Michael Moore and Rape Culture

I have a soft spot in my heart for Michael Moore. He is a very talented film-maker and author, and I can't help admiring somebody so gifted even when they use their gift in ways that are not always easy to respect. As I wrote before on the subject of his brilliant documentary Sicko, Michael Moore's portrayal of medical care in Cuba was offensive to anybody who has ever visited this country. An even more brilliant film Capitalism: A Love Story (which was so well-made that I watched it four times on the same day) was based on a deliberate fudging of terminology that can hardly be accidental for somebody as smart and well-versed in the topic as Moore.

Of course, what I kept forgetting in my hurry to disregard Michael Moore's lack of respect for factual veracity is that as soon as you see a person falsify facts here and there for the sake of a pretty, well-constructed story, there is no telling how far they will go. In order to preserve the validity of his narrative about Julian Assange as a Jesus-like martyr figure, Moore started offering interviews and tweets that discuss rape in terms I find to be extremely offensive. Here is part of his interview to the BBC, for example: 

Are you kidding me? I mean really. What? I mean, we’ve lived long enough, through enough of this kind of deception, these kinds of dirty tricks that governments and corporations play. And the issue here is that if he were any other just normal Brit, with this so-called “crime” that he’s been accused of — which I understand isn’t, wouldn’t actually be a crime if it was committed in Britain, a condom broke I believe is the “evidence.”

"So-called crime"? "A condom broke?" On other occasions, Moore referred to rape allegations as "strange" and "hooey." Can you be any more cavalier about allegations of a very serious crime that, surely, deserves being investigated? 

As I said before, I have no idea whether Assange is guilty of rape. And neither does Michael Moore. We weren't there, we haven't seen the evidence. All we have heard is, at best, third-hand accounts of second-hand stories. What I don't understand is how any decent human being can be so dismissive of the topic of rape and still feel good about themselves without waiting for any actual evidence to come in.

There is one thing, it seems, that is capable of bridging the ideological divide, joining the conservatives and the liberals in a happy embrace: the rape culture. See how fast they leave aside their animosity to howl in a perfectly attuned chorus: "It's just sex by surprise! Hooey! She asked for it! She lied! How dare she make these strange accusations about this so-called crime? What's the big deal? Who the hell does she think she is?"

P.S. On Rachel Maddow's show tonight, Michael Moore has finally recognized that rape allegations should not be dismissed. Ever. At all. I think the massive public campaign that was mounted on-line (especially on Twitter) against his and Keith Olbermann's pro-rape pronouncements was instrumental in bringing about this change of heart.

DailyKos Recognizes That Wikileaks Info Is "Nothing Special"

Finally, among all the voices that keep gushing about how much the super-duper-crucial revelations coming from Wikileaks changed the world, honest achnowledgements are starting to appear of the very obvious fact that these so-called earth-shattering revelations didn't really reveal anything at all. On this blog, I have asked both the admirers and the detractors of Julian Assange to give me some information about what was so new in these leaks. As of now, nobody has been able to offer anything in response.

Today, DailyKos finally acknowledged that the leaks

tell us nothing we didn't already know about way the United States shoves around other players at the world table, [. . .] the documents themselves are nothing special.

The article then goes to argue that even though the information "revealed" by Wikileaks was old news, it was still important for it to come out of yet another source. You can follow that argument on the DailyKos website, if you are interested. What interests me, though, is that the this entire hullabaloo over Wikileaks is at last getting to the point where we stop gushing and start analzying. DailyKos has acnowledged the basic uselessness of the Wikileaks documents and is trying to salvage the whole project through some inventive verbal acrobatics. For now, the only argument in defense of Wikileaks' abiding importance is that if the US government doesn't like it, it must be good and helpful to the liberal cause (or bad and unhelpful to the conservative cause.)

I will let my readers ponder the fallacies of this kind of logic on their own.

Even More on Assange

Our administration has caved completely to the Republicans and is preparing yet another major takeover of the country by the ultra-rich. Now we will hand over to them the Social Security, gut the sad remnants of the middle class so that Blankfein can buy yet another yacht, and finally destroy education. Yippee.

In the meanwhile, the public that has been getting all antsy is given this delicious story where a brave freedom-fighter is being chased all over the world by the CIA agents. Then, he is accused of rape by two women. Who later turn out to be radical feminists. Or not. Who later turn out to be CIA agents. Or not. Who later are said to have worked undercover in Cuba. Or not. These two women are appropriately Swedish because a good spy story cannot do without some blondes in it. The brave freedom fighter a.k.a. the James Bond of the New Millenium has made some revelations, which are not really revealing anything, just the stuff everybody has known forever. Still, everybody is riveted to this story, while the new Congress is robbing us blind. And when this whole drama finally blows over, we will wake up to the reality where we are all poorer, more overworked, and have less to hope for.

That's how I see this story. That's why I believe that engaging in the "save brave Assange!" show is detrimental to the progressive movement in this country.

More on Assange

Honestly, I don't understand why so many of my fellow progressives are enamored of Assange. I'm all for freedom of speech, but I don't see how Assange's actions have anything to do with freedom of speech. I believe that I should have the right to say anything I want here on my blog, for example. If somebody tries to prevent me from that or censor me in any way, that will be a violation of my right to express myself freely. However, if I were to steal somebody's bank records or personal e-mails and publish them here, that wouldn't be freedom of speech. That would be stealing. As I understand the meaning of the entire concept of freedom of speech, it has to be your own speech, not somebody else's papers that you have stolen and disseminated. Something tells me that if Assange were to steal and publish the personal papers of any of his defenders, they would run to the police screaming for some action to be taken to stop him.

Almost 20% of students in one of my courses this semester plagiarized their final essays. They stole somebody else's words and presented them as their own for personal gain (a good grade, having to do less work, getting free time for other activities.) I gave a grade of zero for each plagiarized essay. Should I have respected my students' "right" to steal information as an expression of their freedom of speech? Another question I have is how can I require my freshmen not to steal information for personal gain when they see somebody like Assange being glamorized precisely for doing that?

I have heard the childish argument that governments shouldn't have secrets anyways. That is a point of view that I find hard to take seriously. Governments always had and always will have secrets and classified information. If you are in any way shocked by this knowledge, you can always become a consistent anarchist and fight for the elimination of any and all governments whatsoever. There is also always the Tea Party to join. It's easier than being an anarchist, and you will have a chance to vociferate against the "big bad givernment" to your heart's content. If you do believe, however, that some form of government is necessary, then you will have to accept that governments will have secrets and will work hard to protect those secrets.

There is another childish school of thinking that maintains that people have the right to know governmental secrets because those secrets affect the citizens' lives. Under that logic, my students should have the right to steal the answers to their final exams from my office and publish them online. The grade they get for the final exam does affect their lives, so should I just leave the office door unlocked and let the information be stolen?

There are so many honest, hard-working journalists who risk their lives in order to bring us information every day. Why don't we celebrate their efforts rather than some stupid pranks of a money-hungry hacker?

Is Julian Assange a Rapist?

The only reasonable answer to this question at this point is that - aside from the alleged victims and Assange himself - nobody knows. Unless an investigation has run its course and, possibly, a trial has taken place, nobody is justified in offering any judgments. We weren't there, so we can't know. What has become sadly obvious, though, is how powerful sexist myths and attitudes still are. Even seemingly progressive people like Naomi Wolf and Keith Olbermann have made nasty sexist pronouncements on a case they only know through rumor, tweets, blog posts, and tabloid articles.

To say that rape is a crime that goes massively underreported everywhere in the world is an understatement, if there ever was one. A woman who reports being raped needs to prepare herself for a victim-blaming assault that will shame her, analyze her "motivations," her sexual history, her clothing choices, drinking habits, and as we can see in Assange's case, even her travelling history, her tweets, and e-mails. Rape is an egregious violation of human beings. Of course, this simple truth is accessible only to those who manage to remember that is has now been scientifically proven that women are human beings. If on hearing that a person reported a rape your first reaction  is to analyze her "motives," then I have news for you: you are a sexist jerk.

In short, the rape accusations against Assange have proved to be a very reliable jerk-meter. Many people who seemed completely normal and even progressive have revealed their deep-seated sexism. Anybody who believes that feminism has served its purpose and there is nothing for feminists to fight for any longer needs to think again. Women who report being raped still need to be prepared to be vilified and judged, often even by some losers who believe they know all there is about a rape that allegedly took place on a different continent.

People who have been pouring over every nasty tabloid "development" of this story need to get a life already, let the investigation run its course, and in the meanwhile think about why hearing the word "rape" makes them react in unhealthy ways.