Barry Graham: Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky

After making yesterday’s post in which I said there was no evidence that Julian Assange was guilty of the crimes he has been accused of, but not charged with, I was told by some people that my view smacked of “male privilege” and that by not supporting Assange’s extradition I was “supporting rape culture.” 

I’m getting to used to these claims; I’ve been hearing them since I first wrote about Assange.

We undeniably live in a rape culture, which is a horrible thing. But the solution that so many seem to want is for a woman’s word to be taken as evidence that a man sexually assaulted her. 

Women lie. Men lie. And so the law requires more evidence than one person’s claim that another person broke the law. If that were not the case, it would be even easier to set up political opponents or personal enemies than it already is, and many more people would be in prison for crimes they did not commit. I would almost certainly be one of them.

It is a terrible reality that rape usually has no witnesses to help determine whether the sex was consensual or not. Any sane and moral person must wish that were otherwise. But to make an exception to the law’s demand for evidence, and to take any woman’s allegations as facts, is surely to create a “female privilege.” 

I can’t say whether or not Julian Assange sexually assaulted either or both of these women. I wasn’t there, and neither was anyone else - and therefore there is no evidence against him except for the claims made by two women who made no such claims until they found out that Assange wasn’t being sexually monogamous with them.