Jacyln Friedman says the Assange sexual-assault allegations shouldn’t be dismissed just because they’re politically motivated.
I have no way of knowing whether Assange is guilty as charged. It’s also obvious that the timing and ferocity of Interpol’s prosecution of Assange is politically motivated. That Interpol should randomly build up such a head of steam about the violation of two women in Sweden, (which has the highest rape rates in Europe and a decreasing rate of convictions) strains credulity.
Had the backlash against Assange’s arrest focused on Interpol’s hypocrisy, my colleagues and I would have been free to join and strengthen that critique. But it didn’t. Instead, Keith Olbermann used scare quotes around the word rape as though the charges themselves (which are that Assange held one woman down against her will, and in a separate incident raped another while she was sleeping) were silly, and everyone from Glen Beck to Naomi Wolf rushed to belittle the accusers, along the way employing every victim-blaming, rape-denying, slut-shaming trope ever invented, from “they’re just lashing out because they got their feelings hurt” (that’s both Beck and purported feminist Wolf, paraphrased) to my personal non-favorite, popular blogger Robert Stacy McCain’s suggestion that women who consent to any kind of sex are sluts who deserve whatever happens: “You buy the ticket, you take the ride.”
