I think I feel about the MP's rape apology with respect to Assange fairly similarly to how I felt with regards to Naomi Wolf's defense of Assange--that he should know better and it's completely disgraceful. But as long as the defense gets made, I believe it has to be refuted, so here we are:
"Even taken at its worst, if the allegations made by these two women were true, 100% true, and even if a camera in the room captured them, they don't constitute rape," Galloway said. "At least not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it. And somebody has to say this.
"Woman A met Julian Assange, invited him back to her flat, gave him dinner, went to bed with him, had consensual sex with him, claims that she woke up to him having sex with her again. This is something which can happen, you know. I mean, not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion.""Not everybody needs to be asked prior to insertion." Not everybody but possibly somebody, certainly? And how is one to tell who these free-spirits are, to differentiate them from the killjoys who'd rather have a little beauty-rest than some uninvited pronging?
Why, you ask. You ask every damn time. Because you don't know how the other person feels about it. A sleeping person is not about the "sex game" whether they did it two hours or two minutes before. If one is asleep--they are about being unconscious. So you wake them up nicely and ask. Of course you do. Because if you've ever been so much as woken abruptly by a friendly arm-tap--you know you can wake up disoriented or with a start. You know you might take a minute between being totally asleep and wide awake--and just imagine if, instead of a tap--well, if you don't get the idea, you might be the one without any sense. It's not "bad sexual etiquette", as he quite appallingly asserts. It's using another person's genitals without respect to their humanity and autonomy. In other words--that shit is rape.
And for the further idiocy regarding stopping intercourse:
"She claimed that while she did have consensual sex with him, the condom ripped and yet he continued to do it," he said. "Now you wouldn't just need to be in the room with the two of them to know the truth of this allegation. I don't want to take the biology too far, but you would actually need to be somewhere located inside the woman to know if that allegation were true. And if it were true, is it rape?"
It's not rape if we didn't see it? Is he saying "If the condom was still fit, you must acquit"? Let's just get this bit straight--if a party having consented, withdraws consent--then consent is withdrawn. It could be because there's a problem with the condom. A charley horse. An incipient asthma attack. A third martini on the verge of making an epiglottal exit. The paranoid certainty someone is at the window. Or just because this isn't the right time and this isn't the right partner. "Stop means stop" just as certainly as "No means no". You don't do it just because it's convenient for your partner that you stop. You do it because you recognize that sex is with a partner, not an object. If it's one-sided--the non-consenting partner is being "done unto." That person's humanity and freedom of choice is once again being discounted. If someone reasons they've just "gotta finish"--well, maybe their ideal partner is an old sock and not a feeling, thinking person.
It disgusts me that this descent into rape apologia is being made on behalf of Assange. If someone admires the goals of Wikileaks, that's fine, but it certainly doesn't oblige anyone to actually support rape culture while they do it, does it?
1 comment:
Great post... I'm sick and tired of the appologia. Assange is a self-absorbed, overly-entitled creep, even though he did found an admirable organization. He should take his lumps, though I understand his fear of being extradited to the U.S.
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