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troubleOkay, I have the first half of Part 2 of the "debate" between Naomi Wolf and Jaclyn Friedman done. I need to stop now because I have other things that I need to do, and it's really really upsetting. If no one's done the latter half by the time I'm done my tasks, I'll pick it up again. I did the first 12 minutes and 15 second. This discusses rape and what's a real rape and what isn't at length. I also haven't edited or spell checked it yet because I do that when I'm done.
Video is here.
Amy Goodman: AG
Jaclyn Friedman: JF
Naomi Wolf: NW
AG: With part 2 of our discussion with two feminists about the sexual assaults allegations against Julian Assange. We're joined in Boston by Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of Women, Action and the Media, a charter member of CouterQuo, and the edited of the anthology "Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape". In New York we're joined by Naomi Wolf, well known feminist, author, social critic author of seven books including "The Beauty Myth" and "The End of America".
Jaclyn, we're going to go back to you right now. As we continue this discussion about the allegations against Assange. How did you first get involved with this, and what do you think of the media's coverage?
JF: With this particular case? Or.. okay? I got involved the same way everyone else did. I first heard the charges - the allegations this summer. I was disappointed when the Swedish justice department decided not to pursue them further and I was pleased when they decided to give them a second look, although I certainly am suspicious of the government's motives. I'm always glad to see any rape victim, or any alleged rape victim, get a chance at justice. And since then I have been writing, tweeting, particpating in a mass protest on twitter that's happening under the #mooreandme hashtag, and I wrote an article for the American Prospect about what's at stake when we talk about high profile rape cases in the media, and what a real impact it has on victims and their opportunity to get justice around the world. Women who have cases that aren't against men who are famous and in the medit, it has a real impact making rape more prevelent and making it harder for women to seek justice when we minimize their experience. I really want to get back to talking about issues of consent. My book, "Yes means Yes", proposed a new model of consent, and it works like this: It is the responsibilitiy of every party to a sexual encounter to not just make sure that someone is not just lying there, terrified of them, and not objecting, but you actively make sure they're consenting. And this is a model that's increasingly being adopted because it puts everyone in the driver's seat. Everyone who is partipating with someone else sexually has a responsibility to make sure their partner is enthusiastically about what's happening. I mean, really, in a pratical sense, would you want to have sex wiht someone who isn't enthuasiastic? None of us would, I think, if we're not sexual predators. SAnd so, when we talk about consent, and we talk about whether or not she literally said the word "no", we have to talk about the context. He had ripped her necklace. He had held her down. She was afraid. A lot of women have been taught that they can do nothing against someone who wants to rape them and the best thing to do is to go along so they don't get further hurt, and a lot of women operate with that fear. Further, if we look at the second case, she was alseep. A woman who is asleep, a person who is unconscious is unable to consent. They are also unable to object. So if you initiate sex with a sleeping person, you are sexually assaulting them and that is perfect clear. It is totally ... whether or not you've slept with them, even if you are naked in the bed with them. COnsent is not a lightswitch. If I say yes to sex with you, it doesn't mean I'd say yes to sex with you forever under all circumstnaces, it doesn't mean you have permission to do whatever you want with my body, so let's be very, very clear.
AG: Naomi Wolf -- Let's let Naomi Wolf respond now, Jaclyn.
NW: My concern is exactly the same as Jaclyn's. I, too, worry about the fact that rape is so rarely taken seriously and that victims of very cut and dried crimes have very little chance of any legal hearing, around the world, including in the West, including Scandinavia. But, I would say that it's exactly this kind of treatment of this kind of situation that undermines the seriousness by which rape victims are likely to get a response. If you look again, Jaclyn, again I urge you to look at this report from the police--
JF: I fully have.
NW: Can I just finish? Again and again and again Assange did what Jaclyn and everyone who cares about rape, and I, say you should do. He consulted with the women. Now, if you're going to say that anyone who takes someone clothes off in an assertive way is engaging in a sex crim ethen a lot of people who are having consensual sex are going to be criminilized. The women said "let's talk about the condom", they discussed it, they reached an agreement, and went ahead. He didn't have sex with that woman when she was asleep. I agree that you have to be awake, and concious, and not drunk to consent. We agree about that--
JF: He did have sex! That's the allegation, that he started when she was asleep--
NW: Well, you know, he started to have sex with her when she's asleep, correct--
JF: And that's rape.
NW: Bear with me. That she was half-asleep, then she woke up, then they discussed how they would have sex, under what conditions which is, to me, negotiating consent. Your model is not a new one with all due respect. I agree that people need to be clear about consent, be clear about the circumstances. They had a negotiation in which they both agreed not to use a condom. Then they went ahead and they made love. And what I'm trying to say--
JF: They did not make love.
NW: Well, I guess neither you nor I was there and it seems to me that when you say, okay, you better not have HIV, he said of course not, quote "she couldn't be bothered to tell him one more time because she'd been going on about the condom all night." I mean, to me, if I was making love to a woman, if I was, you know, a lesbian making love with a woman and we had that conversation, I would keep making love with her because we'd had a discussion about it and reached a conclusion. Again, never in 23 years of supporting rape victims, rape victims, people who had no ambiguity, who didn't throw parties for their rapists, who didn't continue to host-- I mean, women who've been raped, in my experience, don't want to be around their rapist, they don't host them in their home. They can barely go home if they've been assaulted in their home. THey don't feel safe in their home--
JF: I find it suprising you've been around many rapists.
NW: I beg your pardon? What did you say, Jaclyn?
JF: I find it surprising you've been around many who have been raped, because the women I've talked to who have been raped, 70 to 80% of all sexual assaults are committed by people who know their assailant.
NW: Of course that's true.
JF: That creates a lot of-- okay, I'm talking now. That creates a lot of difficulty in terms of complex feelings afterwards, the ability of the rapist to emotionally manipulate them. And people like you are doing minimizing their experience--
NW: I am not minimizing the experience of rape. I am asking--
JF: Naomi, I am speaking now.
NW: And then, as moral adults, take responsibility for their actions.
JF: I went to .. I go to a lot of TAke Back the Night talks on college campuses because I'm invited speak there, and I hear the same sotry over and over again. I hear the story from women who were sexually assaulted by someone they knew. Sometimes continued to date them, sometimes continued to live with them. Because they didn't know that they had rights. They didn't know that what was being done to them was something that was not okay and they could speak up about. They were afraid, they were confused, and then they don't tell anybody. Then they get up at these talks and they say 'I didn't tell anybody for three years. I let this keep going on because I didn't know I had any other choices, and it's been making me suffer in silence for three years because I haven't had access to any services or support', and that's the story I hear from trauma victims over and over again.
NW: That is the story, Jaclyn--
JF: And what I'm trying to do-- and these are real rape victims too, real rape that doesn't necessary involve being punched in the face, getting drunk.
NW: Jacklyn, do you believe--- can I respond? Do you agree, and I think this is so important. For feminism to be successful, it is not about giving women home court advantage, it is about justice. It is so important that the rule of law operates impartially. So just bear with me. Do you agree that men or anyone who is the sexaul intiator, because, of course, men can get raped, women can engage in unwelcome or non-consensual advances. Do you agree that men deserve to know when something is not consensual? I, too, have heard stories that alarm me, of young women and god bless them, my heart goes out to them, but this is not the end result of feminism , it is not us evolving to the place we need to get. They say "Half way through I was having sex with this guy and I felt raped." and I say "Well, did you say anything?" "No." "Did you indicate anything?" "No. I just felt... I felt it." So, I would agree that that's a failure of society--
JF: That is not what happened in this case!
NW: In this case, you're right. He negotiated--
JF: In this case he held a woman down, he raped another while she was sleeping.
NW: You know with all due respect you have got to read this. He held a down-- I have been held down by my lovers--
JF: I've read it, Naomi.
NW: I held them down as we were consensually negoating--
JF: They did not negotiate a scene in advance.
NW: And then he spoke with her to --
JF: They did not negotiate a rough scene for him to hold her down.
NW: All I can say it--
JF: He coerced her, he forced her. If someone asks me twenty times if I want to have sex with them, or do I want to have sex without a condom, or whatever sexual act we're negotiating, and the 21st time I say yes because I am worn down and because I'm being pressured and coerced and I'm afraid, and because I woke up to him already raping me and I'm freaked out, that's not real consent, that's not a chance to have actual consent. That's not legitimate consent.
NW: I guess you and I will have to part ways because I would like to see a world in which women and men are both treated as moral adults, and a world in which if someone's going to be accused of a crime as serious as rape, which is the most serious crime short of murder, you know, or violent violent physical abuse, that both parties take it very very seriously and in this particular situation, where he stops and consults with these women again and again and again and they consent verbally and directly again and again.
JF: He wasn't consulting he was coercing.
NW: Well, you and I are going to have to agree to disagree about that.
JF: He was coercing.
NW: I would like to see a world in which--
JF: In my moral universe where everyone is an adult moral actor, people are only having sex with people who are an enthusiastic about what they're doing at all times and are enthusiastic about the circumstnaces. If you are pressuring your lover into something, if you are coercing, if you are having sex witht them without consent, when they are asleep, that is not a moral actor. That is morally unjsitifable.
NW: [Crosstalk] In a way, Amy, I find this concersation extremely frustrating and wrong because really, and this is why I was reluctant to have this particular debate, because, really, here we are debating oh, you know, nuances of what it is to me, working 23 years with rape victims, a highly ambigous situation compare dto the cut and dry, clear assaults and violence and date rapes that do not get a legal hearing every day, including in Sweden, when really the issue is a man who has, you know, released information that shows wrongdoing at the highest levels being dragged out of the line of the jusitce, out of any kind of ordinary treatment of any ordinary assault, and, by the way, these women did not make charges against him. They went to the police to see if they could get him to take an STD test. The police, the state, brought charges against him--
AG: Can I stop for a second to explain that, we have talked about that, but--
NW: It's a very important distinction, and when I've worked with rape survivors, in the United Kingdom in the 80s, it was the same situation where it was the state and not the women, who pursued the case, and this very much marginalized what the women wanted, so let us remember the women didn't go to the police and say "this guy assaulted me" or "this guy violated me" or "this guy molested me". That's not what happened. They went to the police, much subsequent, and said, "can we get him to take an STD test." And the police walked them through what had happened and the police said "that's against the law in Sweden." And then they dropped the charges, and then they reinitiated the charges-
AG: Can you explain what the law is?
NW:
Video is here.
Amy Goodman: AG
Jaclyn Friedman: JF
Naomi Wolf: NW
AG: With part 2 of our discussion with two feminists about the sexual assaults allegations against Julian Assange. We're joined in Boston by Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of Women, Action and the Media, a charter member of CouterQuo, and the edited of the anthology "Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape". In New York we're joined by Naomi Wolf, well known feminist, author, social critic author of seven books including "The Beauty Myth" and "The End of America".
Jaclyn, we're going to go back to you right now. As we continue this discussion about the allegations against Assange. How did you first get involved with this, and what do you think of the media's coverage?
JF: With this particular case? Or.. okay? I got involved the same way everyone else did. I first heard the charges - the allegations this summer. I was disappointed when the Swedish justice department decided not to pursue them further and I was pleased when they decided to give them a second look, although I certainly am suspicious of the government's motives. I'm always glad to see any rape victim, or any alleged rape victim, get a chance at justice. And since then I have been writing, tweeting, particpating in a mass protest on twitter that's happening under the #mooreandme hashtag, and I wrote an article for the American Prospect about what's at stake when we talk about high profile rape cases in the media, and what a real impact it has on victims and their opportunity to get justice around the world. Women who have cases that aren't against men who are famous and in the medit, it has a real impact making rape more prevelent and making it harder for women to seek justice when we minimize their experience. I really want to get back to talking about issues of consent. My book, "Yes means Yes", proposed a new model of consent, and it works like this: It is the responsibilitiy of every party to a sexual encounter to not just make sure that someone is not just lying there, terrified of them, and not objecting, but you actively make sure they're consenting. And this is a model that's increasingly being adopted because it puts everyone in the driver's seat. Everyone who is partipating with someone else sexually has a responsibility to make sure their partner is enthusiastically about what's happening. I mean, really, in a pratical sense, would you want to have sex wiht someone who isn't enthuasiastic? None of us would, I think, if we're not sexual predators. SAnd so, when we talk about consent, and we talk about whether or not she literally said the word "no", we have to talk about the context. He had ripped her necklace. He had held her down. She was afraid. A lot of women have been taught that they can do nothing against someone who wants to rape them and the best thing to do is to go along so they don't get further hurt, and a lot of women operate with that fear. Further, if we look at the second case, she was alseep. A woman who is asleep, a person who is unconscious is unable to consent. They are also unable to object. So if you initiate sex with a sleeping person, you are sexually assaulting them and that is perfect clear. It is totally ... whether or not you've slept with them, even if you are naked in the bed with them. COnsent is not a lightswitch. If I say yes to sex with you, it doesn't mean I'd say yes to sex with you forever under all circumstnaces, it doesn't mean you have permission to do whatever you want with my body, so let's be very, very clear.
AG: Naomi Wolf -- Let's let Naomi Wolf respond now, Jaclyn.
NW: My concern is exactly the same as Jaclyn's. I, too, worry about the fact that rape is so rarely taken seriously and that victims of very cut and dried crimes have very little chance of any legal hearing, around the world, including in the West, including Scandinavia. But, I would say that it's exactly this kind of treatment of this kind of situation that undermines the seriousness by which rape victims are likely to get a response. If you look again, Jaclyn, again I urge you to look at this report from the police--
JF: I fully have.
NW: Can I just finish? Again and again and again Assange did what Jaclyn and everyone who cares about rape, and I, say you should do. He consulted with the women. Now, if you're going to say that anyone who takes someone clothes off in an assertive way is engaging in a sex crim ethen a lot of people who are having consensual sex are going to be criminilized. The women said "let's talk about the condom", they discussed it, they reached an agreement, and went ahead. He didn't have sex with that woman when she was asleep. I agree that you have to be awake, and concious, and not drunk to consent. We agree about that--
JF: He did have sex! That's the allegation, that he started when she was asleep--
NW: Well, you know, he started to have sex with her when she's asleep, correct--
JF: And that's rape.
NW: Bear with me. That she was half-asleep, then she woke up, then they discussed how they would have sex, under what conditions which is, to me, negotiating consent. Your model is not a new one with all due respect. I agree that people need to be clear about consent, be clear about the circumstances. They had a negotiation in which they both agreed not to use a condom. Then they went ahead and they made love. And what I'm trying to say--
JF: They did not make love.
NW: Well, I guess neither you nor I was there and it seems to me that when you say, okay, you better not have HIV, he said of course not, quote "she couldn't be bothered to tell him one more time because she'd been going on about the condom all night." I mean, to me, if I was making love to a woman, if I was, you know, a lesbian making love with a woman and we had that conversation, I would keep making love with her because we'd had a discussion about it and reached a conclusion. Again, never in 23 years of supporting rape victims, rape victims, people who had no ambiguity, who didn't throw parties for their rapists, who didn't continue to host-- I mean, women who've been raped, in my experience, don't want to be around their rapist, they don't host them in their home. They can barely go home if they've been assaulted in their home. THey don't feel safe in their home--
JF: I find it suprising you've been around many rapists.
NW: I beg your pardon? What did you say, Jaclyn?
JF: I find it surprising you've been around many who have been raped, because the women I've talked to who have been raped, 70 to 80% of all sexual assaults are committed by people who know their assailant.
NW: Of course that's true.
JF: That creates a lot of-- okay, I'm talking now. That creates a lot of difficulty in terms of complex feelings afterwards, the ability of the rapist to emotionally manipulate them. And people like you are doing minimizing their experience--
NW: I am not minimizing the experience of rape. I am asking--
JF: Naomi, I am speaking now.
NW: And then, as moral adults, take responsibility for their actions.
JF: I went to .. I go to a lot of TAke Back the Night talks on college campuses because I'm invited speak there, and I hear the same sotry over and over again. I hear the story from women who were sexually assaulted by someone they knew. Sometimes continued to date them, sometimes continued to live with them. Because they didn't know that they had rights. They didn't know that what was being done to them was something that was not okay and they could speak up about. They were afraid, they were confused, and then they don't tell anybody. Then they get up at these talks and they say 'I didn't tell anybody for three years. I let this keep going on because I didn't know I had any other choices, and it's been making me suffer in silence for three years because I haven't had access to any services or support', and that's the story I hear from trauma victims over and over again.
NW: That is the story, Jaclyn--
JF: And what I'm trying to do-- and these are real rape victims too, real rape that doesn't necessary involve being punched in the face, getting drunk.
NW: Jacklyn, do you believe--- can I respond? Do you agree, and I think this is so important. For feminism to be successful, it is not about giving women home court advantage, it is about justice. It is so important that the rule of law operates impartially. So just bear with me. Do you agree that men or anyone who is the sexaul intiator, because, of course, men can get raped, women can engage in unwelcome or non-consensual advances. Do you agree that men deserve to know when something is not consensual? I, too, have heard stories that alarm me, of young women and god bless them, my heart goes out to them, but this is not the end result of feminism , it is not us evolving to the place we need to get. They say "Half way through I was having sex with this guy and I felt raped." and I say "Well, did you say anything?" "No." "Did you indicate anything?" "No. I just felt... I felt it." So, I would agree that that's a failure of society--
JF: That is not what happened in this case!
NW: In this case, you're right. He negotiated--
JF: In this case he held a woman down, he raped another while she was sleeping.
NW: You know with all due respect you have got to read this. He held a down-- I have been held down by my lovers--
JF: I've read it, Naomi.
NW: I held them down as we were consensually negoating--
JF: They did not negotiate a scene in advance.
NW: And then he spoke with her to --
JF: They did not negotiate a rough scene for him to hold her down.
NW: All I can say it--
JF: He coerced her, he forced her. If someone asks me twenty times if I want to have sex with them, or do I want to have sex without a condom, or whatever sexual act we're negotiating, and the 21st time I say yes because I am worn down and because I'm being pressured and coerced and I'm afraid, and because I woke up to him already raping me and I'm freaked out, that's not real consent, that's not a chance to have actual consent. That's not legitimate consent.
NW: I guess you and I will have to part ways because I would like to see a world in which women and men are both treated as moral adults, and a world in which if someone's going to be accused of a crime as serious as rape, which is the most serious crime short of murder, you know, or violent violent physical abuse, that both parties take it very very seriously and in this particular situation, where he stops and consults with these women again and again and again and they consent verbally and directly again and again.
JF: He wasn't consulting he was coercing.
NW: Well, you and I are going to have to agree to disagree about that.
JF: He was coercing.
NW: I would like to see a world in which--
JF: In my moral universe where everyone is an adult moral actor, people are only having sex with people who are an enthusiastic about what they're doing at all times and are enthusiastic about the circumstnaces. If you are pressuring your lover into something, if you are coercing, if you are having sex witht them without consent, when they are asleep, that is not a moral actor. That is morally unjsitifable.
NW: [Crosstalk] In a way, Amy, I find this concersation extremely frustrating and wrong because really, and this is why I was reluctant to have this particular debate, because, really, here we are debating oh, you know, nuances of what it is to me, working 23 years with rape victims, a highly ambigous situation compare dto the cut and dry, clear assaults and violence and date rapes that do not get a legal hearing every day, including in Sweden, when really the issue is a man who has, you know, released information that shows wrongdoing at the highest levels being dragged out of the line of the jusitce, out of any kind of ordinary treatment of any ordinary assault, and, by the way, these women did not make charges against him. They went to the police to see if they could get him to take an STD test. The police, the state, brought charges against him--
AG: Can I stop for a second to explain that, we have talked about that, but--
NW: It's a very important distinction, and when I've worked with rape survivors, in the United Kingdom in the 80s, it was the same situation where it was the state and not the women, who pursued the case, and this very much marginalized what the women wanted, so let us remember the women didn't go to the police and say "this guy assaulted me" or "this guy violated me" or "this guy molested me". That's not what happened. They went to the police, much subsequent, and said, "can we get him to take an STD test." And the police walked them through what had happened and the police said "that's against the law in Sweden." And then they dropped the charges, and then they reinitiated the charges-
AG: Can you explain what the law is?
NW:
