First we had Todd Akin, Republican candidate for the Senate from Missouri, explaining that if a woman becomes pregnant, it’s almost certainly a sign she wasn’t raped.
Now we have Blackburn Bradford West MP George Galloway acquitting Julian Assange of rape.
In a podcast released today, Galloway claimed that the allegations against Julian Assange, even if they were “100 per cent true, and even if a camera in the room captured them”, “don’t constitute rape”. At least “not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it”. Here’s the bit that matters (hat-tip The New Statesman):
Woman A met Julian Assange, invited him back to her flat, gave him dinner, went to bed with him, had consensual sex with him. Claims that she woke up to him having sex with her again. This is something which can happen, you know.
I mean not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion. Some people believe that when you go to bed with somebody, take off your clothes, and have sex with them and then fall asleep, you’re already in the sex game with them.
It might be really bad manners not to have tapped her on the shoulder and said, “do you mind if I do it again?”. It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning.
Gee, and some of us are naive enough to believe that non-consensual sex at any time in any form is rape. Silly us.
Tom Chivers of The Telegraph dares to hope that this is at last the end for Galloway. Problem is, as we have documented here over almost a decade, he has said and done lots of equally appalling things which should have meant the end for him, but never quite did.
(Hat tip: Bob-B)
Joseph adds:
I think just be generally wary of famous people talking about rape.
Take Roman Polanski. He drugged and raped a child.
People who didn’t want to see him face justice included:
Milan Kundera
Salman Rushdie
Natalie Portman
Pedro Almodovar
Monica Bellucci
David Lynch
Kristen Scott Thomas
Martin Scorcese
Jeremy Irons
Penelope Cruz
Woody Allen
Sam Mendes
