Category Archive

Wow. I wasn’t expecting this.

Back on December 7 of last year, erstwhile feminist Naomi Wolf wrote an op-ed for the Huffington Post in which she claimed that sexual assault allegations lodged against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange were no more than accusations of “consensual sex” with two women who were “upset that he began dating [the] second woman while still being in a relationship with the first.”

This was a gross misrepresentation of what was known about the allegations at the time, as well as a misrepresentation of the sources on which Wolf herself relied in writing her piece. Ten days later, Wolf’s account was again confirmed to be false by a long story in The Guardian.

Wolf as much as admitted that her version of the story was “not sound” in a radio interview on January 7, but she didn’t go back and change the HuffPo piece to reflect that concession. On January 12 I put up a blogpost calling attention to Wolf’s failure to correct the piece, which I described as “a story which cast allegations of sexual assault in a negative, trivializing, and unfair light.” I wrote that I found that failure mind-boggling, given her own previous anti-rape activism.

Well, apparently Wolf got wind of my criticism (or received a nudge from someone else), because sometime in the last week or so she finally added a correction to the HuffPo piece.

Here it is:

The Guardian has, since I wrote this original post based on the Daily Mail, reported that the two women’s complaints to Swedish police centered on the alleged misuse of or failure to use condoms, which can be illegal in Sweden.

Yep. That’s it.

No acknowledgment that she misrepresented her own sources. No apology for ascribing false motives to the accusers. No link to the Guardian story.

And most crucially, no honest description of the allegations themselves.

According to the Guardian’s ccount, accuser A claims that Assange first pinned her down during sex to keep her from getting to her condoms, and then — after subsequently relenting and agreeing to wear one — deliberately tore it so that he could have unprotected sex with her without her knowledge. Accuser W claims that Assange penetrated her vaginally while she slept without using a condom after she had repeatedly told him that she would not have intercourse without protection.

In each of these cases, the women allege that Assange forced himself on them. He is accused of holding A down against her will to keep her from getting at a condom, and then later sabotaging that condom. He is accused of having sex with W while she was unconscious under circumstances in which she had previously explicitly denied him consent to do so. That’s what’s being claimed here. There’s no ambiguity about it.

And for me, that means that the worst thing about Wolf’s correction is its sophistry — because despite its many misrepresentations, there’s nothing in it that’s technically false. Assange is accused of “misuse” of a condom, in the course of deliberately and surreptitiously destroying it. He is accused of “failure to use” a condom, in the course of an act of non-consensual sexual intercourse with a sleeping woman. What he’s accused of is “illegal in Sweden,” but it would be under the rape laws of the United Kingdom and the United States, too. And while it’s true that the Guardian reported all this after Wolf wrote her original piece, it’s also true that she misrepresented what was publicly known at the time she wrote.

Wolf is, of course, aware of all this. She carefully constructed her “correction” in such a way as to make it technically factually accurate while leaving a false and harmful impression in the minds of her readers. If you stumble upon her piece today under the impression that no assault is alleged in this case — that it’s purely a matter of a bizarre quirk in the Swedish legal code that criminalizes consensual sex — you’ll emerge as misinformed as you were when you arrived.

That’s intentional. And it’s appalling.

Update | Comments on Wolf’s piece have apparently been not just closed, but taken offline. When I tried to view them just now, to confirm that I’d posted a link there to my original critique of the article, I wasn’t able to. If anyone can double-check this and make sure it’s not just me, I’d appreciate it.

If you know your history

Then you would know where you’re coming from

Then you wouldn’t have to ask me

Who the heck do I think I am?

–Bob Marley (February 6, 1945 – May 11, 1981)

Posting remained light this last week, due to a number of factors — the start of my new semester teaching, the Egypt crisis crowding out other news, a couple of personal issues. But I’m lining up posts for tomorrow and after right now, and there’s a lot to cover. Here are some highlights:

• Eleven students at the University of California at Irvine — the Irvine 11 — have been indicted on misdemeanor conspiracy and disruption charges in connection to their alleged involvement in an action at a campus speech by an Israeli official one year ago. This is a huge story, and one which I’ll be covering in depth in the days and weeks to come.

• I’ll also be doing my best to add useful content to discussions around the current uprisings in the Arab world. I won’t always have much to contribute, and when I don’t, I’ll tend to just keep my mouth shut, but I’ll be piping up as I’m able.

• And of course it’s not just the Arab world that’s seeing an unexpected amount of youth and student organizing right now.

• Here in the US, signs are pointing toward March as being a big month.

In other news…

• A statewide student group in New York is breaking with a near-consensus among student activists nationally and calling for a tuition increase in SUNY, contingent on the revenue coming back to the system’s campuses.

• A student strike against new fees continues in Puerto Rico.

• New federal regulations on for-profit colleges are expected soon, and could be another big blow to an industry already reeling from bad press and customer dissatisfaction.

• Julian Assange’s extradition hearing is scheduled to begin tomorrow in London. New details are expected to emerge from the hearing on claims that Assange sexually assaulted two women in Sweden.

Malcolm Gladwell, on the New Yorker’s website, today:

In the French Revolution the crowd in the streets spoke to one another with that strange, today largely unknown instrument known as the human voice.

Just one question, Malcolm. How old are you?

I’m serious — my grandfather doesn’t sound this old, and he’s been dead for twelve years.

Tunisia ousted a dictator seventeen days ago, and its people are struggling toward democracy. The median age of the people of Tunisia is 29.

Egypt has seen millions of people take to the streets this morning, and appears to be on the verge of overthrowing its unelected President. The median age of the people of Egypt is 29.

Palestinian officials announced today that they will be holding their first municipal elections in five years “as soon as possible.” The median age of the people of the West Bank is 20, and the median age of the people of Gaza is 17.

The government of Yemen, facing widespread popular protests, has just announced the suspension of university tuition and the creation of a new jobs program for recent university graduates. The median age of the people of Yemen is 18.

The king of Jordan has just dissolved that nation’s government and appointed a new prime minister — supposedly tasked with implementing reforms. The median age of the people of Jordan is 21.