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Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

My experience with people is that a strong personality trait tends to influence all details of how they live their lives, not just what kind of work they do. Someone willing to take on the American government because of the strength of his convictions is someone I would say has an extremely strong personality trait.

Funny, though not really unexpected, that you would focus on that one remark when most of my post was basically sympathetic and outlined facts concerning how difficult it is to determine these things, even for the people involved, much less outsiders who weren't there when whatever happened, happened.

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It bothers me because when wikileaks got a little erratic a while ago I thought of launching something similar, even built it to about 80% (based on torrents rather than a wiki), and rape is the furthest thing from my mind.

So I took it very personal, and I'd hate to think that there would be a strong correlation between people standing up to governments and rapists.

So I took it very personal, and I'd hate to think that there would be a strong correlation between people standing up to governments and rapists.

Sorry I hit a nerve. Intended as a humorous observation: Given that politics is dominated by men and most people view rape as something committed only by men, perhaps there is (purely coincidentally) some kind of correlation there.

I'm not someone who places much value on politics. Maybe someday that will change. I believe "The government is best which governs least." I believe attacking the government so it feels all the more compelled to defend itself is counterproductive. I believe in the "light one candle rather than curse the dark" philosophy. I believe that fighting against some "evil" is a waste of time and the time and energy involved in doing so would be better spent building something good in the world. I believe letting opposition to evil define your actions is a win for the thing you view as evil.

The English bible says "The meek shall inherit the earth". I have heard the French version is "The nonchalant shall inherit the earth". I prefer the French version. I've got my own self-righteous streak and have stepped on plenty of toes in my time. I find it counterproductive and continue to work on being non-chalant and offering alternatives rather than attacks. It's slow but I think it's really more productive.

Peace.

Peace in return :)

The things that are happening around us are pretty scary indeed, and it's not the meek that will stop them.

For instance, in my country we now have a nation wide register of finger prints of non offenders. We have DNA data banks, license plate registration systems, identification requirements and so on.

Wikileaks is a force pushing in the opposite direction, something that watches over the watchers. You can't directly attack wikileaks, but you can attack the people behind such initiatives. That person could easily be me or a hundred others who are not going to stand by idly while our freedoms are being eroded.

My passport is about to expire, I will not renew it because I don't feel like giving up my fingerprints to authorities that have already been seen to abuse every little bit of data they have on us.

Former East block citizens are shocked at the ease with which we have given up our privacy in return for a non-existent threat.

We need wikileaks, or something like it. I'm against the way wikileaks is taking sides in issues, I think it should just dump whatever it receives as long as it has been verified to be true and not editorialize. But I can see how attacking a man is much easier than attacking a concept, and after the attacks on the concept have failed we should not be too surprised to see attacks on the man.

I've been raped. And was molested for 2 1/2 years as a kid. I read lots of books and articles on the topic, did tons of therapy...yadda yadda. Child molestation or even adult cases of rape don't typically start with physical assault, they culminate in it. They start with a myriad of subtler forms of disrespecting one's boundaries and one's wishes. When I had kids, I never taught them "there are scary people in the world who will want to do unspeakable things to you and scream if anyone touches your private parts" (which is essentially what a lot of parents teach their kids). I felt that would rob them of their innocence and burden them with a lot of baggage concerning their sexuality. Instead, I taught them that affection had to be by mutual consent, it was their decision and if someone disrespected their decision, then come to mom and mom will back your decision (no questions asked). Most kids get molested by someone hugging on them and kissing on them even though they aren't comfortable with it and, in most cases, the parents side with the adult who is violating their child's wishes. This is so common that you see it in movies: Some aunt is visiting who pinches the kid's cheek red and slobbers all over him with her kisses. The parents not only won't protect their kid, they find it funny. So the kid tries to hide from her as his only defense. I didn't worry about my kids either being molested or committing date rape. I knew they wouldn't give such situations an opening to happen.

I think if you want a better government, you need to make better people since government is run by people. I think if you want a government that places a high value on respecting the rights of its citizens, you need to foster a population of people that really respect each other. I think spitting in the face of the current government doesn't foster such an environment. It fosters something else, something I don't want in my world. You cannot compel others to be respectful. You can only teach them to do so. The best way to teach it is to model it, to live it. So I believe the antidote to the scary stuff going on is to just go through life having compassion for others and doing my best to treat them with respect. It's sort of like "the broken windows theory". Yeah, I know, the way the theory is written has serious flaws. But it's the best model I know to reference which is well-known and might be a concept people here will be familiar with.

Anyway, I'm just trying to clarify my view as to why I think wikileaks isn't necessarily here nor there in the grand scheme of things. My original point: Shit happens. This isn't necessarily about the government framing him and it isn't necessarily about him being a bad dude and serial rapist. There are other possible explanations and too little info to really go on.

Have a good day. I'm going offline now.

Thanks.

most people view rape as something committed only by men

In English law rape can only be committed by a man.

And little boys, too, tried as adults.

Upvote. Great point, but laws are written by people and therefore reflect the thinking of the folks who author them. So I stand by my statement: Most folks view it that way. That doesn't mean it is accurate to assume (which such a law clearly does) that a woman is incapable of violating the will of a man and having sex with him without his consent. For a variety of reasons, it may be less likely but that doesn't mean it never happens.

Sure. Actually my original comment left out of a lot of context that is important and was against the spirit of your post, so apologies for being pithy.

In England "rape" is a crime which requires the criminal to penetrate with a penis. There are many other forms of sexual assault that are punished just as severely as "rape" but are just not known by that name. They can be, and are, committed by men and women.

Sure. Actually my original comment left out of a lot of context that is important and was against the spirit of your post, so apologies for being pithy.

No problem.

The problem is that I am unaware of a word or law which specifically defines and names some opposite equivalent, which suggests the concept is absent from our language and therefore absent from our culture. The word "rape" also gets used as a metaphor in non-sexual situations where someone feels violated in an ugly manner. (Someone on HN used this word to describe how they felt about Google Buzz making so much of their personal info public by default when it launched.)

If Assange truly is innocent, that's all well and good. But I for one am not okay with date rape apologists. There's no excuse, as a man, for ignoring when a woman says no.

This looks like a setup. But that's different from saying Assange is still an okay guy even if he did it.

> But that's different from saying Assange is still an okay guy even if he did it.

Fully agreed. No is no. There's plenty of fish in the sea.

If someone wants to play 'hard to get' they deserve to be left alone, on the more than likely chance that they mean what they say.

I'm not an apologist and I'm not saying "he's an okay guy, even if he did it". I don't see how putting out statistics makes me an apologist. I think it makes me someone proposing an alternative to the dichotomies offered here of "Either he's a bad guy who goes around raping women" or "The government framed him". There is lots of room in life for other options.

>My point: I think genuinely, unquestionably consenting sex is really a quite difficult standard to meet and there are many cases of less than ideal encounters where it ends up being a judgment call on the part of the woman as to a) how she views it in her own mind ("rape" or something else) and b) whether or not to publicly accuse/charge someone.

That's what I was primarily responding to. You don't say it directly, but you're using very weaselly language to suggest that in some cases it isn't a terrible thing to ignore a woman when she says no. You're not just 'putting out statistics.'

No, not my point at all and I don't know how you are getting that. My point is that such situations are often not as cut and dried, black or white as people would like them to be. That doesn't make me an apologist and it isn't weasily language. It is just reality that life isn't always easily categorized.

Your post might have been sympathetic, but you basically argued that because he has the will to leak information without the consent of those who want to keep it secret, there is a high probability that he would have sex with a woman without her consent, which frankly is ridiculous.

I suppose, if I do something without the consent of my parents, I might also have sex without the consent of a woman? That's just silly.

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