These are some miscellaneous thoughts on Julian Assange’s rape allegations and the responses. I’m worried that the issues Wikileaks raises regarding US imperialism and state secrets could be reduced to a tabloid story about its founder and mouthpiece and the establishment liberals who always seem to pop out of the woodwork with excuses for rapists with politics they like, but I think any opportunity to be critical of rape apology and the culture that makes it possible shouldn’t go to waste. There have already been a few great write-ups, and you really should go read them (Sady Doyle’s, INCITE!, Update: and Kate Harding!) because they’re important.
Every trial is a state conspiracy, and this one very much so. I am uninterested in the trial and legal proceedings. I don’t care what Sweden’s laws are, I care if Assange coercively and sexually used someone’s body without her participatory consent. The recourse to legal defenses by Assange and co. indicates the lack of a solid ethical argument.
Let’s imagine a scenario, an absolutely generic rape accusation. A woman accuses a man of rape, he denies it, you have no other information. Who do you believe? This may seem like a painfully abstract question, and it is. But it is also the situation in which we often find ourselves when we hear rape accusations. The partial information that we use to make that decision in real life (what she was wearing, her reputation, his reputation, whether she reported it, their comparative size or attractiveness, whether she stayed over after or saw him again) is more confounding than helpful. Rapists, survivors, and the incidents themselves don’t share enough in common for partial specifics to be indicative. We know certain populations are more vulnerable, but the chilling truth is that rape happens so much that knowledges about what kind of person rapes or is raped and under what circumstances are more a reflection of our rape-apologizing culture than the realities of victimization.
Nate Silver argues that the circumstances around Assange’s prosecution, both the prosecution’s unusual zeal and the obvious interests that various states have in discrediting Wikileaks, suggest that we ought disbelieve the allegations, or at least be skeptical of them. But if instances of rape share the negative commonality “not circumstances,” that is, if the circumstances of rape are so varied that the only abstraction we can make is “not,” then whether or not the circumstances are convenient doesn’t tell us anything about whether or not the rape occurred. Skepticism as to the state’s motives for prosecuting so zealously? Of course. But anyone who thinks criminal prosecution is generally apolitical is delusional and naive.
I think this use of partial specifics and faulty abstractions is a really bad idea, but what else do we have? The “assumed innocent until proven guilty” line doesn’t work for me, if Wikileaks has taught us anything it’s that the state produces truths about which we should remain skeptical and vigilant. Not to mention that for survivors who allege rape, the legal standard means “assumed lying until proven otherwise.” I am not a magistrate and have no pretensions of agnosticism. I propose an answer to the abstract question above: I believe her.
I’m not talking about at the gut level; like a lot of men, at the gut level I hardly believe any rape accusations. Unless I’m there to see it or its a really obvious case, my own horrific impulse is toward denial and apology. These responses are second nature in a rape culture like ours, especially for men. Think about the depictions: no one had to stretch to imagine a CIA “honeypot” plan against Assange, we’ve probably seen more of these scenes represented in media than powerful men (who aren’t “villains”) raping women. Which do you think happens more in real life? The same thing goes for false accusations: I’ve had friends accused of rapes that I knew first-hand did not occur, it does happen. However, whenever it does happen, we hear about it a lot. False accusations always happen out loud and knowledge of them spreads quickly and widely, so if the total volume looks comparable to rapes that occur, that assessment ignores the huge iceberg below the surface of unreported or undiscussed rapes. Statistically, I have female acquaintances, friends, and family members who have been raped and not told me about it. Rape culture doesn’t only excuse sexual assault, it makes it disappear.
The question we have to ask, especially men, is why our first reaction to an instance of rape, a social phenomenon that we know to be disgustingly prevalent, would be disbelief. That question, which nags in my head rather than my gut, leads me to a place where I can answer the abstract scenario. Rape denial is an illogical proclivity that indicates a deep ideological tampering; when it comes to rape, men (at least) don’t see clearly. It is the very existence and dominance of rape denial in the face of rape’s widespread existence that should make us pause and consider why we would, as a gender, think something so clearly dumb. Sometimes this kind of counter-hegemonic thinking makes me wrong and/or beat unconscious on the street in Oakland for failing to assume that a group of young black men would jump me, but blank empiricism and the prejudices we’ve been given (more or less the same thing at the end of the day) are wrong more often.
So I tend to believe rape accusations. I believe these ones. Truths are tactical, and until we accept that rape is outrageously common and that our culture and media obscure that, we’re all helpless to stop it.
I also think it is possible for rape to occur with only one partner’s knowledge, that is, a rapist can not realize what he’s doing. That doesn’t make it less rape or even necessarily less detestable, but it does highlight the problems with locking one person up for a social crime. As Dostoevesky puts it, “We are guilty of all, before all, and on behalf of all,” and as all is the only way we can stop rape. Any society that locks someone away causes itself more damage than any criminal ever could. No bars ever. For anyone. Not for Assange, not for Bradley Manning, not even for the perpetrators of the much bigger state crimes revealed in the Wikileaks documents. It’s not worth it.
On another note, I think it’s interesting that the argument that works for me is so cerebral. I’ve had some really important conversations with female comrades about the way men use academic knowledges (to which we have more access for a number of reasons) to dominate discussions and marginalize women. Here I can certainly finish the Dostoevesky quote: “We are guilty of all, before all, and on behalf of all, and I am the guiltiest of all,” and it’s something I’m always working on, but I find it interesting on a personal level that my most radically feminist positions come through analysis (like this post) that comes off as coldly intellectual. I think this is at least partly because our society is set up to confirm sexism in men through experience. The very way we see the world is distorted, patriarchy is supposed to “feel right” or seem natural or unavoidable to men (at least), and that’s how it keeps itself around. I’ve heard the argument from women that lived experience is more important than books or philosophy in developing a feminist pattern of thought, which I certainly believe about their lives, but as a cis class-privileged white guy, my lived experience is a really faulty position from which to understand rape and rape culture.
destructural 
word!
Reached this post from #mooreandme; great position, interesting perspective presented well. I think that no position is more valid than any other; if one single human being experiences the world in a certain way, then that experience is valid. Morality doesn’t enter the argument at this point, but I think I can safely say that your argument is morally secure as well as being valid from a more global perspective. Thanks for your words.
If you had written this more concisely, less subjectively, been a bit less in denial of yourself, perhaps a bit more open-minded, left out the speculation on any specific (scurrilous allegations), it might have been something worthwhile.
As it is, it seems like nothing more than a bid to win approval and a pat on the head from some women you won’t get to have sex with. Looks like you throw men’s rights under the bus because you’re socially conditioned to be a wuss.
That’s the thing though – it’s a really bad anti-rape argument for anyone to use to get laid. It’s an argument by a man mostly to men about the way we’re taught to understand the world.
Also, fuck you, troll.
I think this makes sense, although I’m uncomfortable with the suggestion in the last paragraph that women tend to be feminists because of lived experience. It’s probably true to some extent, but you make it sound as if they’re therefore less inclined to have “cerebral” reasons for hating patriarchy. Actually, it’s women who usually come up with the sorts of feminist arguments you’re using.
Oh totally. I didn’t mean to imply it as an essential, when I say from some women, I mean just a few who I know. I borrow liberally from female theorists and writers and have no desire to reproduce the male/female intellectual/affective binaries. I’m responding to the argument that I should be responding affectively by saying that I don’t feel I’m in a good place to do that usefully, it implies nothing about the way women can respond intellectually, sorry if that was unclear. It was, after all, a college girlfriend who got me into critical theory in the first place. 🙂
it’s an interesting article, but i think that, on a fundamental level, you’re asking the wrong question. the first question should never be, “who or what do we believe?” instead, we should always start with, “do we believe?” before taking sides, we should ask ourselves whether or not we have any reason to believe anything about whatever situation we’re considering. personally, i don’t think there’s a good reason to believe here. i neither believe nor disbelieve any party, or in any version of events. absent compelling, independently verifiable evidence, belief is unwarranted, perhaps even unethical. the human race suffers far more from a willingness to take sides than a reluctance. this maxim is universally applicable.
I think a fair number of cliched quotes from both the bible and Dante’s inferno contradict that last statement. Here’s a problem with empiricism: can’t be empirical about itself, it can’t admit that empiricism is sometimes empirically wrong. Woah. And who is this magic verifier that people keep talking about? Is it the courts that will produce all the truths? Fat chance – how many white folks are still complaining about OJ?
i get you, but that’s too glib by half. of course we’ll almost never know The Truth (provided we believe that such a thing so much as exists), but there’s still every reason to be careful about how and in what we choose to invest our belief. it’s tempting to see issues of belief in oppositional terms, as the choosing of sides on a plainly-drawn moral/mimetic battleground, but that temptation too often leads us to view complex issues in simplistic terms. picking teams is often more satisfying than constructive, in that once we’ve decided which imaginary side we stand on, we can stop wresting with the unknowable and simply bathe in the glow of our own righteousness. i’m not saying that this is what you’re doing, but speaking instead to my own reluctance: i’d rather my satisfactions were harder won. i.e., i want to approach the investment of my own belief with as much moral and intellectual integrity as i can muster, regardless of which “side” i eventually wind up on. that said, i’m more inclined in general and on a gut level to side with those who take rape allegations seriously than those who deny them out of hand.
But this is all based on the world as it exists, as empiricism always is. Yes it’s oppositional, that’s how struggle works. I said truths are tactical because they are, they carry with them ideologies, interests, and sides. Pragmatism is as ideological as anything else, and it reflects interests as well. It may very well be the dominant ideology of the moment, it’s certainly President Obama’s, and I’m suggesting it might be worth contemplating whose interests it reflects.