Twitter Feminists are doing a very good job of dismantling the anti-woman rhetoric written by Women Against Rape in the Guardian today. The article is a pile of victim-blaming, rape excusing twaddle from two women who should know better: Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff. Any woman who writes this is victim-blaming:
It seems even clearer now, that the allegations against him are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction.They are calling the two women liars. It doesn't matter how much we want to pretend they aren't, suggesting the charges are a "smokescreen" is calling two victims of sexualised violence liars. That is the territory of MRAs and their handmaidens. Not Feminists. Yeah, they try to minimise the impact by saying this without a trace of irony:
... the names of the women have been circulated on the internet; they have been trashed, accused of setting a "honey trap", and seen their allegations dismissed as "not real rape".WAR are also calling the two women liars. They are suggesting it wasn't real rape. By buying into Assange's paranoid fantasies, they have effectively silenced two rape victims and trashed the reputation of their organisation. They are arguing precisely the same thing as MRAs. All for what, to line up to defend a whiny little tosser because they think he's The Second Coming? Well, he isn't. I know her and she'd kick the shit out of Assange.
Yeah, it might be true that Assange is being pursued with more vigour than most rapists are in the UK or in Sweden, but that's hardly an excuse to dump the procedure against Assange. All rapists should be pursued this aggressively. Then, rape victims might actually get some justice. Instead, WAR have just made it a whole lot harder for women to get support. They have made it harder for other women to get convictions for rape.
The whole article is a pile of paranoia and misinformation. WAR have just ensured that I won't ever use them for support or refer friends to them. Anyone who writes that Wikileaks is more important than the bodily integrity of two women is no feminist. Wikileaks is more than one man and, frankly, it's not like Assange's reputation in Wikileaks is all that brilliant what with the whole dumping an Iranian leak into the shit without a backward glance.
The whole article is a pile of paranoia and misinformation. WAR have just ensured that I won't ever use them for support or refer friends to them. Anyone who writes that Wikileaks is more important than the bodily integrity of two women is no feminist. Wikileaks is more than one man and, frankly, it's not like Assange's reputation in Wikileaks is all that brilliant what with the whole dumping an Iranian leak into the shit without a backward glance.
Freedom of speech is meaningless if it only applies to rich white men's rights to criticise governments. Supporting Assange at the expense of rape victims removes women's right to bodily integrity. It removes our right to free speech. If that isn't hypocrisy, then I don't know what is.
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