Kudos to Rachel for taking this on, I have frankly been wondering where she was while KO and Moore were making jackasses out of themselves and hurting rape victims.

I wonder if you read the Democracy now transcript of the debate between Jacklyn Friendman and Naomi Wolf, and if so, who you think can be prevailed upon to ask her, directly, wtf she is talking about when she continues to lie and fabricate things like “every step of the way he stopped and consulted with the women”.  “THey said yes over and over.  Yes yes yes, yes, continue without a condom, yes yes yes”.

I am at the point where i am wondering if Naomi is simply confusing her fantasy life about Julian Assange with reality.  I am all for masturbation and if what gets her off is “Yes yes yes yes Jullian, yes yes yes Julian, go ahead Julian, yes without the condom yes yes” then that is her business.

But I’d appreciate it if she kept her mastabatory fantasies to herself. 

I am happy that Moore is changing his tune - his statements hurt as I have been a supporter of his by buying his dvds, tickets to his movies, his books, and his tv shows on dvd, for about a decade now.  I haven’t seen KO change his tune, but if he is, then I am happy about that too.

The one “argument” I have seen from the sexist douchebag camp that irritates me the most is that the two women didn’t think they were raped until they spoke to each other, and that somehow means that they weren’t raped and just decided to take part in a vast feminist/US government conspiracy against Assange.  The male fear of women talking about them is so deep that any discussion among women about men is suspect.  Another explanation for what happened is pretty obvious if you have ever read scholarship about women’s response to rape and their willingness to press chargers (which, of course, sexist douchebags who think themselves experts concerning women’s response to rape have probably never read).  What probably happened is that the women were afraid individually to press charges, or were unsure if what happened to them was wrong.  When they spoke together about it, they likely realized that they were victims of assault and that this same fucked up thing occurred twice.  Rape apologists cannot wrap their heads around the fact that victims are generally unwilling to press charges BECAUSE OF RAPE APOLOGISTS, not because rape did not happen.

Wikileaks is not about exposure of specific instances of government wrongdoing—it is about the notion that nothing should be secret, ever.  For example, I don’t see a legitimate argument that US diplomats ought not to be giving confidential appraisals of the character and negotiating strategies of foriegn officials to the State Department—that’s useful information, provided that the appraisals can be kept secret.  Ultimately, the principles advocated by Wikileaks mean less informed decision-making by public officials and the end of privacy for private individuals.

#2,

I think another big part of it is that rapists and rape apologists just LOVE to pretend that everything was a misunderstanding or an innocent mistake, and that those poor rapists just didn’t realize what they were doing.  And unfortunately, they’ve been very good at pushing this myth because so many people believe it, even victims.  So when victims feel violated, they tend to still think it wasn’t really his fault.  But when they learn that there are other victims, they realize that it wasn’t just a misunderstanding and that the rapist is a continuing threat to society.

mmm, I’m a little skeptical. We have seen over and over again, particularly with regards to rape cases, that people will cling tenaciously to whatever comforting lie they can even in light of a corrected record. Let’s look at the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. It really seems that no one is willing to accept that the woman WAS raped, even if it wasn’t by members of the lacrosse team, and the fact that she was drugged probably made it hard for her to identify just what was happening. And a fair number of good folks on our side of the fence look at the email that was sent out by the team member as All The Proof You Need that they did it.

I still get into arguments with (men) that women who file false rape reports should go to jail. They honestly don’t realize what they’re suggesting is just giving rapists a blank check because coming forward with a rape accusation is hard enough for most women and adding the possibility that they’ll go to jail in the (likely) event that they won’t get a conviction will shut them down completely.

Honestly, I feel like with rape cases, what we need is MORE secrecy. The media should be forbidden from releasing the names of both the accused and the accuser until at least the trial is underway and the evidence is being submitted. This way, the rare instances of false accusations don’t destroy good mens’ lives, and the accuser doesn’t have to worry about a huge trollish hate machine coming after her if she dares stand up to some privileged media darling.

First of all, as I was watching the show, I noticed a brunette woman with bangs in the audience during one of the camera fly-bys, and I thought, gee, that looks like Amanda Marcotte, and whattaya know?! My face-recognition software is better than I give it credit for!

Second of all, I found the notion that people were lying internally to such a large degree (i.e. over such small things, not to mention the infamous ‘slam dunk’) to be a delightful detail. It’s such a hallmark of human social interaction, especially among hierarchical models. You tell the bosses what they want to hear and hope they give you a cookie. You might even believe it yourself, because in your head, that’s the way it ‘should be.’ And I agree that this aspect of the Bush years will be fodder for historians and behavioral scientists for decades to come.

Third of all, I was relieved to hear Moore reverse course on the rape allegations. He didn’t actually apologize for his previous statements, but he was forceful and sincere. I appreciated his ‘we can all agree on that [that rape allegations should be vigorously investigated and rapists should be held legally accountable], right?’ as a good olive branch.

Meh.  Too little, too late.  Some working class hero——-I guess women don’t work?  Damage done—-way too much damage.  He needs to kiss ass for being one of the powerful ‘big guys’ attacking the real little guys in this case—-the rape victims.

Jesseleelips, there’s a HUGE huge taboo against daring to suggest that one might suggest, imply, infer, conclude that sometimes men act in the same way, and that those actions can define that group of people.  One doesn’t dare suggest that there are trends, but women, of course, are fair game.  I can’t figure out if it’s a power thing or just a male privilege thing, because it doesn’t seem to apply to any other group of people. You can talk about any other group of people, but not men, who are supposed to be regarded as special individual snowflakes, every last one of them.  Women, for example, get discussed in terms of, say, fear mongering news articles about how crimes committed by women are rising at stupendous rates——119%!! Oh noes! (They never include the raw numbers, which are miniscule, nor mention that men are committing huge numbers of crimes without being regarded as a group.)

The thing about women talking presumes that women are lying, scheming plotters, and that of course women are such brainless bimbos that all they do is talk about men—-not politics, history, art, geophysics, what have you. It’s just an assumption built in there that nobody ever notes. “They were talking and that’s when they decided to file rape charges” also has more than a little hint of scorned women about it, too—-the implication is that neither would have called it rape had he not been such a ladies’ man.

“Ultimately, the principles advocated by Wikileaks mean less informed decision-making by public officials…”

...maybe, but it could also result in much more informed decision-making by the people they serve. 

The problem with secrecy regimes, especially in the US, is secrecy is automatically assumed, regardless of the information involved, rather than secrecy being the exception.  It seems to me that 99% of what the government does on our behalf should be publicly available.  They work for us, and we are expected to vote intelligently, either for the decision makers directly, or for the people who supervise the decision makers.  Without accurate knowledge of what is being done, how can we adequately perform our role in this democratic system?

”...and the end of privacy for private individuals.”

Privacy for individuals is already under dire threat, and secrecy about what the government is doing to undermine that privacy (see widespread phone taps, for example, that Bush/Cheney sought even before 9/11) is a major factor in accelerating the continuing erosion of privacy in the US.

IMHO, we need more access to official government information (and official corporate information), not less.  And I believe the benefits of having access to this information far outweigh the drawbacks…

There’s no proof whatsoever of the standard conservative whine that this stuff will cost soldiers’ lives. For one thing, there’s this little network called Al Jazeera that actually is a very good news source.  For another thing….there’s raw numbers. Afghanistan has been heating up for quite a while, so there’s no discernible connection there. And the troop pullout in Iraq hasn’t pulled so many troops out that they’re not targets, but the fact is, they’re not being attacked in numbers that demonstrate an increase of any sort. 

  I don’t know how much more info is going to do when the US population is so apathetic, though.

My face-recognition software is better than I give it credit for!

Yes, and if it was no better or worse, you’d have a bit of a problem:

A NEUROLOGIST’S NOTEBOOK about prosopagnosia, or the inability to recognize faces and places. Writer describes his own difficulties recognizing and remembering faces. He also has the same difficulty with places and often becomes lost when he strays from familiar routes. At the age of seventy-seven, despite a lifetime of trying to compensate, he has no less trouble with faces and places than when he was younger. He is particularly thrown when seeing a person out of context, even if he was with that person five minutes before. Writer gives several examples of his inability to recognize familiar people out of context, including his therapist and his assistant. After learning that his brother suffered from the same problem, the writer came to believe that they both had a specific trait, a so-called prosopagnosia, probably with a distinctive genetic basis. Mentions several other people who have the same trait, including Jane Goodall and the artist Chuck Close. Face recognition is crucially important for humans, and the vast majority of us are able to identify thousands of faces individually, or to easily pick out familiar faces in a crowd

Prosopagnosia

@ Mighty Ponygirl, #5

I completely agree about individual case specifics (names, adresses, etc.), but there needs to be a lot more societal conversation about what rape actually is.  The level of ignorance out there is astounding, especially among younger people.  I’ve spoken with younger female friends and relatives who didn’t know that they are “allowed” to withdraw consent at any time, and if their sexual partner continues despite protest, that is rape.  They didn’t know that if a man forces himself on his wife, that is rape.  They didn’t know that having sex with someone unable to give consent (i.e. drunk, drugged, etc.) is rape.  They think that rape is something that happens to other people, in the dark when they’re walking alone.

Unfortunately, the only times society does talk about rape, it’s in the context of individual cases.

These litmus tests are killing me. You all think so very, very hard until you’ve reached a justification of your predetermined conclusions—at which point the thinking stops because the dopamine payoff per unit of ratiocination drops off precipitously.

Maddow pushes for a more meaningful, thoughtful, complex understanding of the issue—which would be great if she didn’t apparently mean by that that we should all meditate on how WL isn’t a legitimate news organization.

You push for rule of law and the protection of the weak (rape victims trying to be heard) against the strong (cultural predilections to ignore rape claims)—which is a great thing, until you applaud a targeted government leak against an individual.

But you do see how that sort of a leak is different than quasi-anarchically publishing classified information, don’t you?
And you do see how it’s not so different than the reprehensible outing of the alleging victims’ names, don’t you?

So long as we’re talking about reasonable, thoughtful, and principled debate here, let me offer up the argument that you can simultaneously 1) think WL is doing god’s work, 2) be completely disappointed in its leader’s alleged behavior and want the law to get to the bottom of all this, AND 3) be completely disappointed in the shady manner in which that investigation is being conducted.

Hell, until the 1970’s the majority of states specifically excluded spouses as rapists.

Oh, ‘we all’ think it’s a government conspiracy, eh? 

“...which is a great thing, until you applaud a targeted government leak against an individual….”

How come this big deep dark government leak didn’t pick a slam dunk case, then? And isn’t it kind of worrisome that Assange’s fanboys don’t like leaks? I mean….?

  I musta missed that with all the sneering at our pre-concieved biases and all that, because it’s bias when someone takes rape victims seriously.

<blockquote>So long as we’re talking about reasonable, thoughtful, and principled debate here, let me offer up the argument that you can simultaneously 1) think WL is doing god’s work, 2) be completely disappointed in its leader’s alleged behavior and want the law to get to the bottom of all this, AND 3) be completely disappointed in the shady manner in which that investigation is being conducted. </quote>

Thank you, JohnCM, for coming here and arogantly try to make a point that’s been argued here for weeks like we’ve never ever heard it before.  What would we do without your keen insights?

Blogger zunguzungu has a brilliant parsing of Assange’s strategy manifesto.

Coupled with Nate Silver’s statistical analysis of the likelihood that the pursuit of the charges are politically motivated, where the pressure has to be applied becomes clear.

The question that needs to be pressed is simply:

Why are governments not pursuing more of these cases?

This has always been the question feminists have asked. Assange’s notoreity allows it to finally be heard. This is what we are seeing as spin backfires: The trolls are more obvious and isolated, and more people are questioning the government than are being distracted by the false he said/she said.

We’re getting closer to making that question get an answer.

It’s working.

I am at the point where i am wondering if Naomi is simply confusing her fantasy life about Julian Assange with reality.

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe Assange fanboys could take a break from rape apologism to upload Naomi/Julian ‘shipper videos to Youtube.

JohnCM:

So long as we’re talking about reasonable, thoughtful, and principled debate here, let me offer up the argument that you can simultaneously 1) think WL is doing god’s work, 2) be completely disappointed in its leader’s alleged behavior and want the law to get to the bottom of all this, AND 3) be completely disappointed in the shady manner in which that investigation is being conducted.

Well, only you could have offered that concept up.  No one else has ever said that before!  Certainly not in this very blog!  Thank you so much for shining the light of mansplaining on us all!

I don’t have much substantial to say at the moment, but I really am glad Maddow apparently got Moore straightened out on this (or that he performed the head-ass separation surgery himself, even.) A lot of the fanboy wank I’ve seen (particularly from young nerd types) has been privilege in it’s purest form—no strong malice* but a lot of casual dismissal and arrogance that these dudes know what happened and it fer sure wasn’t rape. It’s a whole ton of assumptions and games of telephone and total inability to rationally assess either the situation or themselves. Hopefully having Moore throw on the brakes a bit, and say “well, my initial analysis was apparently not quite right” will let some of these guys also pause to reflect, and maybe change their kneejerk reactions a little.**

*not that it’s not, of course, still in the service of actually malicious people. ‘Cause it is; these guys are all quite literally tools. :p

**and I’m gonna get that pony from Santa in my stocking aaaany day now!

What Moore is saying is also very interesting, which is that once information is out there—-such as the fact that this cable was sent—-we can actually deal with it.  So, yes, a lie got out about his movie and Cuba.  But then the lie was corrected, and what we learned from the whole shebang is that the Bush administration had a lot of internal propaganda going on.  This is an important thing to know, and will influence our understanding of history from here on out.  (It shores up the sense that conservatives lie to themselves in order to gin up enthusiasm for lying to others.) Of course, that doesn’t deal with the problem of deliberately leaked propaganda, but still, he had a point.

It wasn’t just the Bush Administration that was targetting Moore, it was the health insurance industry as well. A few weeks ago, Wendell Potter, who has become the biggest whistleblower against the practices of the industry he spent much of his life working for, made a direct apology to Moore on Countdown for his own role in sliming Moore at the time SiCKO was released. When the film came out, Mr. Potter was working as the VP of Corporate Commmunications for CIGNA, and his prime directive at the time was to do whatever needed to be done to discredit Moore’s claims in the film. Potter resigned from CIGNA and became a whistleblower in July 2008 - less than a month after SiCKO‘s debut in theaters across the country.

oore countered by pointing out that the record was corrected in this case, and in fact, the Wikileaks cables are improving journalism because every cable the news medias wish to cover they have actually follow up with investigations.  In other words, the cables are the starting point.

So it’s a lot like Wikipedia, in that it’s a place to go to get an idea about some subject, but not anything you can use as an actual journalistic source?

Blogger zunguzungu has a brilliant parsing of Assange’s strategy manifesto.

Thanks for re-posting this—it’s a clear and well-written antidote to the simplistic narrative of Assange’s motives promoted by the MSM.

Thanks also for the Nate Silver link. I’ll be reading that one shortly. In exchange, here’s a link to Bruce Sterling’s commentary on the business (the original site is borked, so check in the BoingBoing comments for the full text).

As for the question you pose regarding acquaintance rape and he-said/she-said cases, you’re dead on. However, given people’s obsessions with celebrities and/or their own very legitimate triggers and the lurid details of this particular case, I doubt we’re gonna get anyone giving the correct answer, which is this:

Absent a celebrity suspect or a bid for their own celebrity or political ambitions, prosecutors don’t usually pursue cases they know they have a good chance of losing—cases where the alleged crime took place behind closed doors, cases where there’s no physical evidence or witnesses, cases where it comes down the word of social equals against each-other. Prosecutors really like their win records.

Women who are considering the already difficult and stressful measure of filing acquaintance rape charges are sent this chilling message at every stage of the process, from the desk sergeant on up. It’s not stated in a blunt and cruel way—to the contrary, it’s often couched in sympathetic and conciliatory tones. Which feeds right into the toxic idea that even considering filing such charges against a husband, a relative, a boyfriend, a co-worker or a fix-up date is evidence that one is the second coming of Andrea Dworkin or Catherine McKinnon.

Dark Avenger:

Markos Moulitsas has described his own struggles with prosopagnosia, and it seems like a really frustrating condition, particularly in a vocation like his which includes a lot of interaction with people from all over the country. He’s said that this is why he isn’t a huge fan of doing TV interviews, and he pre-emptively apologizes for his failure to recognize someone at Netroots Nation who has previously been introduced to him.

Most people indeed do not understand a few basic concepts of intelligence:

Intelligence Collection: collecting raw data on the activities of an “adversary” (technical intelligence community term).  This is what Wikileaks does.

Intelligence Analysis: analyzing the raw collected intelligence to predict how the adversary will act.

Counterintelligence: activities designed to disrupt an adversary’s intelligence collection and analysis.

So yeah, you can plant false information for adversary intelligence collection to pick up and pass on to their intelligence analysts, in order to confuse them.  It’s bread and butter in the intelligence community.

We’re also seeing many cases of the media presenting collected intelligence as if it was a finished analysis.  For example, I’m very skeptical of the media reporting on the leaks about the Korea/China situation.  The papers have made too much about the leaked cables in this case, which seem to say nothing more than two or three Chinese diplomats favor South Korea taking over the North as long as China gets a few concessions.

So it’s a lot like Wikipedia, in that it’s a place to go to get an idea about some subject, but not anything you can use as an actual journalistic source

Not quite, at least not in its current form. From an operational viewpoint, Wikileaks is intended to act as an anonymous conduit for whistleblowers. The starting point may be considered “grassroots” (e.g. a data dump of classified docs, or an insider’s tip regarding malfeasance), but that’s the limit of comparisons to the Wiki ideals of open and on-going editing.

Unlike something like Wikipedia, once the data is received it’s subject to internal scrutiny to determine if it’s legitimate and is then further subject to internal editing (mainly redactions). The raw data is then released to the general public through established news outlets as a vetted but still raw journalistic source, at which point crowd-sourcing may or may not be applied alongside the journalists’ analyses.

The main point of contention between Assange and the Openleaks people has surrounded the issue of how open that middle bit should be. Assange seems to prefer internal vetting to ensure that a release is in line with his stated mission (sparking auto-immune responses in the target organisation).

This is also one of the reasons he’s reacting in a seemingly hypocritical manner to the leak of docs on the Swedish sex crime case.

I doubt we’re gonna get anyone giving the correct answer

Happy to keep the door open to the wider picture, though Amanda’s analysis of this specific step is spot on and relevant.

The question is pretty straightforward, and the Assange mess means it can be returned to as often as we like, and given voice. Gracchus, your genuine answer is indeed too complex for a soundbite, but this accurate take would be easy to get:

“Is the prosecutor so lazy that he’ll only go after a Julian Assange and other easy pickings? Does he wait for kidnappers/murderers to leak a confession first, too? Why is the government not pursuing more of these cases?”

Prosecutors’ winning records turned against them: Rovian strategy for the good guys. (MLK Jr strategy, really.) At least make them address it, make them try to bury it in bureaucracy—feeding back into the Wikileaks goal as stated by Assange: burdening the corrupt and enlightening the ignorant all the while.

Mighty, in no way did I suggest blanket release of all police documents. Neither is Wikileaks advocating blanket transparency, which is why they work with media sources.

Gracchus, your genuine answer is indeed too complex for a soundbite

That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day.

And agreed, there’s a lot to be said for just bringing the question out there, for public debate (as opposed to a closed meeting between a complainant and the cops/ADA/judge) and in a way that forces an auto-immune response to hide the reasons why some cases are pursued while others aren’t.

Tangentially, I found this news item interesting:

A funny thing happened on the way to a trial in Missoula County District Court last week.

Jurors – well, potential jurors – staged a revolt.

They took the law into their own hands, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t about to convict anybody for having a couple of buds of marijuana. Never mind that the defendant in question also faced a felony charge of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

The tiny amount of marijuana police found while searching Touray Cornell’s home on April 23 became a huge issue for some members of the jury panel.

No, they said, one after the other. No way would they convict somebody for having a 16th of an ounce.

In fact, one juror wondered why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, said a flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul.

The connection in this case is the “flummoxed” reaction of the ADA—the only public reaction he could have. The guy is so conditioned to pursuing every petty skirmish in “War on Drugs” that’s been propagandised for 30+ years to a degree that only bogus wars are, and suddenly he’s faced with people calling BS.

Normally, Paul said after the sentencing, a case involving such a small amount of marijuana wouldn’t have gone this far through the court system except for the felony charge involved.

But the small detail in this case may end up being a big game-changer in future cases.

The reaction of potential jurors in this case, Paul said, “is going to be something we’re going to have to consider.”

Ya think, counselor?

That he’s surprised at this turn of events—that jurors would think for themselves regarding a minor BS charge used to win a larger case—is indicative of the mindset at work.

In other words, John, since Assange’s main power is male dominance over women, we should pretend that’s not power, but a “private” manner.

The excuse used to say violence against women isn’t violence of old. Kicking it 19th century style.

That’s why ‘privacy’ and ‘private life’ is such a watchword. It’s only possible to have one-sided privacy that protects only men if you still believe that what men do to women involves one real person and one non-person,  which is what used to happen before women were enfranchised and could vote and own property. It used to be called ‘femme covert’; the only person who existed was the man.  She didn’t exist if some man didn’t own her.  She had no rights that inconvenienced any man, and her value was as a pure thing to have his heirs.

  The people who are taking the attitude that, ‘Oh, well, they already had sex once, who cares, she gave blanket permission’ are taking their attitude toward gender relations from ancient viewpoints indeed and at least some of these guys are very young. And supposedly liberal. But they boggle at the notion that women are human beings, and that they literally count, that it’s not acceptable to treat women as if they don’t exist.

@JohnCM:

You push for rule of law and the protection of the weak (rape victims trying to be heard) against the strong (cultural predilections to ignore rape claims)—which is a great thing, until you applaud a targeted government leak against an individual.

No one would be applauding targeted government leaks against an individual if that individual’s fanboys weren’t running around lying about what he’s accused of. They’re applauding the smacking down of rape apologists, not the targeting of an individual by a government. Now the world knows what he’s accused of, so the apologists are going to have to knock off the “She consented and the condom broke!” bullshit.
You can’t honestly think leaking the details of a case everyone knows about is anything remotely like leaking the names of victims so they can be smeared and harassed, especially since the victim names had already been leaked and a grand smearing was being had at their expense. What right was violated? The right of the accused to lie about what he’s accused of?

@ginmar: There’s a case to be made against the leaking of documents related to any case like this, but it isn’t the argument that was being made because it isn’t for the benefit of the accused. That’s a consideration too, but not nearly as important. I’m against the details of rape cases being leaked on general principles because of how much harder it makes it on the victim. In this specific instance, leaking the details seems to have muffled the attacks on the victims somewhat, in most cases it just gives apologists documents to pore over searching for a justification.

@ginmar: as someone who didn’t once understand that women are people due to societal training but now does understand that, I feel a certain amount of sympathy toward Michael Moore and will probably wait until the next time something like this comes up before condemning him.

It’s not right that men are trained the way they are, but if we accept that patriarchy installs self-destructive behavior in women, it does make a certain amount of sense that it installs just plain destructive behavior in men.  And, in both cases, covers it up and makes us think that it was us who did it.

Looking back, I overestimated the backlash against Moore.  I didn’t hear any booing in the video and when it comes down to it, Moore will always be a likeable guy.  The dude will always be popular with liberals with a few exceptions, but haters will hate.  Ditto for Olbermann.

Gracchus,

I know you are sympathetic and all, but I really hate the “he said/she said” formulation being mentioned at all.  It is such a loaded, deceptive phrase.  Kinda like “date rape” makes it sound all cuddly and not-so-rapey. 

Why I disagree with he said/she said:

1)  It assumes, without knowing the facts of the case, that “he” and “she” are equally credible.  A lot of rapists are not credible.  They change their stories.  They fall apart under questioning.
2)  It assumes that “he and she” disagree on what happened.  Many times they don’t disagree over the facts, or even over what was said.  They disagree over whether or not “he” was justified in starting/continuing sexual contact.
3)  It assumes that “he” and “she” have the same ground state motives to lie.  I don’t think they do.  If this were an oral contract case, or a mutual battery case, this would be so.  But fornication is no longer illegal, so “she” has no need to explain away the sex act, while “he” is being accused of a felony.
4)  It assumes that the absence of other witnesses or physical evidence of serious physical injury means that the only evidence is the two parties’ testimony.  Sexual assault victims often show signs of trauma, although not always immediately, and there is a variety of ways that people experience trauma.  Sexual assault perpetrators often have attitudes and histories with other victims.
5)  It is often used to suggest the case should not go forward, even before an investigation happens.  Or even before “he” is questioned under oath.  I think that is a serious mistake.  One very good way to catch liars is through serial interviews with trained interviewers.  If he takes the fifth after “he says” the first time, well then, your second interview is the trial.

Now, I have generalized with “he” and “she” because that is what the formulation was, but I think this can also be true in sexual assault cases where the genders are reversed or the same, etc.

So please, I ask you and everyone else to think about he said she said, and why it really may not be a good phrase to use to describe any rape case.  (And in the Assange case, at least one of the victims has torn clothing and a torn necklace and no allegations, at least yet from Assange, that this was part of a consented to scene, as Jaclyn pointed out re: the holding down comment Naomi Wolf made.)

Comment #31: JThompson on 12/22 at 05:13 PM

No one would be applauding targeted government leaks against an individual if that individual’s fanboys weren’t running around lying about what he’s accused of.

Actually, as far as I can determine it’s not fanboys but rather Assange’s lawyers that are the source for most the lies about what he’s accused of (the “sex by surprise” thing, for example).  So Assange and his lawyers want the actual details of the prosecution’s case to be kept secret, purportedly to protect him from being tried by the public, while they go around and lie about the case to the public.  Classy, that.

I think the bigger, more obvious problem with the “he said/she said” minimization paradigm is that people don’t apply it to, say, muggings.  They drag it out just for rape.

This analogy has been made a million times, but I guess I need to be #1,000,001: suppose I get mugged by a guy who threatens me with a knife and I give him my $60.  I go to the cops, identify the guy, and they find him.  He tells them that he was just showing me the cool knife he’d just gotten a couple of days ago, asked me whether I could give him some money, and I voluntarily gave him $60.

The police and the DA then conclude that there’s no point in prosecuting this.  It’s my word against his, isn’t it?

I think there’s this belief out there that Assange and the Wikileaks crew are all about information as some kind of solution in and of itself

Well, yes.  And if you click through to the piece Yamara linked to (and click through there to the source document that post is about), you’ll see that’s exactly what Assange is claiming.  Gracchus put it most succinctly: “sparking auto-immune responses in the target organisation”.

I’m not as impressed by Assange’s theory (I find it, as most theories about the world that start with mathematics and attempt to branch out, to be far too essentialist), though it still has had a good effect, as Amanda described in the “Shine On” post a few days ago:  Assange naively thinks exposing all secrets will “break” government conspiracies; Amanda has rightly pointed out that it’s the overreaction of the US government to this document dump that’s caused people to take notice more than anything else.

I know you are sympathetic and all, but I really hate the “he said/she said” formulation being mentioned at all.

I’m not fond of it myself, but that’s how the cops and prosecutors and some judges characterise it—even more so when “he and she” are social equals. If we’re afraid to mention this attitude, we’re ignoring a major reason why acquaintance rape isn’t prosecuted as often as we’d prefer.

If there’s torn clothing and a torn necklace in this case, they had physical evidence and less excuse not to prosecute—not the same as the eyewitness in Amanda’s harrowing experience, but enough that the accusation wouldn’t be dismissed out of hand (especially in Sweden). Which makes it even odder that the original prosecutor dropped the case.

I’m not as impressed by Assange’s theory (I find it, as most theories about the world that start with mathematics and attempt to branch out, to be far too essentialist)

I find it more convincing, but that’s because I see his theory starting from systems analysis rather than the more essential mathematics behind it. And as Bruce Sterling describes, the theory put into practise is yielding some significant results (though, I’ll agree, not to the degree Assange aspires to):

Unfortunately for the US State Department, they clearly shouldn’t have been messing with computers, either. In setting up their SIPRnet, they were trying to grab the advantages of rapid, silo-free, networked communication while preserving the hierarchical proprieties of official confidentiality. That’s the real issue, that’s the big modern problem; national governments and global computer networks don’t mix any more. It’s like trying to eat a very private birthday cake while also distributing it. That scheme is just not working. And that failure has a face now, and that’s Julian Assange.

As I’ve said before, the thing that outrages the targets of Wikileaks the most is that they’re now being forced to choose between liberty (convenience, efficiency) and security (protecting asymmetrical information)—the same choice they’ve forced on peon private citizens for the past decade.

This analogy has been made a million times, but I guess I need to be #1,000,001: suppose I get mugged by a guy who threatens me with a knife and I give him my $60.  I go to the cops, identify the guy, and they find him.  He tells them that he was just showing me the cool knife he’d just gotten a couple of days ago, asked me whether I could give him some money, and I voluntarily gave him $60.

The mugging analogy doesn’t really work when you’re discussing acquaintance rape. The mugger and victim generally don’t know each-other at all, they’re usually not social equals, there’s clear evidence of stolen property more often than not, and sometimes evidence of assault if the victim is foolish enough to put up a fight.

There is such thing as acquaintance robbery. The better analogy is the depressingly common scenario of the creep who steals from an elderly parent or grandparent. When caught, the perp inevitably explains to the police that granny had promised him that painting or had put the money aside as a birthday gift. The interesting thing is that these sorts of crimes usually are investigated and what the accused says isn’t automatically given equal weight with what the accuser says, despite the assumptions being made about the two parties.

Pundit…About not knowing women were human—-What is that like, seriously? I’m not being sarcastic, because you’re being honest about it, but….What was the tripping point? How did it start? Of course, this comes from the perspective of someone who’s lived my whole having my humanity rejected, scorned, or dismissed, as do so many others.

Jthompson—-about releasing information—-it turns down that releasing information about these rapes confirmed for some people that these were ‘real’ rapes—-there was force used, which is squick making, because we require rape victims to be harmed before we’ll believe them.  The fact that the condom story was roundly rejected by so many people is depressing because that was a situation where there was no consent. But people only respect certain kinds of rapes.

@ginmar: It’s a really strange feeling. I couldn’t describe it well because while I remember the past when I was a complete ass, it feels like it’s an entirely different person by now. I’m often on Advice subforums in the online communities I join and the number of times I said something like “just assume women are rational human beings and every question you’re asking right now will answer themselves” and I’ve got a few doodz coming and saying I’m talking nonsense, it’s staggering. The culture tells us nonstop that women and men are fundamentally different, like alien species, and that you’ll never be able to understand each other, and at some point even though it goes against all common wisdom most of us accept that as a given (until something breaks the spell).

For me I think the crack in my bubble of privilege happened when I actually started having sex with men. One was hot online because he was a sweet talker but when we met he was physically repulsive to me and I still had sex out of a sense of obligation/shame (HE had travelled, I was hosting). One fucked me a minute, came without caring if I did, and left pronto before I even realized what was happening. One was drunk, forcibly inserted anal beads up my rectum without any sort of care or restraint, and while I cancelled the evening I realized if he had decided to continue he could have physically overpowered me (and if I had been a woman, would he have felt more empowered to try his luck?). All these bad experiences taught me what heterosexual women must feel like pretty much every day of the year (except when they get to be with the few caring men out there). I get to only feel like that when I’m looking out for my bisexual side, which is privilege.

I know I’m not Punditus Maximus but I also am a recovering Nice Guy(TM).

Gracchus,

Okay, but perhaps it might be better to point out that others treat these cases as “he said, she said” rather than uncritically attaching that name to them.  Because I don’t think it should be uncritically mentioned—although there could be cases where he and she are equally credible, based on my own experience with rapists/rape victims/reading police reports in rape cases/reading case law on rape, I don’t buy it.

Using he said/she said at all suggests an equivalence that isn’t there, and presupposes and absence of supportive evidence.

Gracchus @38:  That’s a great, great writeup.  The only way I can reconcile that analysis of Assange’s motivations with his own “the conspiracy is a graph” paper is to not take Assange at his word.  Sterling asserts (I believe correctly), that Wikileaks is expanding number of nodes, not severing their connections.

Thank you, Blackbloc. Hm. Interesting. I’d like to hear more if you remember anything else about how that change came about. I see guys that have that obvious mindset—-or saw, rather—-in the Army, where on one occasion the guys whose convoy I hitched a ride on out of Baghdad absolutely refused to listen to me when I told them they were going the wrong way. It was my duty station, and my unit had done patrols around there for months, but hey, if a non person says something does it make a sound? Three hour convoy took nine hours. On one occasion, I walked up to a bunch of guys from my unit. They absolutely, positively, would not let me say anything at all. They talked over me, through me, around me.  Not a person. 

  I think it’s easier for a gay or bi person to conquer that mindset due to the fact that there’s an opportunity for recognizing similar experiences. I think straight guys profit from the ‘unperson’ mindset because who exploits and abuses women and gay or bi people? (Or, hell, the whole group of LGBT people, for that matter.) If that person is not a person, then it’s not really a crime, is it? And that person doesn’t really have feelings do they?

  I had an aborted date with a guy who told me, for some reason, on the ride to the restaurant, that ‘gay people aren’t like real people. They don’t have emotions like the rest of us do.’ I jumped out of the truck on the on ramp. He just articulated it exactly like that.

Sorry, I think I’m rambling really bad.

I don’t know really. I think it’s part of my reality-based mindset. The feminist critique is true so eventually by just being open to the evidence (in my case, by crashing and burning through a series of terrible relationships) it came by itself. Being an anarchist (and thus having access to litterature by liberation theorists from all across the radical left spectrum, from radical feminists to radical people of color theorists to radical queer theorists) also helped, even though I had to go through a couple of stupid phases before I got to some place I feel is intellectually consistent (for a few months I was a primitivist for instance… then I figured out Zerzan was a hack, thankfully).

I just wished I had figured it out before because there’s a few women in my life I ended up hurting for no good reason and also because I spent a few years being an idiot (wanting a relationship but fronting I only wanted casual sex due to conforming to masculine gender roles, then being confused by the fact I ended up with women who wanted only casual sex and ran like hell when I tried turning it into a relationship, that sort of thing). Of course the fact I made a lot of stupid adolescent mistakes in my early 20s might be related to the fact I got my first kiss at 19… I started with a couple years of experience less as an handicap.

Gracchus:

If there’s torn clothing and a torn necklace in this case, they had physical evidence and less excuse not to prosecute—not the same as the eyewitness in Amanda’s harrowing experience, but enough that the accusation wouldn’t be dismissed out of hand (especially in Sweden). Which makes it even odder that the original prosecutor dropped the case.

NO IT ISN"T ODD.  Jesus, haven’t you been paying attention?

Even violent rape cases are dropped all the time.  Especially in a rape case where the guy is white, not poor, and internationally mobile.

Then we accelerate directly to, “Oh gosh, they dropped the case, that’s weird, probably because IT WAS ALL A FAKE” is a super popular way to discount rape.

Not saying you are doing that, but it’s really common.

The mugging analogy doesn’t really work when you’re discussing acquaintance rape. The mugger and victim generally don’t know each-other at all, they’re usually not social equals, there’s clear evidence of stolen property more often than not, and sometimes evidence of assault if the victim is foolish enough to put up a fight.

Actually a lot of mugging victims are poor and of the same social class as their muggers, some know their muggers, and cash doesn’t have names attached to it.  Mugging starts as “give me your lunch money”—those kids usually know each other.

The mugging reports you hear on the news, the ones that get prosecuted, are more like your vision of “a mugging.”  But they are not the only ones.

<block>You can’t honestly think leaking the details of a case everyone knows about is anything remotely like leaking the names of victims so they can be smeared and harassed, especially since the victim names had already been leaked and a grand smearing was being had at their expense. What right was violated? The right of the accused to lie about what he’s accused of?</block>

I think that’s an opinion that can be held in good faith. Because of course he has a right to lie. Is that a joke? Or is there a Bureau of Truth in Sweden that administrates targeted leaks, to raise up the good and bring low the mendacious, that you’re not telling us about?

I don’t think it’s an opinion that can be held in good faith that the primary intention or even real effects of this leak were the vindication of the two women and not the further character assassination of Assange. If people truly do think that the case is being mishandled, then they shouldn’t avail themselves of its yields, no matter to what end. Some commenters have argued that there has been a consensus that the charges should be pursued and that the case has been mishandled. Now you can think those things and then lend tacit support to the most extreme example of mishandling in this case by gloating over its targeted leaking, but only at the cost of being a hypocrite.

I like the point made above that it’s probably most disappointing here that people needed a claim of force to be included in order to take it seriously. That mindset is the problem here, and pushing back against it is not helped by pulling out this leaked testimony as proof that a really real rape really happened.

I don’t think it’s an opinion that can be held in good faith that the primary intention or even real effects of this leak were the vindication of the two women and not the further character assassination of Assange.
Comment #48: JohnCM on 12/24 at 12:11 PM

Is it character assassination if the claims are true?

If people truly do think that the case is being mishandled, then they shouldn’t avail themselves of its yields, no matter to what end.

If we use your moral reasoning, then any material on Wikileaks that was leaked for nefarious purposes, rather than in the spirit of truth and freedom and all that, shouldn’t be posted, because it’s dirty.

“The mugging analogy doesn’t really work when you’re discussing acquaintance rape. The mugger and victim generally don’t know each-other at all, they’re usually not social equals, there’s clear evidence of stolen property more often than not, and sometimes evidence of assault if the victim is foolish enough to put up a fight.”

What does knowing each other have to do with anything?  Unless you are going to side with the people assuming that consent cannot be withdrawn, consent to one thing means consent to anything, etc - what does it matter?  Also, as most completely fabricated accusations of rape that I can think of were about unidentified men (hard for a non-existent person to say you were lying), it seems to me that a woman that is willing to accuse of rape someone she actually knows and likely has to deal with no matter how the trial turns out is all the more likely to be telling the truth.  So, I don’t see how the whole acquaintance part of acquaintance rape makes it harder to prosecute - except for the whole rape culture thing.  Which is what the analogy is trying to point out.

And actually, muggers and their victims often ARE social equals.  Most criminals commit crimes within their own socioeconomic group.  It’s a combination of who is around you all the time and cost versus risk.  YOU may not be the social equal of most muggers - or vice versa - but then you aren’t the target of most muggers.  They are more likely to target someone who is less likely to get the sympathetic ear of the police, no matter if the reward is less.

But most of all how and why would there be clear evidence of stolen property?  Unless the mugger was identified (and usually the aren’t) and the police found the loot? (and even then, how do they know I didn’t give it away?)  If someone steals my wallet, most times the only evidence the police have that it was stolen is still MY WORD.  That’s it.  For all they know, I could have tossed it.  Hell, for all they know, I could still have it.

Only, you know, why would I do that?

THAT’s the main difference between rape and mugging - when it comes to how it’s prosecuted, anyway.  That people can’t think of any reason why I would lie about stealing my wallet, but they can think of plenty as to why I would lie about being raped.  Even though it’s just as rare - likely rarer - to do the latter as the former.  Even though I think all those people are crazy cuz I can think of tons more reasons to FALSELY claim something was stolen by an unknown person(s) than to publicly accuse an actual, living, breathing, person of a rape they are GUILTY of.

Chet,

That’s why mutual assault and oral contract cases are better analogues.  Because in those cases, there is a higher ground-state motive to lie than there is regarding rape, but we don’t get moral panic surrounding those cases. 

And you are still making the mistake of presuming that competing accusations and denials mean that the accusations and denials are equally credible, and see the rest of my post above about why he said/she said is a poor formulation.

Chet, muggers aren’t all armed.  Often, they’re bigger, faster, stronger, or more fearless than you, and generally they are aided with the element of surprise. 

They’re usually smart enough to toss the wallet or purse once they get the cash.  And once they have only your cash, unless you wrote your name on it, how do we know it was yours and not theirs to begin with?