Fugitivus

I suspect most of you have already heard about this, but for those who haven’t, you guys, Sady Doyle made Keith Olbermann cry, and he fucking well deserved it.

She also exposed Michael Moore for being a big doofus asshole. Okay, he was already widely exposed for that, but now he’s a big doofus asshole who lies when it is morally convenient for his personal belief system, and he is a big doofus asshole who thinks rape victims are worthless. Not true, Michael Moore? Then open your fucking mouth and say so! I know you have experience with opening your mouth, for lots of other causes, for lots of other abused and unfairly treated people, so keeping your mouth firmly glued shut when giving money to an accused rapist speaks volumes. Not to mention, opening your mouth long enough to tell everybody to disbelieve rape victims when they accuse celebrities of raping and then firmly closing it immediately thereafter, well, I guess I know whose side you would be on if a famous man had raped me. And, you know, I am not a bigshot film hero to the little guy, so maybe I don’t have the brainpower or moral authority to parse this one appropriately, but I am pretty sure one’s feelings on the transparency of government and one’s feelings on a guy accused of raping women and having his lawyer openly smear and lie about the accusers in public are quite separate concepts that do not necessarily intersect and can be held in one’s mind at the same time, with practice, much like you once learned to chew gum and walk. But what do I know. I am just a rape victim who did not prosecute because I have this crazy idea that rape victims who prosecute sometimes get harassed and threatened and bullied in such a way that being legally rapeable seems like a reasonable way to live out the rest of my permanently rapeable life.

I would rather be raped than prosecute a rape, Michael Moore. And there is nothing about you that makes me think you do not agree that this is the way it ought to be.

IF YOU NEED A LIST OF THINGS TO REMEMBER, MICHAEL MOORE, I MADE ONE FOR YOU. Perhaps you could keep this in your pocket for the next time you are on TV ignoring Sady Doyle:

Wikileaks is not the same thing as Julian Assange
Government transparency and accountability is not the same thing as Wikileaks
Rape victims are not the same thing as Interpol

Rape victims do not control the government
Rape victims do not control secret classified documents
Rape victims do not control Interpol
Rape victims do not control prosecutors
Rape victims do not control the internet
Rape victims do not control your Twitter account

Rape victims are not as hysterical as governments. When the government says people will die because you released a memo that reveals a diplomat thought a world leader had stinky breath, this is pretty much propaganda. When a rape victim fears for her life because her address has been released to a virulent public, this is pretty much a fear based in reality. Transparency: it’s for governments, not people in fear for their lives.

If Wikileaks goes down, the internet is infinitely capable of creating another site just like it
If Julian Assange goes down, Wikileaks is infinitely capable of going on
If Julian Assange raped two women (or more!, rapists tend to continue once they realize that documentary makers and news anchormen are giving them the thumbs up), the concepts of government accountability and transparency are still real concepts in the world — they do not crumble and die, as if these concepts were Tinkerbell, and Julian Assange raping women with impunity the handclaps she needs to go on

If Julian Assange has never raped anybody, and you have in the course of his not-raping-anybody:

• made up ridiculous laws meant to mock or cast spurious judgments upon systems of justice that attempt to deter rape and give victims justice
• made up ridiculous facts meant to mock or cast spurious judgments upon people who accuse others of having raped them
• discussed those fake laws and facts in public because you are too lazy or intellectually dishonest to find source material or a point backed up by actual evidence
• bailed out an accused rapist based on those made-up facts and laws you still refuse to pursue further because you like some other stuff he does
• told people (on national television or, you know, ANYWHERE) to always suspect rape accusations against people whose politics you enjoy
• stayed silent when others reveal information about real human beings who could die as a result of such revealed information

you will have said those things in front of rapists, and you will have said those things in front of rape victims. And those rapists know they can rape with your approval, and those rape victims know that they can be raped with your approval. RAPISTS WILL THINK YOU ARE THEIR FRIEND. RAPE VICTIMS WILL THINK YOU WANT TO HURT THEM, OR APPROVE OF THEIR BEING HURT. And neither of them will be, in any way, wrong. Especially if you don’t open your mouth to correct them.

If you have set up a career where your entire job and persona is all about truth and fighting for the little guy, then you better be prepared to take it as hard as you give it. If you’re not prepared, then your entire job and persona is actually about feeling like a big man by exploiting the trauma of the little guy for swirls of attention and adoration. Either you are for justice, or you are for misery tourism.

Julian Assange is not Wikileaks
Julian Assange is not Wikileaks
Julian Assange is not Wikileaks
Rape charges are not Wikileaks
Rape charges are not Wikileaks
Rape charges are not Wikileaks

Bailing out a guy who does a thing you like — when anybody else can also do that thing, maybe even you! — is saying that this thing this guy does is more important and more worthwhile than any rape victim, anywhere, ever. It makes a very clear image of your priority list, which looks like this:

1. Stuff I like
2. Everybody else, ha ha, fuck ‘em

I am taking this personally, and seriously, and angrily, because I have a personal investment. I have been raped. It is not altogether unlikely that I will be raped again in my lifetime. I know what it is like to be asked, nicely and not nicely, to shut the fuck up. I know what it is like to be bullied. I know what it is like to be mocked, and threatened, and harassed. I know what it is like to decide that being legally rapeable is more tolerable than filing a report, or going to court and asking for justice, as is my legal and human right.

I do not know why Keith Olbermann or Michael Moore are taking this personally. Since neither of them will engage in a discussion, I am left with the most obvious assumption. They are personally invested in keeping rape accusers silent, and are personally invested in making sure others do not believe rape accusers when they speak up. I do not know why they are personally invested. I do not know them personally. But I do know that they both believe that Julian Assange must be unassailable and immune from rape charges, because of his work with Wikileaks. They have spoken on that quite clearly. In fact, it is all they have deemed to clear up, except Olbermann, who wishes you to know that he totally has a friend who was raped once and so he’s incapable of ever being wrong about rape. I guess you guys didn’t know this, but it’s true, and just a well-kept secret among the secret society of rape victims. Everybody who knows me gained this super-power when my husband raped me; they are all right about rape all the time now, like fucking magic. If other rape victims disagree with them, they are just crazy! If only they had known me when I was raped, they would be right all the time, too.

(A side note, Keith Olbermann: You are a celebrity. Did you know? You are under some degree of media scrutiny, due to this fact. Your friends, your family members, they get a secondary wave of this scrutiny. So. Outing a rape victim to prove your temper tantrum point? I hope you asked her first; it is her rape, you know, not yours. There is every chance that the internet, divine troll factory that it is, will try to track her down now, and learn all the secret details of her rape, because they are entitled to such knowledge, and that is what the internet loves to do. If you don’t believe me, witness the revealing of the names of Assange’s accusers. Oh, wait, you did. Anyway. Glad to know that when a friend or family member of yours gets raped, the takeaway is that this rape is all about YOU, and the ways it makes you immune to ever learning anything new about rape, especially things like not outing rape victims in vast public arenas without their express consent.)

So, my conclusion is this:

Olbermann and Moore are personally invested in keeping rape accusers silent, and making sure others do not believe in rape accusations, because they are personally invested in men they know to be potential rapists. They are invested in those men more than they are invested in justice for rape victims. That sounds patently obvious, but I’m saying this because it’s more important than Julian Assange, Keith Olbermann, or Michael Moore; this is a survival tip. Anybody who slanders rape victims based on lies and damned lies is doing so because there is a rapist or potential rapist they are protecting. The rapist or potential rapist may be them. It may be somebody they know whom they suspect of such a thing. It may be that they never knew the rapist, but they knew his victim, and they do not want to believe her because she, I don’t know, worked for the CIA? Is a Republican? A feminist? Loud? Annoying? Needs support and dignity they are not equipped to give? The rapist or potential rapist may be a possibility and not a real person, the possible right to grope women without their consent, the possible right to harass drunk women, the possible right to call women in short skirts cunts who deserve what they get, going out like that. People with a personal investment in maintaining rape culture have a personal investment in maintaining rape culture; there is something in their lives they are trying to protect. Which means, there is something in their lives more important to them than your right not to be raped. If these same people talk about truth, or justice, or personal accountability, know that it only extends so far — that is, it only extends as far as the thing they are trying to protect, and no farther. If you threaten what they wish to protect, it certainly does not extend as far as you.

Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann are personally invested in Julian Assange. Keith Olbermann is invested enough to have had a big crying fit on the internet, and Michael Moore is invested enough to have shut his fucking mouth for once, and this is the mouth that he has built his career upon flapping. They are not personally invested in Assange’s work, not invested in his beliefs, which they can share without being invested in a man who potentially rapes. They are invested in Julian Assange, the man himself, enough that they believe he should not be allowed to be accused or tried of rape. Perhaps they would not say they are invested in Julian Assange being allowed to rape, with impunity, but there is slim difference between being invested in protecting somebody from accusations or trials and being invested in insulating a person from the repercussions of their real actions. Perhaps Julian Assange has never raped anybody, and never would. But if he wanted to, he now knows that Moore and Olbermann have his back.

So! Here is a thing you can do. You can have Sady’s back. She has stirred up a shitstorm of unimaginable proportions. I have stirred up tiny shitstorms on my blog. These made me want to burn my computer. It’s not a small thing, to have the swirling eye of the internet hurricane focused upon you. It can suck just about everything good out of your life; it’s meant to, because usually, the reason the eye is sucking upon you is because you are doing something effective. The importance of what Sady is doing is directly proportional to how much everybody is hating her for doing it. So she needs some love and support. Head on over to Tiger Beatdown and read up on what’s been happening. You can join the Twitter war upon Michael Moore’s infantile silence. You can join the donation spree upon anti-rape organizations. She has not asked for this, but I suspect you can donate to Sady’s blog, because this is taking up all the time she could be spending making money to eat and have shelter. And you can leave a nice comment for her on her blog, to cleanse the palate of the thousands of trolls that are intentionally trying to hurt her in whatever ways they possibly can.

And you can have the backs of survivors. You can reaffirm for any of them that you know (including yourself) that their right to move through life without being raped is worthwhile to you. That they are worthwhile to you. That you are not protecting some part of your life that would allow them to be raped. You can re-investigate your life, your beliefs, your friends and your family, and make sure that you are living up to that promise. Rape culture is pernicious. It’s easy to get sucked into it. Even people we respect, people who do great things, people who believe in justice and accountability, can honestly believe at the same time that some people should never be accused of rape. Take the time to sort through your own pile of trash, and make sure you can live with it, and make sure you can answer if somebody ever comes outside your tower with a bullhorn, demanding you account for what you did.

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