Tuesday, December 07, 2010

A Non-Post On The Wikileaks Scandal



I have not written on the leaks themselves because writing about them on a level which would offer something not offered elsewhere would be all-consuming in terms of time. But I have followed the debate, of course, and in particular the rape accusations part of it all.

On the general debate, it is possible to regard the leaks as offering interesting insights into the problems of secrecy in governments and at the same time point out that the Wikileaks revelations are also problematic* in terms opaqueness and no more based on democracy than the problems they have leaked. On how governments are reacting to it all, well, it's pretty obviously not in the terms of greater sunlight.

On the rape accusations: For an outsider, sitting far away, to absolutely know what happened just from the media is impossible and the final conclusions will be made at a Swedish court, most likely.

But if one steps a little away from that and looks at the debates on the net and elsewhere, one notices a few disconcerting twists: The idea that the Swedish law makes a mockery out of rape by defining it as "sex without condom" (which is not the case), the idea that rape is funny (to be found in comments threads, mostly) and the idea that women lie, a lot, about rape.

All this may strengthen the view of rape as non-serious in the public mind. Hence the non-post in the title of this post.
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*Thanks to Molly Ivors for this link.