and made demonstrably false claims (i.e. about how date rape is prosecuted) without recanting them.

If these are the standards by which you’re agitating for prosecution, I worry for our future.

“I believe people are saying that consent can be withdrawn during sex and that continuing sex after one’s partner has said no is assault, which I thought was pretty much a given.”

Such a discussion is completely academic, as I told Angus. The vast majority of ‘date rape’ cases like these are, as I’ve said, dismissed on the grounds that it’s impossible to prove consent one way or the other short of witnesses or extraneous evidence. It may indeed be a crime, but one also has to prove a crime was committed by the alleged offender before he can face any kind of punishment.

“You could very well be discouraging rape survivors from coming forward and could be letting actual perpetrators get away in doing so. All for the sake of armchair lawyering.”

Better a thousand guilty murderers or rapists than a single innocent man imprisoned. I’ll repeat again that the principle of innocent until proven guilty is not as malleable as many appear to believe, no matter what the nature of the crime is. When the burden lies on a person to prove he’s innocent, the repercussions do not conform to any traditionally “progressive” template.

Also I have no idea why you’d bring up innocent until proven guilty or the burden of proof, which hasn’t changed last I checked.

I am saying that dismissing hard-fought ideas of consent and body autonomy because date rape is harder to prove in a court of law than, say, burglary in which the suspect is caught with burglary tools and stolen items is missing the point.

BUT people who actually believe they have been victimized should not be discouraged from going to authorities if that’s the path they want to take, and all this picking apart of the very idea of consent and the rights of people to control what’s done with their own bodies is hurtful to ACTUAL victims out there.

Again, I don’t know what you mean by “define our behaviors” or “body autonomy”. I’m arguing that a crime that consistently cannot be prosecuted is frivolous. If you want to encourage these victims to seek emotional redress outside the legal system, that’s your prerogative. But why you would accuse me of “discourag[ing them] from going to the authorities” is beyond me. Of course they have every right to go to the authorities, as does anyone who believes they’ve been victim to crime, but when the odds that such a case will even make it to trial are so astronomically low, it leads one to wonder just what exactly people would change about the proceeds to see the justice they apparently crave.

Brian, that’s all very nice and I’m glad you’re an idealist, but in reality some women don’t fight back once someone is on top of them or hurting them, especially when it’s someone they know and even care about or respect, and some portion of that actually IS self-preservation at work. I’d like for every woman in every situation to fight back and to feel safe fighting back, but some of them don’t, and when they don’t it’s sometimes because they’re paralyzed with shock or because they fear it will escalate into a murder (which happens) or any variety of things. It is a terrible, inconceivable thing to be victimized in that way. It is not helpful to second-guess survivors or to say that anyone truly advocates that they not fight back. Sometimes they, we, women, cannot without further harm.

Terre, you’re just not engaging in a good-faith or serious debate, sorry.

I am a woman and a pragmatic feminist. I completely agree with Doug1 and Brian on this particular matter and I think their argument is well-reasoned and convincing. The so called radical feminists have gone too far to satisfy their personal ego, as opposed to the general well-being of normal women. Julian Assange maybe a arrogant cad, but he is not a rapist, and he should not be prosecuted for a trivial offense possible motivated by personal revenge or political purpose.

Terre, surely you have stopped an argument with someone who was being willfully obtuse and/or seemed to be trolling. To me, and apparently to the author of the article above, you fell into that “hopeless” category. This has nothing to do with the acuity, ethics, intellect or position of those who were arguing with you. Come now.

Manoe, I reject speculation on the characters of people I know nothing about. I have actually spent some time with Assange myself but am not going to speculate about him either. This is all very tacky. If you are indeed a feminist I expect you already know that.

And whether or not these allegations end up being true or not — and we will likely never have a satisfying answer to that, nor are any of us really owed that answer, honestly — the actions described by the prosecutor are, in fact, rape, and you don’t have to be a “radical feminist” to believe that. The idea that penetrating a person without that person’s consent is rape is not “radical” in the least. I actually have a hard time believing you are actually a “pragmatic feminist” if you are calling basic ideas of consent and body autonomy “radical” and are accepting Doug01 person’s specious and ugly arguments — including the argument that penetrating a woman who is sleeping, but who relents after the initial penetration, can ever be “consensual” — as healthy, helpful discourse. This is not feminist, be it radical, pragmatic, or any other kind of feminism.

Signed,
A pragmatic and level-headed feminist who supports Wikileaks fully

No, Arkay, I don’t generally stop arguments unless I believe I’ve reached some kind of impassé. I’ve asked a relatively simple question about the standards of evidence that would be needed to prosecute Assange, and for some reason I can’t get a straight answer.

“Trolling” does not mean “posts opinions I don’t like”. If Angus is willing to entertain silly discussions about what precisely consent means in a) b) and c) scenarios, I hardly think it’s trying for him to explain what evidence would suffice to convict anyone of breaching said consent. Otherwise, like I said, what does it matter?

“I’m arguing that a crime that consistently cannot be prosecuted is frivolous….But why you would accuse me of “discourag[ing them] from going to the authorities” is beyond me.”

I can’t imagine why anyone would get the idea that someone who labels a particular crime as “frivolous” is discouraging people to go to the authorities if a victim of that crime.

Has everyone else noticed that the apologizers here have completely abandoned the actual question at hand, which is whether the allegations as they have been made qualify as rape, and have sharply twisted the conversation to “But you can’t prove anything! Neener neener neener!” Is it fair to assume this is because they realized their error and just can’t bring themselves to admit it?

I got into this comment thread after watching the debate between Friedman and Wolf and reading some comments that I found misinformed and harmful. I have actually never commented before on a blog such as this but felt compelled after reading some comments from Doug1, daniel, and now Brian regarding consent for sexual activity and how it relates to the specifics of this case. Having worked to educate men on consent, I felt it would be useful to contribute my experience and knowledge to this thread. And also, I felt it important to challenge these men and their deeply entrenched beliefs which I so often encounter.

The reason this case is so important to me (as in most high-profile cases involving accusations of rape or sexual assault brought against a celebrity) is that it evokes a very strong response from the media and popular culture. This response, as I’ve seen time and time again, is to immediately try to discredit the accuser(s), find ulterior motives for the accusations, speculate endlessly about the specifics (that no one will ever know because we weren’t there), and often, right away assume the innocence of the accused and then proceed to laud the achievements, character, and morals of the accused as “evidence” that such a person would never commit such a crime. It happens all of the time.

When cases like this surface, I find it only helpful to use them to discuss the larger issues at hand—consent, the language the media use to discuss and discredit the accusers, the response from men (and what it means to be a man in our society), etc. Unfortunately, I think this case may be too tainted by the politics swirling around WikiLeaks to do so effectively.

It’s common for people to attack an accuser and say she is falsely accusing a famous man of rape to extort money from him, damage his reputation, get revenge (as in Brian’s case), or try to “save face” for an instance of bad or regrettable sex. All, I might add, are extremely uncommon cases though they do happen.

But I don’t think I’ve encountered yet what Michael Moore and Naomi Wolf are alleging—that the accusations of the women in this case are completely made up as part of an international conspiracy to eventually extradite Assange to the U.S. so he can be punished like a war criminal. That level of fervor around this case just might be too much to get through for people that are hard-core supporters of WikiLeaks and Assange—even though it shouldn’t be. People should be able to separate the two entities while still accepting that the international attention and Interpol involvement would not have happened without the political ramifications. Still, it does not automatically mean that the acts in the accusations didn’t happen and aren’t real and we still need to treat them as serious—despite the circus.

Brian also said:
“There is a knee jerk reaction in society whenever a woman even implies “rape” and it’s reinforced by the media in social cliches as early as old cartoons with Popeye’s Olive Oyl tied to the railroad track. These are of course two dimensional views of the world and situation, and are not a master template for anything except more cartoons.”

“But what if she just resented him, and wanted to play power politics with the “RAPE” allegation? “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” and I’ve read accounts where one accuser complained that he paid more attention to his computer than her. Can’t you smell at least the potential for resentment?”

“I’ve had the misfortune of knowing, and knowing OF too many women that are not above such petty nonsense, which undermines all of the objectives of feminism by using victimization as a power play.”

As I have established above, the “cliché of automatic female victimization” doesn’t really exist, except for maybe in cartoons as you say, Brian. Just look at the backlash against the women in this case, or any other high profile rape or sexual assault case. Do you really think everyone automatically sides with the women? I don’t. I know you had a very unfortunate experience with a woman falsely accusing you. I don’t support that, and I’m sorry that happened to you. It very clearly had a significant impact on your life and the way you know view current events. But I have to say, instances of false accusations of rape are extremely uncommon. We think they are more common than they actually are, because when a false accusation case gets media attention, people are so horrified that it creates a sensational story that everyone hears about.

All of your above comments are typical of the exact kind of backlash against women that I’m talking about. It’s these exact attitudes held by men (and given such a prominent role in our discourse about rape and sexual assault) that actually, logically, ensure that the percentage of false accusations is very low. Think about it this way: we know that the percentage of reported rapes is very low compared to how many are actually perpetrated. A huge factor in this disparity is the fear that the survivor has that he or she will not be believed. Many people never even tell close loved ones about such assaults for fear that they will be met with disbelief, shame, or a total lack of support. Why do survivors feel this way and have these fears? Probably because well before and then after the assault they are surrounded by people echoing the sentiment that you express above: an overeager tendency to attribute accusations to ulterior, and sinister, motives and a not-so-thinly veiled resentment toward these accusers. Men need to think about the message that sends to the women all around them in their daily lives.

I can tell you that a very large number of women (survivors included) have expressed to me they would be extremely hesitant to disclose that they were raped or sexually assaulted because of the immense backlash they have witnessed in the media and from similar attitudes and beliefs held by those close to them.

Doug1 said:
“take back the night” rad feminists on college campus after campus, vastly misrepresenting information on the frequency of date rape, and the infrequency of false date rape accusations.

How many Tack Back the Night events have you been to, Doug? I’ve been to three and at no point did anyone make the claims you attribute to “rad [sic] feminists” (though they are pretty rad) in your earlier post. As far as misrepresenting information of the frequency of date rape and (ugh, again, really?) false date rape accusations, they get their facts from DOJ studies.

Just to clarify, the word “mangina” was not my choice, it was Doug1’s.

I was merely commenting on his use of said label that he defined later. By suffusing the word with genitalia-sounding words, it adds a “macho” gender stereotype to the epithet, but I was not supporting that. I was commenting on the definition of the type of person to whom it would apply.

I don’t have to call you a particular name to recognize what someone else means when they use it. By dismissing the remark as playground behavior is a shortcut to avoiding his underlying point, which I believe he sees as over-identification with women, particularly knee-jerk extreme feminists.

To suggest that you “man up” could be interpreted as an androcentric term, so I will instead use the term “stand up.” If the point being made is more properly put, I would say he’s questioning your identification with females over males. I would add that a fair and balanced identification should favor neither gender, and for you to “stand up” for the right position, your arguments would be more gender balanced, especially in the abstract.

Perhaps, Angus, so that you can set yourself apart from unreasonable extreme feminists (which I assume by definition you also oppose), you could identify an example of feminism being overreaching or going so far as to be unbalanced, and how it differs in this case.

If you demonstrate the ability to discern proper feminism from extreme factions merely posing under its auspices, we might be better able to see where you define the line between balanced and unbalanced feminism, and perhaps use that to frame part of this debate specifically directed at you.

I did read your earlier post. It was so strange that I thought I would just ignore it. It is clear that you think very highly of yourself, but your convoluted ramblings about contract law (I have no idea where you got the bizarre idea that consent to sex amounts to a binding contract) neither directly nor comprehensively refuted the main point that is being made. I’ll break it down for you:

1. Having sex with somebody who has not explicitly consented is rape
2. Somebody who is asleep cannot explicitly consent to anything
Therefore:
3. Having sex with somebody who is asleep and has not earlier given explicit consent is rape

You made the point that this happened to you, you liked it, and therefore don’t consider the experience rape. I am very happy for you. That doesn’t change the fact that if you reported the incident to the police, a prosecutor would probably be able to pursue the crime as a rape at their discretion, regardless of your wishes. None of us has any idea what other information prosecutors have that may have informed their decision to pursue Assange.

The rest of your comment basically amounted to “Ms. W didn’t behave the way a rape victim should behave,” which is just classic. If you had ever taken the time to listen to how actual rape victims describe their experiences, rather than basing your worldview on episodes of Law and Order SVU, you would know that sometimes, rape victims are unable to or don’t fight back or say no—like if they wake up, find that they are already being raped, and don’t see the point in escalating the situation.

I am not against Wikileaks and I am not against men. I really have no agenda here other than to call out bullshit ideas about consent where I see them. “Yes means yes” should be fundamental, and it is obvious that standard was respected in this case. I really don’t see what part of that you don’t get.

Brian, it is generally accepted that the reason that domestic violence against and rape of men is underreported (I completely accept that it is, you have no disagreement from me there) is because of gender norms that make male victims feel that admitting their abuse is emasculating, and so would only further hurt them. In addition to that, there is the response from law enforcement, as you described, that views women as weak and incapable of causing harm, when that clearly isn’t true. Do you think that feminists, of all people, advocate this world view? Most feminists, radical feminists included, want to do away with the gender norms that dictate that women are always weak, and that therefore men who are abused by women must be emasculated.

@mamram
If you concede that gender norms preclude men’s report or not report based on gender, then you must also concede that a similar imbalance must exist on the other side.

You do raise a question however, about radical feminisim. On what issue is the line drawn between radical and conventional feminism? I would say it would be arguably on vitriol against men, rather than empowerment of women.

People of all genders under report rapes. Men are less likely to report than women are. That doesn’t mean that women are somehow on the winning side of the bias. There is no winning side.

The two largest branches of modern feminism are radical feminism and liberal feminism. The differences have nothing to do with hating men. Radical feminism generally focuses on systematic change, and liberal feminism on political change. I know a lot of both kinds of feminists, and I don’t know any who hate men. I think you may have a false perception of how common “vitriol against men” is among feminists of all stripes.

@mamran

“nonverbal communication can be explicit”

Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Unless the person is holding a sign written in big block letters with the words “FUCK ME, PLEASE” and furiously pointing at their genitals, I’d say that’s IMPLIED consent.

Brian, did you even read the definition of consent given by Angus in a previous post on his blog? Here you go, one more time:

“Consent” means words or overt actions by a person indicating a freely given present agreement to perform a particular sexual act with the actor. Consent does not mean the existence of a prior or current social relationship between the actor and the complainant or that the complainant failed to resist a particular sexual act.

–Minnesota state code, section 609.341/4b

Overt actions. Get it? No one is saying there has to be a long,verbal dialogue discussing the sexual itinerary.

Thanks also to Mamram. I also know no feminists who “hate men.” This is a ridiculous myth that just hurts all dialogue.

Just a reminder as we talk about consent: in this particular case we’re discussing, matters of implicit and explicit consent are null and void because the woman’s prior consent was contingent on condom use, so even if we were to throw out everything else we’re still talking about someone initiating a sex act against the woman’s wishes.

Honestly as progressives I would hope we would actually hold Assange, as a self-styled radical and critic of power himself, to higher standards than we do stupid fratboys with regards to understanding of and respect for body autonomy.

And thank you, Arkay. For your excellent commentary and your reminder. You’re right on.

“They hear you and the message they get is ‘This world is predisposed to doubt me. I will not come forward; I need to preserve my mental health first, I cannot risk being destroyed by people who don’t understand what it is really, truly like to be raped and how it doesn’t look like an episode of Law and Order SVU,'”

Damn. So right on.

I think what’s missing is a branch of feminism that focuses on individual change and persona responsibility. When laws are fair and balanced, is the onus not on the individual to claim their equality? I believe that aside from residual cultura attitudes from times past, all that is needed is a change in attitudes“unless that person would have serious trouble getting anyone to say “fuck me please!”” Some women of more conservative nature and upbringing believe it’s not “lady like” to express an interest in sex so explicitly

@Arkay

“Brian, your understanding of what feminism is and who feminists are is just so skewed and so regressive that you might as well be wearing They Live glasses that only allow you to see cartoonish misunderstandings of the issues at hand. There is nothing “extreme” about anything being discussed here. The basic idea is just, hey, no means no, all of our bodies are our own, and if someone’s consent is conditional on specific things like condom use, then you comply because you’re equals having fun together, not one person taking from another person. This applies to everyone regardless of gender.

Feminists are not frothing man-hating boogeymen. If you believe that, you have been misled, misinformed, and miseducated. I’d suggest you’re focusing on the wrong things, and even in that focus you’re misidentifying the matters at hand as some “extreme” feminist viewpoint rather than basic, common-sense matters of body autonomy. Believe it or not, Wolf is the one who is making strange and radical arguments in the debate with Friedman.”

What the fuck are you taking about? To what prejudice do I deserve this unfair bashing?

You accuse me of painting all feminists with a man-hater brush, when I’ve done NOTHING of the kind, trying rather to separate extreme man-haters from feminist women genuinely deserving fairness and equality, because they do exist and pollute the field of fair discourse on the topic. Even more, because I’ve questioned some typical assumptions, you even move to strike, going so far as to paint me as MYSOGYNIST when nothing could be farther from the truth.

I think you should take a look back and re-read what I actually wrote instead of fomenting in your own elitist egoism. I have not made an academic study of feminism, but I’ve seen it’s impact first hand in the world around me, and I have an opinion to state from observation.

You may have fancy academic labels that give narrowed specific meanings to normal language, but that doesn’t make my my observations or use of the common language incorrect.

And in case your thick-headedness requires me to spell it out, I am OPPOSED to someone imposing sex on another also known as RAPE. However if there is an established relationship between a couple, given other context of consent, I DISAGREE (I’m allowed to do that here, am I not?) that it’s as cut and dried as your tidy little framework needs it to be.

Maybe you should learn a bit about hearing out a person’s position, interpreting it completely BACKWARDS before you summarily dismiss them, you arrogant jerk!

“What the fuck are you taking about? To what prejudice do I deserve this unfair bashing?

You accuse me of painting all feminists with a man-hater brush, when I’ve done NOTHING of the kind, trying rather to separate extreme man-haters from feminist women genuinely deserving fairness and equality, because they do exist and pollute the field of fair discourse on the topic. Even more, because I’ve questioned some typical assumptions, you even move to strike, going so far as to paint me as MYSOGYNIST when nothing could be farther from the truth.”

You keep bringing up extreme man haters as opposed to pragmatic feminists or whatever and I’m saying that this entire idea is a myth, and your very bringing it up shows that you’ve been misinformed. I’m not attacking you or painting you as a misogynist. You are reading things into what I’m saying that are not there, just as you are reading “extreme man hating” into the feminist movement. It’s just…not really a thing. There are a few outlier assholes out there who became feminists for the wrong reasons just as there are assholes in any group, but for the most part your feminist dichotomy is just a misunderstanding.

From Webster’s:

Radical:
very different from the usual or traditional : extreme

So if I say vitriol against men is radical to feminists, do you still disagree?

Aside from your alternate definition of radical, my use of the word is correct. Certainly your definition has an expanded scope, but to dismiss my correct use of the word as ignorant is disrespectful to me and to any meaningful discussion. This certainly decries an intent to dismiss fair comment.

If it’s your goal to drive away dissent, then by all means I shall depart company from this room of yes-men (and/or women)

“From Webster’s:

Radical:
very different from the usual or traditional : extreme

So if I say vitriol against men is radical to feminists, do you still disagree?”

This is just a game of semantics and has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. You are intent on proving some point about man-hating feminists that can’t be proven, and you’re now resorting to half-assed semantic tricks that don’t even amount to a point?

“Aside from your alternate definition of radical, my use of the word is correct.”

Huh? You were talking about radical feminism, not what might be seen as extremist outlier ideas or behavior to feminists. You can’t just reinvent context like that, sorry.

“Certainly your definition has an expanded scope, but to dismiss my correct use of the word as ignorant is disrespectful to me and to any meaningful discussion. This certainly decries an intent to dismiss fair comment.”

What?

Also I think I’ve done the opposite of “drive away dissent” here and am engaging you very openly!

@mamram wrote:

“Some women of more conservative nature and upbringing believe it’s not ‘lady like’ to express an interest in sex so explicitly”
So try to talk to them about it, and if they still refuse to communicate like adults, find somebody else to sleep with. Problem solved.
—
I did, and I did. That solves the problem for me just fine, but not for them, and the lovers they will take after, some of which will take her up on the sketchy rules of engagement she offers, creating another potentially sticky situation. I can isolate myself from the problem but it will still exist in the world where it continues to happen.

I wasn’t asking for personal advice, I was commenting on conditions in the world and existing gender attitudes. Or do feel it’s your job to personally explain to every man on the planet who ever might encounter this phenomenon the proper way to handle every situation?

This debate is about how the law addresses such matters, attempting to balance the complex ideological issues with down to earth pragmatism. The law doesn’t give a shit how well people communicate or even comprehend, so long as they don’t destroy the place and can play sort-of nicely.

This is exactly what happened with Assange and these women. I don’t think he should be jailed for this anymore than I should have a right to punch someone for farting in the bed when I explicitly told them not to. It’s irreverent, inconsiderate and even plainly wrong, but is it worthy of the harshest possible punishment?

No amount of “excuse me, pardon me” among academic elites will change the nature of the task that lawmakers have to address for the sake of the rest of the world. We can talk about explicit consent all day long, but sometimes it doesn’t happen that clearly and the remedy vanishes.

There seems to be a vacuum of reality here with this utopian notion that human beings always act reasonably, and if there are ever grey areas, then to hell with them. The law has the responsibility not to dismiss, but protect everyone equally, including the inept and ignorant, which is where application of these laws are more likely to be needed.

This whole conversation is a false dialogue anyways, a distraction from the larger issues to do with the content of the WikiLeaks. Hundreds of thousands dead, heads of state acting in bad faith, atrocities committed daily that end up in war and death, and here we sit, blogging about proper etiquette for people’s private parts.

I’m ashamed I even partook, knowing full well that this self-styled social psych thread would most horrendously butcher a legal issue that would be much more cleanly and neatly solved in a law blog, knowing full well all of the above.

I was expecting a bit more nuanced point of view from what I believe is a rational person.
There’s no way for a non drugged woman to get fucked during her sleep, specially if she makes a point about wearing condom and the guy is reluctant to do so.
But never mind..let’s say she got fucked and did not wake up.

now how comes she kept sleeping with him after what you all call a rape ? maybe because it isn’t.
maybe they just did not appreciate being dumped and went to the police to find a way to make him pay that ? just asking.
because people are talking about rape, but that’s not what the warrant was issued for.
they are suing him for sexual misconduct, ie, he did not wear a condom AND did not want to make a HIV test.
they were not assaulted, they never said that, they both agreed it was consented sex.
so please, just stop talking about rape, it’s irrelevant.

Let me try and further clarify my position, since it’s been extremely difficult getting any of you to follow me on this. Trying to obsessively treat “rape” cases as a violation of “consent” (rather than as an act of demonstrable assault, where non-consent is obviously a given) will lead to law that amounts to weighing the character of two people, and it’s highly desirable that the law remains the purview of evidence-based cases of redress. I do not want to see a world of Judge Judys writ large, and neither should any citizen who fears unjust imprisonment.

“Terre I still maintain that this matter begins with ethical concerns of body autonomy and boundaries much the same way our understandings of things like free speech and property rights inform and help define those crimes that trespass upon our free speech and property rights. I believe all people have certain rights that inhere regardless of the laws of the land in which they find themselves. Those things inform laws but are not just about the legal code or the prosecutor’s case.”

I don’t know what “body autonomy” means in the sense of something that’s not already respected by the law. As I just said, we have a mechanism for violations of “body autonomy”; it’s called assault. But whereas we can demonstrate a violation of free speech or property rights with hard evidence (witnesses, missing material, accountable obstructions by the defendant etc.) it’s extremely rare that one can demonstrate a violation of consent, especially if the only two people privy to the act were the disputing parties themselves. In that sense, your definition of “body autonomy” is not at all comparable to either of those legal or moral classes.

“I wasn’t asking for personal advice, I was commenting on conditions in the world and existing gender attitudes.”

You were actually commenting on the very conditions in the world and existing gender attitudes that feminism seeks to change in order to make the world more just for men and women! Just sayin.

“This is exactly what happened with Assange and these women.”

You don’t know exactly what happened with Assange and these women, nor do I, nor does anyone but the three involved parties.

“I don’t think he should be jailed for this anymore than I should have a right to punch someone for farting in the bed when I explicitly told them not to. It’s irreverent, inconsiderate and even plainly wrong, but is it worthy of the harshest possible punishment?”

Irreverent? Inconsiderate? It’s treating someone else’s body as an object you have more say over than the other person does. I mean, yes, it’s at its basis inconsiderate but in reality it can genuinely traumatize and damage a person. The basic ethical idea that we control our own bodies and cannot be sold into slavery, trafficked, raped, are the fundamentals of human rights. Violating another person’s rights is not “irreverence.”

This is not academic at all, nor is it abstract. It is very, very real and people who are fighting for the kinds of things Friedman is fight for are actually battling to help people, to stop trauma, to stop lives from being permanently altered by someone else saying, “You know what? Your body? It’s mine.”

Imagine living in a world in which people routinely treat you as if your body belongs to them, or to the public common. That is the kind of thing we’re talking about. Equality and basic human rights demand we fight back, and if Assange did violate this incredibly fundamental boundary, knowingly and without concern for his partner’s express wishes, it is nothing like a fart and a punch in bed.

“As I said before, feminist ideas of consent exist to make navigating these kinds of things easier for all of us by providing some kind of blueprint we can adapt within our personal relationships. It’s there for men, too. Feminism is a movement for gender equality: for men too.”

This could not be further from the truth. If consent lies entirely in the hands of women, even when the women aggressively pursue a bedfellow (as in the case of Assange and the two Swedes) that would quite literally put all men at the mercy of a woman’s whims. If, for any reason at all, a woman can “withdraw consent” mid-coitus, sexual union would be such an extremely risky enterprise that few men would bother to seduce girls.

But this is almost irrelevant, because my entire angle this whole time has been that such “feminist ideas of consent” would render trials into shouting matches between two warring parties. Angus’ notion that one could look to past behavior (like text message correspondences) is explicitly contrary to this image of consent, because the issue is not whether or not the woman gave consent beforehand but whether she gave it during the act. Short of video evidence, such a fact would be impossible to prove one way or the other.

“This is really important. Rape isn’t just a legal issue, and a conversation about what constitutes rape is only partially — and often only secondarily — a conversation about the law.”

Are you actually serious? Why in the world would a crime as grievous as rape be “only secondarily […] a conversation about the law”?

Arkay, anecdotes are not evidence one way or the other when it comes to the veracity of date rape allegations.

“Terre, OF COURSE WOMEN CAN WITHDRAW CONSENT MID-COITUS. Of course that’s true. Of course that’s true. How could it not be true?”

Don’t be intentionally obtuse. I’m saying that if a woman’s word that she withdrew consent was all the evidence needed to successfully prosecute, men would not submit to the dating game.

“Wait, are YOU serious??? Because, as you have said many times yourself, the law isn’t really capable of addressing every case of rape. That doesn’t make those cases any less awful, unless ones only concern when it comes to sexual assault is how to get away with it.”

I’m not interested in what is or isn’t awful. I’m interested in what constitutes a crime that one can be found, without any reasonable doubt, guilty of.

“How would that situation be different from one in which a woman’s word that she never consented at all was all the evidence needed to successfully prosecute? Because it sure as hell sounds to me like your standard precludes any and all acquaintance rape prosecutions where the evidence boils down to his word against hers.”

Yes, I would hope my standard would indeed preclude those prosecutions. Better a million guilty than a single innocent, etc.

Brian, I am doing no such thing. I am a feminist and therefore actually know a lot about feminism, and I’m not drawing complicated definitions. I am simply saying that your tangent about “man-hating feminists” is

1. a tangent

2. based on myths that have nothing to do with feminism

Why do you keep insisting we discuss your straw man? It is completely meaningless and, again, ill-informed because what you’re saying has nothing to do with feminism or any of its wings. Of course I disagree with your useless digression, and I’ve said it dozens of times by now so I hope this time it finally sticks and we can get on to talking about something of a bit more merit. Geez.

Back in a second, I’m going to go troll a cricket board demanding that people explain why cricket isn’t played with basketballs.

“Police, someone was just trespassing in my house! I’d like to make a report!”

“I’m sorry, the DA won’t be able to prosecute this because you didn’t get a good look at the suspect and the suspect left no evidence behind. This means trespassing as a concept is null and void, since ethical breaches, boundary violations, humans rights abuses and petty crimes, one and all, can only be discussed in the narrowest terms of what poster Terre thinks is prosecutable.”

“…”

Terre, I am aware of that. As I said before, I am a journalist. I work with police and the courts all the time. What I am saying is that the discussion of consent is first and foremost about preventing rape, not about prosecuting rape, and that you have dug into your one corner of an issue and won’t budge doesn’t make the issue about your corner and your corner alone.

Alright, how precisely would you go about “preventing rape” in situations where it was only apparent she didn’t want it during the middle of the act?

@ Arkay

“…the woman’s prior consent was contingent on condom use, so even if we were to throw out everything else we’re still talking about someone initiating a sex act against the woman’s wishes.”

^Absolute lie. The only time miss W asked him to put on a condom, he DID, just like a gentleman would, even though he didn’t want to. What part of that is not respecting your partner’s wishes? In the alleged morning sex episode, miss W, in her own words, never said “put on a condom”, she said “I hope you don’t have HIV” and then proceeded to put her back into it. Tell me, at which point in this woman’s life will you be willing to respect her enough to even recognise her personal responsibility and autonomy (which she exercised effectively in forcing him put on a condom initially), let alone address it? You are desperately seeking to change the facts to fit your puzzling agenda. That is wrong, and dangerous – a man’s life hangs in the balance because of this nonsense.

@ mamram

I notice in the entirety of your superfluous bizzare rant, you studiously neglect to address, what I accept must be an inconvenient fact for you – the fact that miss W was in complete control not only of her body, but of the entire situation, forcing her partner to submit to her will and use or condom or NO DEAL. Yes, come to think of it, that does sound like the will power of a very vulnerable woman in need of perpetual and urgent rescue.

Brian put it brilliantly: “Unless the person is holding a sign written in big block letters with the words “FUCK ME, PLEASE” and furiously pointing at their genitals, I’d say that’s IMPLIED consent.” And of course by this near masochistic, debilitating, fantasy standard of yours, that would mean no sex. I would also add that both parties’ lawyers would have to be present with an exhaustive contract to be signed and dated before intercourse. Not to mention the police officers that’d need to be around the bedposts at the ready, to arrest the man (or woman, but mostly the man of course) for not being symbiotically in tune with the woman’s psyche; because of course not responding in time, pre-emptively, to her ever-changing, capricious will during sex is an immediate and arrestable infraction in your world. Geez! What a chore. Who would want to have sex with you, with a mindset like that? And I truly pity the fool who would. When one bad mood is all it’d take for you to put his sorry ass behind bars.

Just chiiill. Sex is fun. In the adult realm, explicit consent is the exception to the rule. And you would know that already if you were truly ALIVE. Whether in a club or wherever, most mature first, and subsequent encounters are fuelled by magnetic, primal attraction in which words simply have no use…at least not until after the joy of union. By your silly standard, damn near every male and female clubber in the world is an actual rapist. I hope you never run for office, there simply won’t be enough jails.

“For starters, we can be vocal and make it clear to EVERYONE that:
1. It is unacceptable to wait until it is “apparent she didn’t want it.” You need to confirm that she DOES want it.
2. When you are no longer certain that she does want it, YOU STOP.”

I’m afraid both of these conditions are fantastical. Human beings have been acting on ‘implied consent’ for, to borrow Angus’ phrase, “literally millennia”. It has been nearly the sole method behind the reproduction of the species. And the second (she doesn’t have to be clear that she doesn’t want it, but simply that it’s “no longer certain?” Wow!) asks for what amounts to clairvoyance. Neither are reasonable and neither should have any place in what constitutes a practical definition of “rape”.

“how sad for you, and how much sadder for her. Really. You must be having truly lousy sex if the question of whether your partner is willing is so mysterious to you”

My thoughts exactly!

“Why exactly is the burden on my shoulders to mysteriously scry the feelings of a girl who’s otherwise consenting to sex? Why couldn’t she just say “stop” or try to leave?”

Because sex isn’t an adversarial endeavor. The idea is for both of you to have fun. If you’re not sure your partner is having fun, and you decide “meh, whatever, she could just leave if she wanted,” then you are a selfish douchebag.

Although, I am operating under the premise that the ultimate goal here is to have a good time and not be an asshole. If instead your goal is to put your penis in as many places as possible, regardless of how anybody else feels about the situation, then I see how we could be arriving at different conclusions.

@ Arkay

“…the woman’s prior consent was contingent on condom use, so even if we were to throw out everything else we’re still talking about someone initiating a sex act against the woman’s wishes.”

^Absolute lie. The only time miss W asked him to put on a condom, he DID, just like a gentleman would, even though he didn’t want to. What part of that is not respecting your partner’s wishes? In the alleged morning sex episode, miss W, in her own words, never said “put on a condom”, she said “I hope you don’t have HIV” and then proceeded to put her back into it. Tell me, at which point in this woman’s life will you be willing to respect her enough to even recognise her personal responsibility and autonomy (which she exercised effectively in forcing him put on a condom initially), let alone address it? You are desperately seeking to change the facts to fit your puzzling agenda. That is wrong, and dangerous – a man’s life hangs in the balance because of this nonsense. They were only concerned about STD transmission NOT rape. How is this police business? Get yourself tested, and if you’re that concerned, next time don’t just half-heartedly say “I hope you don’t have HIV” and proceed to enjoy the sex; no, instead, do what she was perfectly capable of doing and indeed did do just a few hours prior, and say “put on a condom or NO DEAL”.

@ mamram

I notice in the entirety of your superfluous bizzare rant, you studiously neglect to address, what I accept must be an inconvenient fact for you – the fact that miss W was in complete control not only of her body, but of the entire situation, forcing her partner to submit to her will and use or condom or NO DEAL. Yes, come to think of it, that does sound like the will power of a very vulnerable woman in need of perpetual and urgent rescue.

Brian put it brilliantly: “Unless the person is holding a sign written in big block letters with the words “FUCK ME, PLEASE” and furiously pointing at their genitals, I’d say that’s IMPLIED consent.” And of course by this near masochistic, debilitating, fantasy standard of yours, that would mean no sex. I would also add that both parties’ lawyers would have to be present with an exhaustive contract to be signed and dated before intercourse. Not to mention the police officers that’d need to be around the bedposts at the ready, to arrest the man (or woman, but mostly the man of course) for not being symbiotically in tune with the woman’s psyche; because of course not responding in time, pre-emptively, to her ever-changing, capricious will during sex is an immediate and arrestable infraction in your world. Geez! What a chore. Who would want to have sex with you, with a mindset like that? And I truly pity the fool who would. When one bad mood is all it’d take for you to put his sorry ass behind bars.

Just chiiill. Sex is fun. In the adult realm, explicit consent is the exception to the rule. And you would know that already if you were truly ALIVE. Whether in a club or wherever, most mature first, and subsequent encounters are fuelled by magnetic, primal attraction in which words simply have no use…at least not until after the joy of union. By your silly standard, damn near every male and female clubber in the world is an actual rapist. I hope you never run for office, there simply won’t be enough jails.

Cézsar, I will engage you here if you argue honestly without absurd slippery slopes and bending the known facts of this case to fit your argument. If you have to obfuscate the public facts of the case in order to make your point you have already conceded your point. Same with your silly nightmare scenarios and illogical tone.

You go after that straw man, Terre!

It isn’t about putting the burden on the man. It is everybody’s responsibility to make sure that everybody else is freely consenting to what is going on. If everyone is visibly/audibly having a good time, then this isn’t really an issue. If not, confirm it. It’s amazing to me that there are people for whom talking about sex with somebody that they want to have sex with is a huge problem, rather than part of the fun.

“It isn’t about putting the burden on the man. It is everybody’s responsibility to make sure that everybody else is freely consenting to what is going on. If everyone is visibly/audibly having a good time, then this isn’t really an issue. If not, confirm it. It’s amazing to me that there are people for whom talking about sex with somebody that they want to have sex with is a huge problem, rather than part of the fun.”

I really don’t know why the left has this issue of confusing ‘good’ sexual practices (and even then, by whose measure?) with moral ethics and heinous crimes like rape. And it absolutely boggles when rape is equated with not being an emotional therapist or something.

Please don’t patronize me, Angus. If you have a serious question, formulate it in a serious way.

@terre
A point to add:
With a watch, there is clearly a single owner, whereas a sexual encounter is “owned” by both parties to the act. Ownership of a watch when it’s given or taken remains with the owner, but responsibility for sex belongs to both parties.

With a watch, ownership is assumed to be given to ONE party unless disputed. With sex, “ownership” (mutual consent) of the act is assumed to belong to BOTH unless it is disputed.

However, unlike a watch, disputes as to “ownership” are not as straightforward to prove.

@anyone else who cares :P

I was looking for a definition of the charges actually laid and there doesn’t seem to be any clear answer as to whether or not any were actually filed:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-q-and-a

If anyone has the text citing the actual names of charges and related code, it would help settle the dispute. Answers to questions such as the nature of the charges, jurisdiction and legal tests that define guilt for the given accusation can help resolve whats actually going on.

According to NPR, “In Sweden, a person who has sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can be convicted of rape and sentenced to up to six years in prison.” (This definition applies to the second woman’s accusations.)

I offer no interpretation on the appropriateness of this law, since it is Swedish and I know little to nothing about Sweden and its’ culture. Each country and jurisdiction administers its own laws, and for me to impose my value beliefs would be ethnocentric. For example: In some cultures, prostitution is illegal, where in others it’s not (I live in Canada where it’s not)

So, at least according to NPR’s take on Swedish law, assuming the allegations are found to be true, it may lead to up to six years imprisonment.

However, the “up to six years” clause probably reserves the harshest punishment for more extreme violations of this law, i.e. where the person being raped (as defined by this law) not even knowing the perpetrator AT ALL (i.e. crime of opportunity – perp finds victim drunk unconscious on the street and takes advantage = maximum penalty).

So, even if there was no contest against the charges, bearing circumstances in mind, the resulting sentence on Assange should likely be less than 6 years.

Consider:

1. The accuser initiated and continued a sexual interest in Assange (or so some posts in this thread have suggested)

2. The accuser at least partially consented to sex, albeit with an absolute qualifier (no condom, no sex), and was aware of the sexual nature of her interactions with Assange. (with debate as to whether her later concession to the act counts as retro-active consent)

3. They had previously had sex, establishing a sexual history
(can someone confirm or deny this?) Some reports also suggest there was a history of broken condoms, which might explain Assange’s reluctance to use one. (not an excuse, but offers some explanation for his apparent insistence on “barebacking”)

4. The accuser slept with Assange knowing he wanted to have sex without a condom. (again, not an excuse, but should be considered)

5. The accuser conceded to the sex without a condom after the fact, citing only a concern for STDs (further refinement of the terms?).

(it is being debated here as to whether or not this constitutes consent, but it does offer significant contrast versus clear and obvious objection i.e. shoving him away and screaming “get the fuck off me!” – with his attempts to pursuade, he may have believed she changed her mind)

Given all of the above, IF there is a clear finding of guilt, the circumstances suggested he would not receive the maximum sentence.

Now, having explored that, there has to be a discovery into what facts there are that prove the allegations are true. Currently there are disputes between the accused and Assange about consent, so it is conceivable that consent may have been given (pick your side here if you have a bias, unless you already did that earlier).

What is agreed upon:

1. They had sex
2. there was an issue pertaining the use of condoms
3. They had sex without a condom (consensual or not)
4. The accuser did not tell Assange again to stop
5. The accuser did not offer further protest until much later afterwards (laying of charges etc)

6. There were more than one instance involved, with two different women
7. Both encounters involved sex without a condom that might otherwise have been fully consensual

So, it weighs out both ways… either way not looking great for Assange, but with a possibility he could walk.

“I think that’s a fair question. Based on what you have said in this thread, I am not really sure how you would answer.”

Yes, I would stop. If I continued, would it be rape? Unless I’m supposed to be some kind of father figure who overrules her own decisions for her best interests, no.

Um, once you ask, there isn’t any.

In which case, sex is only lawful if the man explicitly asks for permission? Again, how far does this extend? Which acts does he have to carry out this responsibility for?

Brian & Terre,

I suppose it’s entirely possible that you are truly ignorant as to the meaning of the word frivolous. I think it’s pretty unlikely, and think you’re trolling, but let’s assume you’re simply ignorant.

The word frivolous means not serious, lacking serious purpose, unworthy of serious attention, silly, of little of no worth, not to be taken seriously, etc. Don’t believe me? Go to Dictionary.com, or better yet, OneLook.com.

So, let’s translate this sentence: I’m arguing that a crime that consistently cannot be prosecuted is frivolous –> I’m arguing that a crime is frivolous –> I’m arguing that rape is not serious –> rape is not serious.

That’s not seemingly demeaning, it’s an outright dismissal of rape as a serious crime. Apparently in your view, rape is no more serious then a parking violation.

If on the chance that what you’re trying to state is that prosecuting rape charges are frivolous prosecution (and if that’s what you meant, you pretty well butchered the English language to the point of not even coming close to making that statement), you’re demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding of how the criminal justice system works. An Assistant District Attorney’s’ performance is measured by conviction rate. District Attorneys are largely elected positions, and they campaign on their effectiveness in prosecuting criminals. There is little incentive to bring charges when the evidence that is available is pretty unlikely to result in conviction.

However, the DA’s office simply can’t ignore the crime of rape. Aside from the lack of a moral foundation that would demonstrate, it’s not in the social interest to make rape de facto legal through a failure to prosecute a particular crime simply because generally it’s a difficult crime to successfully prosecute.

The conviction rate barometer (as well as the election of state law officials in general, especially sheriffs) is not a practice I agree with in the first place. I don’t believe superfluous factors such as a DA’s election chances should have any place in a court of law, where the sole object should be to get at the truth and to administer justice in the case of demonstrable crimes.

I chose the word “frivolous” because that’s precisely what a case with no evidence or witnesses is, and the rate of date rape cases that make it to trial reflects that fact. There is no way to make these cases less frivolous without lowering the standards of evidence required for a successful prosecution. Rape itself is convicted at rates relatively on par with any other crime, because judges/jurors have more to work with when physical evidence (like bruising) or outside witnesses are available.

“It’s not clear what you are arguing here or what you think the problem is. You seem to be saying that given the recognition that conviction is very unlikely with the evidence available, not all that many acquaintance rapes (which is most rape) make it to trial. And that those that go to trial have a conviction rate similar to other crimes brought to trial.

So, what are you seeing as a problem?”

I’m seeing as a problem this pressure from many given the Assange brouhaha to try and lower the standards of evidence required to prosecute a man of “acquaintance rape” or “date rape” or whatever to that of a person’s word. I even wrote a letter to the Washington Post because of an article by a woman who apparently envied some aspect of the Swedish legal system that allowed people to ‘withdraw’ consent at any time after the fact.

“Actually, nobody’s trying to do that. Nobody’s saying “if she says it’s rape, he should be convicted.” You made that part up.”

In which case, this entire discourse on the notion of what “consent” is was a total waste of time, since the actual matter at hand is whether the girl or the man is lying about their respective accounts of events.

“What we’re saying is that any allegation must be taken seriously, and that some allegations may be so compelling, for whatever reason, as to permit a jury to find guilt on those grounds.”

No, Angus, there is no such thing as an allegation that is “so compelling” it should suffice to convict someone of a crime without any other buttressing evidence, and (again, fortunately) juries will rarely, if ever, convict on such a basis. This is quite seriously confusing the prospect of law and order with the notion of emotional justice.

Terre,

Not sure why this should have to be explained to you but:

and that some allegations may be so compelling,,b> for whatever reason, as to permit a jury to find guilt on those grounds.

The reason(s) would be evidence.

Just because I know Terre will bring it up: the rape kit would probably be the kind of hard evidence he keeps talking about.

“Trying to bring a conversation about consent into a world like this is a good thing and is not going to harm you or harm men. It’s a small and important step. It will not result in us living in some PK Dick story where you’re convicted before you’ve even acted.”

No, it really isn’t. As far as sci-fi is concerned, it’s a lot more akin to that Next Generation episode where a court tried to convict a supposed spy on the sole basis of one woman’s testimony and the ensuing furore. The whole story was a warning about allowing the nature of the crime to determine the standard of evidence appropriate for it.

I knew that’s where you’d go next. And both sides certainly need to be interrogated — people who go along with a prosecution know that. There is a peculiar level of reliance on sexist ideas about women that tends to go into the character dismantling of the accused in a lot of those cases. It’s a matter of us living in an unequal world and defense attorneys using what they think can win them a case. Have you seen this kind of thing happen? It is beyond ugly, beyond the pale, just unbelievable. The men don’t get the same kind of treatment because there is no equivalent to “slut shaming” for men. There are hurtful and unfair stereotypes about men, but they are not equivalent in that regard.

I’m “obsess[ed]” over evidence Arkay because I don’t believe in sending innocent people to prison, regardless of whatever torment it may cause women in court. Again, appeals to emotion are not sufficient grounds to grant leniency when it comes to finding the truth about an allegation.

I don’t see why the state of “cultural narratives” should matter if the defendant should be expected to probe her account of events to the fullest possible extent. You really can’t have your cake and eat it.

I’m saying that if you think the “character dismantling” practiced by the jury/defendant suffers from “sexis[m]”, you can’t expect a girl’s testimony to suffice as evidence for rape. Either her character and story can be probed to within the fullest possible extent (given the gravity of the charge) or her testimony is nil.

wore, oops

So what exactly are your principles, then? Your politics? Your philosophies and concerns? What are you doing on Studentactivism.net if you embrace regressive ideas and an anything-goes, inequitable status quo?

What does that even mean, “regressive ideas”? I’m regressive because I don’t believe in sacrificing justice on the altar of emotional fragility? Why exactly should women be treated with kids’ gloves if we’re using their testimony as the sole evidence of a crime? In what world is this anything but draconian?

@Arkay… I commented in haste earlier after skimming equally as hastily while multitasking other things, and missed some of the context. I was also still a bit peeved after reading a remark from Angus (which I should have anticipated, since I basically sided with someone basically calling him a pussy [paraphrased term]), and misdirected my frustration at you instead.

While I still believe I was making a valid point until then, I’m a bit fatigued from following this thread all day, at least for now… I will have to re-read and see where my train of thought derailed, dust off my condom and get back into the fight another day..

Happy rapist hunting!

“A woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down”
old quote (origin unknown)

What also bothers me is this constant harking back to ‘what exactly did the woman SAY’ Of course ‘no’ means ‘no’ but it is really the last line of defence. I pity the woman who has to forcefully say ‘no’ as I’d imagine there’s a fair amount of aggressive behaviour on the part of the man before it gets this far.

So much of sexual offences law is couched in what society morally dictates is acceptable. For example, someone who is mentally incapable of giving real consent is protected from predators whom would otherwise argue “she was up for it” the same goes for children and young girls. We have a minimum age of legal consent for a reason.

This is very much a debate centred around morals and ethics. That’s why, ethically, if the woman in the Assange case is deemed to be a CREDIBLE and RELIABLE witness by the judge (look these two words up together Terre), and she says she woke up to find Assange having sex with her, that it IS rape and Assange stands a chance of being convicted for it. Why is this so surprising or indefensible to men here? If Assange did what he did, why should we shed tears over a guy who goes around penetrating sleeping women? Are you men saying this is normal behaviour and could this be why you’re getting so upset about the prospect of Assange being convicted?

As for men ‘waking their girlfriends up’ in this way, this is obviously a learned habit brought about by consensual attitudes and prior experience. A stricter, but no less valid, approach, is to say that doing such a thing to your girlfriend is wrong as the man has not confirmed consent is there. Nobody has a right to a woman’s body – not anyone, boyfriend nor husband. In Scotland, marital rape was outlawed in 1987. It is utterly repugnant to me that this happened in my lifetime. I think the views of Terre, Brian etc are a hangover of days gone by when men did have proprietal rights over womens’ bodies. Personally, I would be pretty upset with my boyfriend for assuming I’m not interested in foreplay and for coming at me in my sleep – it seems like pretty selfish/underhand sex to me but that’s beside the point. If Assange is guilty, what right did he have to presume the consent of a woman he doesn’t know? What kind of animal sees a sleeping woman as fair game? Did he hope she wouldn’t wake at all?

No court in the world would support Doug1’s (I think that’s his name) statement that its okay to surprise sleeping women with penetration and ask them for their consent while inside them!!! I am shocked that I’m even having to say this. And he is DEFINITELY no lawyer if he utters the words ‘retroactive consent’

Emma, your supposed background as a lawyer is put into question by your poor understanding of what constitutes evidence in a court of law, as well as where the burden of proof lies. As I may end up saying a million times over, the vast majority of date rape cases don’t make it to trial because a person cannot be convicted for a crime as heinous as rape based solely on another person’s testimony, no matter how credible. This is not my opinion but that of the tens of thousands of jurors and judges who’ve ruled on cases like these. If you or Angus would like to see the statistics, do ask.

The burden of proof lies with the accuser and prosecution. You don’t need a bloody law degree to know that so I don’t know what youth rabbiting on about.

Feel free to bring on more of your ignorant, unresearched nonsense.

Oh, since you appear to know virtually nothing about the courts.

standard of proof (beyond reasonable doubt OR balance of probabilities)

And

burden of proof (on pursuer or defender – can switch depending on the issue, nature of the case – civil or criminal – or technical point of proof)….

They are two vastly different concepts. I was referring to the former and you, due to your ignorance bless you, automatically thought I meant the latter.

I learned this in my first week of law school but I would say most reasonably intelligent people know the difference without a legal education.

“The burden of proof lies with the accuser and prosecution. You don’t need a bloody law degree to know that so I don’t know what youth rabbiting on about.”

You’re apparently the one forgetting that in Assange’s case, the women’s prosecutor has to demonstrate that Assange committed a crime. It’s not his job to prove he had consent.

Anyway, I would recommend that anyone concerned should read this report.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.131.8325&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Read the part on “understanding attrition” most carefully.

@ mamram

“Really? It would mean no sex? You have never said to somebody that you find attractive, “wanna fuck?” and received in return, “absolutely”?”

^Well there we have it ladies and gentlemen. The mask finally slipped. This self-professed champion of feminism and protector and defender of the dignity and respect of women, wants all men to repeatedly and often walk up to random women whom they know nothing about and say “wanna fuck?”. This is the only level of respect you are willing to afford women? That’s what the entire struggle of feminism has amounted to? – “wanna fuck?”

Oh dear. How sad. How very sad indeed. You see, it must be that you just either hate men or want to punish women, as opposed to being a feminist. Because you actively want men to be arrested no matter what they do, even at the proposal stages, never mind the sexual stage. But then again maybe that’s the point: if you can get men arrested for saying “wanna fuck?” to their co-workers for example, on sexual harassment charges on the spot then bingo! – you never have to proceed to the sexual stage and the prospect of rape is thus eliminated – result!

And of course if it did somehow get to the sexual stage, according to you, the man, not being symbiotically in tune with the woman’s psyche, and as a result not responding in time, pre-emptively, to her ever-changing, capricious will during sex, is to be immediately arrested for rape.

Of course all this means women never get to have sex, in your world, but hey, that’s what the vibrator’s there for, right? Who needs a man, aye? At this stage, based on your own incoherent, confused and contradictory ramblings, I will legitimately surmise that you’ve got serious issues lady.

And hats off Terre, for nearly single-handedly whipping the hysterical opposition into shape, even Emma the supposed lawyer. It’s a bit like the scene from the Matrix where thousands of agents close in on Neo, and still lose.

What makes me saddest of all is that some of the very people on this blog, and many others like them, will one day be jurors if they haven’t been already, in real life cases adjudicating upon real peoples’ lives with this most corrosive level of toxic bias demonstrated here in this blog. A surprisingly shocking reminder to me that humans really can never sit in judgement of other humans; that it is an inherently flawed concept…

And that is precisely why the poor and oppressed the world over are increasingly viewed as “the problem” or “terrorists”, while the actual terrorists who’ve terrorised the entire planet and all its peoples for the last 500 years get lauded and lionised and relied upon even further in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way. I hope to God I never get to be sat in judgement by a jury of my so-called fucking peers. Look how well that worked for Blacks in America. How can your enslaver sit in judgement of you as your peer. Are you fucking kidding me? How can an extremist feminist sit in judgement of a man in a case involving a woman? And how does one tell the difference in a fucking court of law? I know it’s the only system we have now, but we really need a better one. I’d much rather be judged by some alien than any of you lot.

Emma wrote:

“False accusations are astronomically dwarfed by actual rapes, to the extent that it is pointless and misleading to speak about false accusations as a real problem.”

Where I might be tempted disagree with you on the numbers, it is nonetheless not pointless to speak about false allegations as a real problem. Each and every one affects real lives.

You yourself state,

“They come up against institutionalised sexism in the police force whereby officers either inherently don’t believe the victim or are too lazy investigate this difficult crime.”

On what basis do you conclude that sexism and laziness are the causes for failure to follow up? Do you have studies or is this merely anecdotal?

Could it be that the police might in their minds be pre-screening for false allegations to avoid overloading the courts with frivolous cases? Maybe in their efforts to screen the frivolous cases, they are throwing out the baby with the bath water.

On one hand you are saying the false accusations are irrelevant, yet dismiss the ineffectiveness of police as a whole as inherently sexist or lazy, when certainly they must have SOME interest in the well being of rape victims. I can see individual officers having said shortcomings (as I’ve seen myself), but the force as a whole?

If genuine cases were easier to determine, would it not also be easier for you to make your case of laziness and sexism? As a lawyer, have you seen the actual numbers of rape calls vs. filed charges, or are you speaking only about the dockets that come across your desk?

Male Privilege

@Brian:
“This is exactly what happened with Assange and these women. I don’t think he should be jailed for this anymore than I should have a right to punch someone for farting in the bed when I explicitly told them not to. It’s irreverent, inconsiderate and even plainly wrong, but is it worthy of the harshest possible punishment?”

“If someone has a car accident and their bodies are mutilated, causing suffering at least as bad as a rape, they can still prevail victorious.”
“Happy rapist hunting!”

“A woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down”
old quote (origin unknown)”

@Terre:
“Why is this any less ethical than hounding the accused’s criminal past to determine whether or not he’d be a likely “rapist”?”

@Ceszar
“I hope to God I never get to be sat in judgement by a jury of my so-called fucking peers. Look how well that worked for Blacks in America. How can your enslaver sit in judgement of you as your peer. Are you fucking kidding me? How can an extremist feminist sit in judgement of a man in a case involving a woman?”

You guys need to do some reading on the topic of male privilege and some serious self-reflection. It really astounds me that intelligent, probably otherwise good men, hold these views and can make such one-sided, ignorant comments. For those of us that work on these issues regularly, these sorts of comments make it brutally apparent that you do not have much real experience with survivors and are clinging adamantly to several traditional myths and stereotypes about rapists, assaults, feminists, etc.

Note:
I know this comes off as dismissive, and I’m not trying to be. But I can’t help it; it’s true. I’m getting so tired of this thread. I’m pretty sure this will be my last comment. You guys need to step back, let the comments sink in, and do some thinking about what has been said. For now, you are just railing against what you perceive as man-hating feminists. You aren’t listening.

Ok, back to business:

I think the most significant theme that seems to be running through all of your comments is a blind allegiance to automatically protecting the accused (established as men in the vast majority of cases). It’s the very same thing you claim that the “radical feminists” are guilty of: automatically taking and defending one side of the argument.

Your veracity in defending men everywhere from women who are “out to get them” with false charges of rape is pure fantasy. In comparing rape to a car accident (or…farting in bed? incredible! that has to go on facebook for my rad. feminist friends to snicker at), you are completely and willfully ignoring that rape is backed up by, the product of, and condoned by the historical institution of sexism and the rape culture (stay with me, but look it up) in which we all live. Not to mention the fact that you are ignoring the intense and lasting psychological trauma that a survivor of rape experiences.

A survivor of a car crash is undoubtedly subject to a degree of psychological trauma as well, but the fact that you compare the two blatantly smacks of male privilege and communicates quite effectively that you have no real grasp on the situation as it occurs in the real world.

You guys really have no idea what it’s like to be a woman. And neither do I. But at least I know that I don’t know, can acknowledge my male privilege (or at least I’m really trying), and act accordingly.

Please think about it.

Rhett Walker, you (as well as everyone else really) ought to read the paper I linked in the last post. The left has a seriously wrong-headed conception of “rape”, both as a problem and in terms of its solution, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the claims surrounding the Assange case.

My issue has never been with “automatically […] defending one side of the argument”. That’s for a judge or a jury to decide in a court of law. But no matter what the crime is, the accused should always, without exception, be considered innocent until proven guilty, and those on the left who’d try to change the system of justice as it stands would put that principle in grave jeopardy.

This is not about male privilege. That is your bias and interpretation.

It’s fair comment for someone to question the likelyhood of a criminal charge rendering a guilt verdict. People debate the same thing about cases where female school teachers have consenting sex with students, and it’s not a matter of “female privilege”

There are female contraceptives available too, so a woman could as easily take responsibility here. If a man AGREES to wear a condom and it breaks, is he guilty of rape for the accident?

NO, because the SEX is consensual and a broken condom is not a crime, with no harm done. You might note here that STD risk is also on the man (and use as a contraceptive is also applicable).

So, with a willing partner, in the case of a broken condom, there is no harm, no foul. There is no rape existent, because the sex act itself is consensual, despite the unfortunate situation with a condom. The issue is not with the sex, it’s with the CONDOM.

Now in the case with the condom being excluded during penetration, without knowledge of presence of the absence of a condom (let’s say presumed at first as in the Assange case), the sex was welcomed, just not the absence of the condom. Although it was previously discussed as a condition, the sex itself was not unwelcome. It was the lack of a CONDOM.

I think that the nuance here is that is what was imposed was not the sex itself, but the absence of a condom. Two entirely different things. One is about forcing sex, and another is about a unilateral decision about a condom.

If it were the other way around, with a person forcing sex on someone, but WITH a condom, there would be nobody here who would claim it isn’t rape.

The fine point is the CONDOM, not the sex. For me to see this as Rape is to let the condom issue eclipse the sex issue.

What else would be similar? Say, removing earrings, piercings or jewelry (for risk of injury?) At what point is consent for the act separate from circumstances associated with it?

This is not about defending males, it’s about debating what is fair to put someone in prison for, labeling them a rapist.

As for the “skirt up, pants down” quote, it’s not about privilege, it’s about responsibility for ones own safety. A women is and should be not only empowered to end the sex act at any time but RESPONSIBLE to as well, and shouldn’t merely concede in the moment just to lay charges later when she’s had time to change her mind.

Laying all the responsibility for the act on the male, placing the woman in a much stronger position of power than the male, even retroactively, is what I would consider to be “female privilege” if such a term even exists.

I’ve had “oops” moments with lovers during sex where there was a mechanical slip up, and my partner demonstrated she was VERY capable of ending the intercourse, rapidly. We adjusted and continued, simple right?

If anything, men (or the defendants, some high profile cases are women) suffer already immense disadvantages in rape trials: no right to anonymity if you’re of “public interest”, rape shield laws prevent regular questioning and make unwarranted judgements about the veracity of the victim’s allegation, etc.

“If it were the other way around, with a person forcing sex on someone, but WITH a condom, there would be nobody here who would claim it isn’t rape.”

Brian, this is just plain false.

A bit brief of a response for me to have a clue what you are disagreeing with. Surely you’re not saying that being raped with a condom is ok?

Being so scared of “placing a woman in a much stronger position of power than the male” is, like, the definition of a man terrified of losing of male privilege.

Bull. I’m opposed to men having an unfair advantage over women too. Isn’t the goal supposed to be fairness, and equal protection?

Female Privilege doesn’t exist because, by definition, the concept of privilege–whether it be white, male, hetero, etc.–comes from the historical institution of the oppression, in this case sexism. Men are the dominant group, women the target group in this construct. There is no “other way around,” sorry.

An empty argument, placing convention over reason. Furthermore it weakens women by implying they are not even capable of privilege, yet it is the entire thrust of the equality movement to move women out “inequal” positions. I’m sorry you don’t have the resources to reason around it. History is an ever changing animal, and what is privilege one decade can be entirely reversed another. With all the thrust being placed on opportunity and empowerment, someone forgot to include responsibility.

As I fully suspected, nothing new has been brought by you guys. Take care in life. And try not to have too many “oops” moments (shudder).

According to you, anything new brought to the table doesn’t qualify because it doesn’t fit your prefab template, or you’re already got all the answers, besides we’re all just chauvanists defending our “privilege” to rape women anyways, right? Why bother giving us a second thought? Oh if we only had your magic crystal ball at our disposal, then we could be wise like you..

“The crucial thing to understand here is that consent to sex, as an ethical matter, is properly understood as a matter of active interest, not acquiescence.”

That’s extremely subjective, Angus, and the vast majority of literature on human sexuality would not agree.

Angus,

I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I’d appreciate you withdraw the condescending tone, my brain “wraps around” complex ideas more readily than you seem willing to acknowledge.

Your failure to present a compelling argument doesn’t obligate me to concede your point any more than, well, someone’s insistence to screw without a condom. If I did concede your point merely out of badgering (and wrongly accused of defending “male privilege”) it would be for me to assume responsibility for that concession, and I would have the burden of having to re-state my position of disagreement after said concession, lest I go on record with a dishonest position.

It is, ironically, analagous to date rape, that your implied threats to close the thread are not entirely different from a someone saying they are going to stop dating someone unless they have sex. Are you trying to control the direction of discourse?

I’m sorry if I have put up so much of a fight, and that I haven’t given you adequate satisfaction with my arguments. I personally believe my recent posts have moved the discussion forward with new ground. It would seem you do not.

In my experience, most blogs I participate in remain open indefinitely, even after the discussion has died off, so that someone arriving late to the party can still partake and potentially fire it up again, perhaps with new participants.

As I’ve stated before, I’m not disputing a person’s right to refuse sex for any reason whatsoever, or the clear certainty of the Swedish legal definition; I’m rather raising the question of where breaching a condition of consent becomes out-and-out rape, an important fine point in this case that I believe will likely come up in defence arguments should this ever see trial.

If I tell a woman I’ll sleep with her only if she gets checked for an STD, and she lies, it’s certainly not rape for her to screw me if I consent unbeknown the actual facts, is it? Or IS IT? What about if I protest to dirty fingernails?

With cases like people with confirmed AIDS, it’s a more obvious threat, but at some point it becomes petty and frivolous to draw a rape charge with someone whose affections you would otherwise be consenting to.

Something very specific is being defined in the abstract with this law (which by the way doesn’t even exist in many developed countries) by coupling the basic issue of consent with a condition. My questioning of this finer point, which is the hinge pin of this almost exclusively Swedish law, you are either missing, or not responding to because you are making a point of your own.

Simple consent on its own is a complex enough issue, but combining it with a qualifier in cases where a person faces hard time in prison makes the circumstances that much more relevant, especially if those involved in the act are existing lovers, the very establishment of which by definition is about the continued redefinition of boundaries.

Are you also thereby making an argument that Sweden is a leader in sex-crime prosecution, and that this law should be propagated to other countries where it doesn’t exist? From what I’ve read, despite these added laws, Sweden actually has a poorer track record than most!

I’d like to hear your response to this last question at very least, if it is your intention to close this thread.

Pardon, a generation ago not a decade ago. Too little sleep!

Angus, the examples you gave are neither common nor in dispute. In the event that the defendant has a rap sheet, that may indeed be compelling enough for some jurors to convict. However, if the man had been a long-time acquaintance of the woman and no residual evidence of force was still available, or if the woman had a history of making false allegations, or if said acquaintance had a romantic character, it would not by any means be unreasonable for the jury to find it impossible to rule in favor of the defendant. He may very well have gotten away with a crime, but unless the court can be certain to within no reasonable doubt, it’s not enough to sentence anyone for.

Arkay, rape is not “so hugely common” by any means. In fact it’s one of the rarest crimes (even in terms of attrition; again, please read the paper) there is.

Terre, that may be the most ignorant-of-the-world-around-you comments I have ever heard.

“Let’s assume no history of false allegations. Sounds like you’re saying that if you found her testimony compelling and his dubious, you might possibly vote to convict. Which suggests to me that you’re saying that the barrier to a just and proper conviction on the sole basis of the testimony of the alleged victim is high, but not insurmountable.”

Well yes, that’s essentially what I’ve said, but testimonies were not the sole evidence in that example. There was hard evidence of intercourse (rape kit) and a background check (which I’m personally not fond of, but this is the feminist/progressive conception of consent and so background can be taken into account).

Arkay, you can ignore the facts if you please (?) but rape is not common at all. It’s statistically extremely rare.

“Very well put, and eloquent I might add. “unexamined privilege” would probably be the proper term I was seeking, but at least my point was not lost for lack of it.”

It’s a helpful term, isn’t it? It’s actually very common on the feminist blogs and websites I read (like I said before, I’m not an academic). I learned it from feminism but it’s used across contexts and makes a lot of sense. And all of us in the West have some amount of unexamined privilege so it’s not something that is in any way calling out a particular group. It’s something we all have to work for ourselves and for our communities.

I’m glad we can agree on some things. Most people, I would hope, want to see a truly equal world. And while I think there’s something more complex going on than “victimization” or victimization narratives — in fact I think that’s a mischaracterization, but I’d have to write an essay on all the reasons why — I appreciate that you’re willing to hear me out and consider that feminism isn’t about granting unequal power to one group of people at the expense of another. I hate that that idea has so much power in our culture, because it separates people who otherwise would be allies.

If one of the other posters here has a good Feminism 101 link regarding “women as victims” ideas, please post it here! BTW Brian I don’t use “Feminism 101” in the haughty way people use “101” to tell someone else they’re ignorant; there are actually internet efforts to create “Feminism 101” articles to direct people to in order to explain big points or give people who might want to know more resources for reading.

“Are you also thereby making an argument that Sweden is a leader in sex-crime prosecution, and that this law should be propagated to other countries where it doesn’t exist?”

Sweden actually has a very low rate of prosecution.

@Arkay

“Sweden actually has a very low rate of prosecution.”

Angus’ favorite person, Naomi Wolf, recently used this fact as an argument for possible political motives in the Assange Case, citing that less ambiguous cases get thrown out readily, while his is being more heavily scrutinized than most.

I don’t have time to respond in detail to a lot of comments I would like to but with regard to this:

“However, even then, the circumstances as described, again with no bias on my part, in my opinion warrants a second look at how serious the offence was. Is this a heinous assault akin to brutality or your “jumping out of the bushes” example? Not at all.”

There have actually been studies that determined that the trauma experienced by the victim is the same in instances of stranger rape and acquaintance rape. The ideas behind both kinds of assault — that another person’s body is yours to do with it what you wish — is essentially the same. That there can be issues of communication problems in acquaintance situation is a given, but the common thread between an act of forcible stranger rape and an act of acquaintance rape or assault (I did not include forcible here but could have made an argument that there was some force involved, as Assange is wanted for questioning for also pinning one woman’s arms and legs down to prevent her from reaching for a condom) is the idea on the perpetrator’s part that a man has a right to due whatever he wants with a woman’s body.

This is why people begin discussions of consent by talking about relationships, about how to go about doing it right, rather than by defining things downward the way Terre wants to. It’s a much more complex idea than an idea of just law or crimes. It’s the idea that all of our bodies are ours and just because you are attracted to another’s body does not mean you have a right to do what you want to that body without its owner wanting to do it too.

Someone elsewhere asked people to imagine how they’d feel if they fell asleep next to a woman they’d just had sex with and awoke to find that she was putting a dildo in his ass. An act he doesn’t like and never wanted to try. That’s what we;re talking about here: the boundaries we accept as part of respecting other people. That is a violation regardless of whether someone considers it a crime or goes to the cops. This is about much more than law.

“If one of the other posters here has a good Feminism 101 link regarding ‘women as victims’ ideas, please post it here!”

Finally, Feminism 101 has a good article in their FAQ: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/10/faq-isnt-feminism-just-victim-politics/

The website in general is a really good resource for people who are new to feminism and want to learn. Unfortunately, a lot of people approach feminist websites looking for something to argue with, not looking to learn. If you are really attached to the assumption that feminists are wrong, and you can’t open your mind to the possibility that people who have spent years or decades thinking about these issues might know a thing or two that you don’t, then no number of fantastic feminism basics resources will help you.

@ Arkay

“Someone elsewhere asked people to imagine how they’d feel if they fell asleep next to a woman they’d just had sex with and awoke to find that she was putting a dildo in his ass. An act he doesn’t like and never wanted to try.”

^ I would tell her to stop, perhaps quite firmly even. But I certainly wouldn’t waste police time with that nonsense.

“The piece of the context that you’re missing here is that in the scenario under discussion, the alleged perpetrator didn’t merely lie about wearing a condom, he penetrated his prior sex partner, while she slept, in circumstances under which she had immediately before rejected his advances. That’s a crucial part of the fact pattern, and it can’t be waved away.”

Uh, yes it can: if the woman then discussed the matter with him and had sex consensually, as the report said. By participation with discussion, consent was clearly established. Period. Not rape. She wasn’t “fucked unconscious”, but was in a sexual situation where he engaged in allegedly shady behavior that does not on those terms constitute “rape”.

If you think it does, please warn your potential partners that you can’t bring yourself to say “no” and that you will call them violent predators who should be imprisoned (and raped in jail) for years. Then call that feminism. Puleaze.

Keep the fires burning Jesse!

“Men — and women — are socialized to see seduction as a matter of pursuit and capture, of breaking down resistance, and that socialization itself creates situations in which men who would never consider themselves rapists wind up sexually violating their partners.”

Seduction *is* a matter of pursuit, of “breaking down resistance”; the resistance is that we feel to any stranger of whom we’re uncertain, and all seduction implies a measure of the unknown, where one ‘aggressor’ breaches the barrier and makes a pass that may or may not be well-received. It is quite figuratively impossible to render all or even a majority of romantic overtures pleasant for all parties involved. Zizek talks a lot about this fallacy when it comes to sexual harassment laws.

“And no, when I lean in to kiss someone who is looking into my eyes and smiling, I don’t see myself as an “aggressor.””

In which case, why consider Assange a rapist (or a “violator” or “unethical” or whatever) for acting on extreme interest on the parts of the two women? In what sense has he committed a crime, given both women supposedly consented to sex?

This conversation is going in tiny, incredibly annoying circles at this point. We clearly disagree about a very fundamental point: whether or not it is ever okay to insert part of your body into somebody else’s body without getting permission beforehand. A number of us say no, never. A number of you think that there are a lot of buts and whatifs involved, and that it’s completely unreasonable to expect everyone to ask permission before inserting parts of their bodies into other people’s bodies. I am not sure there is any point in continuing to talk to somebody who holds that view so vehemently.