Sunday rape linkspam

[gabrielleabelle]

This is a pretty lengthy linkspost. For those who haven't heard, a huge sexual assault case just exploded recently involving Julian Assange, the man who heads Wikileaks. Given his high-profile political position, this has pretty much resulted in mass chaos and confusion in the political blogosphere. Most of the links today are in relation to this

Comments

[botias]

I don't have anything to say about the rape charges against Julian Assange. But I find the enthusiasm with which it is being pursued and prosecuted to be offensive when compared to the response of the authorities regarding other alleged rapes.

[gabrielleabelle]

I pretty much agree. I think the charges against him are valid and should play out, as with any charge of sexual assault. But I strongly dislike the "getting Al Capone on tax evasion" vibe of the whole thing as represented by a lot of the liberal blogs.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that leaking your baby-making and potentially disease-ridden fluid into someone's body without their consent is a serious assault. Would that all rape cases were pursued as aggressively as this one, though.

[sugar_fey]

I think it's possible to support what WikiLeaks is doing and at the same time condemn Julian Assange for sexual assault. One does not cancel out the other, and while Julian Assange is the head of WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks does not consist of only one person. If he is guilty of sexual assault, he should be punished like every other sex offender, regardless of whatever else he's done.

I hate that so much of the media is portraying the sexual assault charges as 'lesser charges'. It's hard enough to get sexual assault charges taken seriously by society and the attitude surrounding this whole mess is insulting to survivors everywhere.

[gabrielleabelle]

Yep. That's pretty much my thoughts.

My boyfriend has long been a firm Wikileaks supporter. I never paid much attention to it until these sexual assault charges came out. I'm so, so happy my boyfriend has managed to get that Assange can be a douchebag rapist without it saying anything about Wikileaks. So many people aren't able to separate the two. Huh. Kinda like the Polanski case, come to think of it.