Owen Jones on Julian Assange

[ahinton]

Make way for scotty as he heads for the safety of those hills.

Oh, to be in England, now that scotty "heads for the safety of those hills"!...

[Pabmusic]

...Whilst what does and does not contitue rape will vary from one jurisdiction to another and from one time to another, I don't see the importance of that to this particular case unless Assange's accusers change their minds and accuse him of rape, which is hardly either likely or credible...

I don't know exactly how Swedish law goes, but in the UK it is not for the witnesses to decide the nature of the charge. It's some official's job to decide what charge(s) fit the evidence. What the evidence actually is will be (I suppose) statements from the witnesses and records of interviews with Assange. There might be some forensic evidence, though that seems unlikely, given the circumstances. If rape is justified under Swedish law, and supported by the evidence, it would make no difference that the complainants don't call it that.

[ahinton]

I don't know exactly how Swedish law goes, but in the UK it is not for the witnesses to decide the nature of the charge. It's some official's job to decide what charge(s) fit the evidence.

That's true insofar as it may go, but if the accusers continue to insist that the alleged sexual assault was not rape, that may presumably make some material contribution to the undermining of any likelihood that the charges to be tried will include it.

What the evidence actually is will be (I suppose) statements from the witnesses and records of interviews with Assange. There might be some forensic evidence, though that seems unlikely, given the circumstances. If rape is justified under Swedish law, and supported by the evidence, it would make no difference that the complainants don't call it that.

Well, clearly rape itself is not "justified" under Swedish law, so I assume you to have meant that the charge of rape may be justified under Swedish law but, as I've said, if the complainants specifically claim that what they received at Assange's hands was NOT rape, that might influence the nature of the charges to be tried in Court; not calling something rape is a little different from specifically calling it other than rape.

[AuntyKezia]

This week's Private Eye has quite a clever cover ...

[scottycelt]

If rape is justified under Swedish law, and supported by the evidence, it would make no difference that the complainants don't call it that.

Which is EXACTLY the point I made at the begining and have continued to make and which appears to have entirely escaped ahinton as he chuckles away whilst mightily arguing with himself!

On the other point, I do not consider Mr Galloway's (and my own) view on rape to be 'vile' as you quite astonishingly claim. Both he and I have expressed utter abhorrence at the crime of forcing a woman to have sex against her will. However if a woman has voluntary and without coercion AGREED to 'sleep' with a man she must accept some responsibility for any sexual activity that occurs. That is not 'being forced against her will' ... if she didn't want sex she should have slept on her own!

Frankly, some may think it rather more insulting to women to infer that they are somehow unable to work that out for themselves. Most women are not stupid but, unfortunately, just like men, some would appear to be precisely that.

As for poor old amsey, would somebody please tell him that, alas, there are not many hills to flee to on the Cheshire Plain!

[jean]

However if a woman has voluntary and without coercion AGREED to 'sleep' with a man she must accept some responsibility for any sexual activity that occurs.

No she must not.

And the law (thankfully) now recognises this.

[Mahlerei]

I don't see how agreeing to sleep with someone gives them an automatic right to unrestricted and unquestioning sex. It's like arguing that if women dress in a certain way they're 'asking for it'.

Galloway is a nasty piece of work, and I hope his constituents turf him out at the next election. Taken together with Akin's ghastly gaffes and Assange's hollow pleas for 'justice' - but not for his female accusers - this makes for a deeply depressing snapshot of some people's antediluvian attitudes towards women.

[scottycelt]

No she must not.

And the law (thankfully) now recognises this.

Well surely that means when it comes to sex men are now treated as responsible adults whilst women are not?

How insulting to women!

[heliocentric]

Well surely that means when it comes to sex men are now treated as responsible adults whilst women are not?

Can you explain the logic that leads you to this conclusion? because it's escaping me completely.

[jean]

Well surely that means when it comes to sex men are now treated as responsible adults whilst women are not?

How on earth do you work that out?

It means, on the contrary, that men can't (necessarily) be relied on to behave like responsible adults, that a woman's having agreed to a particular sort of sexual behaviour does not mean she's agreed to anything and everything else her partner might think up, and that therefore what constitutes responsible adult behaviour has to be spelt out.

[ahinton]

[QUOTE=scottycelt;197497]Which is EXACTLY the point I made at the begining and have continued to make and which appears to have entirely escaped ahinton as he chuckles away whilst mightily arguing with himself![/quoe]
I do no such thing! What Pabmusic wrote was not even clearly expressed and I drew attention to this by saying that by "if rape is justified under Swedish law" he presumably meant "if rape is accepted as a crime that may be tried under Swedish law" (i.e. "justified" only in the sense of being a charge that may be tried in a Swedish Court - I don;t think that anyone is claiming that rape is itself "justifiable"); the point, however, is that if the complainants do not merely decline to describe their accusations as "rape" but specifically claim that they were NOT rape, that fact might impact on the nature of the charges for which Assange could be tried if ever it gets that far. Do please concentrate, scotty!

On the other point, I do not consider Mr Galloway's (and my own) view on rape to be 'vile' as you quite astonishingly claim. Both he and I have expressed utter abhorrence at the crime of forcing a woman to have sex against her will. However if a woman has voluntary and without coercion AGREED to 'sleep' with a man she must accept some responsibility for any sexual activity that occurs. That is not 'being forced against her will' ... if she didn't want sex she should have slept on her own!

Whether or not such a view as apparently held by Mr Galloway and endorsed by you is "vile" may be open to argument but at the very least it is not amenable to factual scrutiny; on what conecivable (sorry!) grounds is mere agreement to sleep with someone analogous to consenting to having sex with them? That's rather like saying that because someone consents to someone else sitting in the driver's seat of one's car they are thereby consenting to their driging the vehicle. In other words, it's nonsense. Why should a woman not sleep with a man just in order to defend herself against the risk of a subsequent accusation that by so doing she consented to having sex with him?

Frankly, some may think it rather more insulting to women to infer that they are somehow unable to work that out for themselves. Most women are not stupid but, unfortunately, just like men, some would appear to be precisely that.

Not least the one to whom I am now responding, it would seem, for the reasons stated above; if you really cared about insults to women in such matters you'd start by recognising that the fact of a man and a woman sleeping in the same bed is not necessarily of itself prescriptive of consent to sexual activity of any kind. A male fried of mine recently slept with his sister by mutual consent. No sexual activity between them was expected by either. The reason that he did so was to give her comfort as she was in the late stages of cancer of which she had died by the following morning. Think, scotty - think. Please.

Leaving that example aside now, if a perfectly healthy man and a woman do consent to sleeping together and the woman then forces herself on the man sexually without his specific prior express consent, would you say that she is not guilty of sexual assault by so doing purely on the grounds that they'd each consented beforehand to sleeping in the same bed?

As for poor old amsey, would somebody please tell him that, alas, there are not many hills to flee to on the Cheshire Plain!

Perhaps "amsey", as you call him" is a little more perceptive and premonitory than you give him credit for, to the extent that he realised not only this but also that you had in reality nowhere to hide!...

[ahinton]

I don't see how agreeing to sleep with someone gives them an automatic right to unrestricted and unquestioning sex. It's like arguing that if women dress in a certain way they're 'asking for it'.

Galloway is a nasty piece of work, and I hope his constituents turf him out at the next election. Taken together with Akin's ghastly gaffes and Assange's hollow pleas for 'justice' - but not for his female accusers - this makes for a deeply depressing snapshot of some people's antediluvian attitudes towards women.

Agreed on all counts.

[ahinton]

Can you explain the logic that leads you to this conclusion? because it's escaping me completely.

I doubt that he can, even if only because he'd surely have done so long before now if he could.

[Lateralthinking1]

I think that talking about love has become a taboo subject. If every two people in a partnership were able able to discuss and agree what love means to them, we could probably reduce criminality in relationships virtually to zero.

[ahinton]

How on earth do you work that out?

He doesn't; like his apparent hero Mr Galloway, it seems to be sufficient for him merely to say it.

It means, on the contrary, that men can't (necessarily) be relied on to behave like responsible adults, that a woman's having agreed to a particular sort of sexual behaviour does not mean she's agreed to anything and everything else her partner might think up, and that therefore what constitutes responsible adult behaviour has to be spelt out.

Neither men nor women can always be relied upon to behave like responsible adults; for example, Mao Zedong was one of the former group and Myra Hindley one of the latter.

Anyway, all this was already getting quite tiresome and invinting all manner of discussion of sideshows to the issue under scrutiny here even before the interventions of Galloway and Akin and scotty's broad endorsement of the for
ill-considered opinions of the former on what may be deemed to constitute consent to what kind of sexual activity between members of the opposite sex in what circumstances. If Assange is indeed extradited to Sweden and if he is charges with ad tried for sexual offences there, we will then be able to see what the outcome will be and not before; in this, at least, scotty is correct, but no more so than anyone else.