If you’re even a casual consumer of the news, you’re no doubt aware of the plight of men in Sweden. If you’re a man in Sweden, your rights are not your own. You must have a female guardian — no matter how old you are. You can’t leave your neighborhood — indeed, your own house — without your guardian’s permission. She has the right to veto your marriage; indeed, you’ve probably heard of the 42-year-old Swedish doctor who’s suing his mother to allow him to marry. You are not to have contact with women you are not related to without family supervision. Indeed, you’re not even allowed to drive.
Do you like sports? You can’t play ’em. Interested in politics? You can’t participate in ’em. Want education? You can get it — but it’s heavy on your responsibility as a man to serve women. And if you’re assaulted by a woman, you’d best not report it — a man who was kidnapped and assaulted by seven Swedish women was famously sentenced to six months in prison and a whipping for being in the presence of women he was unrelated to — and when Men’s Rights Activists complained, the sentence was doubled.
Yes, being a man in Sweden is horrible; it’s pretty much being consigned to subhuman status, mere property of your female relatives. It’s a horrible country for men’s rights, and nobody would think of drawing a comparison between that nation’s laws and more egalitarian laws elsewhere.
Of course, by “Sweden” I mean “Saudi Arabia.” By “men” I mean “women.” By “women” I mean “men.” And by “nobody” I mean “Julian Assange.”
Yes, Julian Assange, International Man of Mystery and accused rapist, went there:
Mr Assange is now wanted on suspicion of rape, sexual coercion and sexual assault. It is important to him that it is known he has not yet been charged with any crime anywhere else.
Mr Assange regards himself as a victim of radicalism. “Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism,” he said. “I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism.”
Because the Swedish insistence that consent is necessary for sex not to be rape is exactly like the Saudi Arabian practice of allowing men to marry off their nine-year-old daughters. Obviously.
I have been deliberately neutral on the allegations against Assange thus far. Having been guilty of rushing to judgment before, I have tried not to repeat the same mistakes. I believe strongly and completely that the rape allegations against Assange are serious and should be treated seriously; I believe firmly that Assange is owed due process and a right to defend himself in a court of law. And I believe that those of us in the public have a responsibility to deal with the facts of the case — that we should not minimize the allegations because it’s convenient to do so, and that we should admit that Assange’s notoriety is clearly part of the reason this case is being pursued.
But when I read Assange’s own words on the matter, I find it hard to maintain neutrality. Because, quite frankly, Assange’s own words are not that of a man accused cavalierly by two women out to deliver him to the CIA. Rather, they’re the words of an unrepentant rapist who sees nothing wrong with his actions:
Mr Assange has also been accused of sexual assault by another young woman he slept with during his trip to Sweden.
According to him, the woman, named only as Miss W, arrived at a lunch in a revealing pink cashmere sweater, flirted with him, and took him home.
She says they had consensual sex but she woke up the next morning to find him having intercourse with her to which she had not consented.
When she asked him if he was wearing anything, he had allegedly said: “I am wearing you.”
Shorter Julian Assange: She was dressed all slutty! She took me home! And obviously, you can’t rape a slut!
Do I know that Assange raped anyone? No. But the fact that the man uses the way one of his accusers dressed as a defense — the fact that he tacitly goes back to she was asking for it — tells me that at best, the man is deeply misogynistic, and filled to the brim with unexamined privilege. Exactly the sort of man who’d see nothing wrong with not using a condom when his partner asked him to — and not stopping when she said, “stop.”
None of this means Assange should be assassinated. None of this means he should be drug to America to stand trial for the non-existent laws that Wikileaks didn’t break. None of this means he should even be convicted.
But is it enough for me to conclude that Julian Assange is a massive douchebag, no friend to women, and someone undeserving of our time and energy? Yes, yes it is.
Comment