Rape

Rape is not rape is not rape is not rape. 

Not all rapes are equal.

Watching the cat fight that broke out between two women, feminists, that ought to stand on the same side and pull in the same direction, was truly disconcerting. My objections to the exchange between Jaclyn Friedman and Naomi Wolf have nothing whatsoever to do with my support of Julian Assange in his attempt at exposing the underhandedness of the big players. I want to be clear, rape is a very serious matter and needs to be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I want to add that anyone insisting on unprotected sex with a stranger is an asinine, selfish idiot, and those giving in to such unreasonable demands are not much better!

This said, the "very effective smear campaign" as Assange calls it, in light of what we can understand off posts on the net, just does not add up, does not even warrant the word rape, as most of us (maybe Swedes excluded) understand what constitutes such a sexual violation. The two women after having bragged about their contest on-line supposedly, and after having found out that Assange had slept with them both and put them both at risk, showed up at the police to request help in getting Assange tested (not arrested) for STDs. It was the police that suggested rape charges. And lo and behold in Sweden a man can be charged for rape if he stands naked behind a sex partner in an attempt to 'negotiate' intercourse. By the way humans are the only animal that will negotiate sexual relations (Leonard Slain.) The charges had been dropped only to be taken up again at a most opportune moment. Strange indeed. For 5 weeks Assange had stayed in Sweden to deal with the matter and finally left the country with full consent of the authorities. He was never on the run, in fact had offered himself up to the authorities again in London, only to be held for 10 days in isolation! Outrageous. Meanwhile US authorities are looking in to the important matters of making up charges for the guy, no doubt happy to have him out of circulation for the moment.

Rape is such a serious offense. One that evokes ideas of brutality and debilitating victimization. Yet rape can have more of a seductive, rather then brutal quality, still it is rape. But rape has to be distinguished from normal adult negotiations of sexual relations. True an adult in an altered state, be it through drugs, alcohol, sleep, or even massage is in a seriously weakened position for negotiations. Initiating sex with a sleeping partner is not rape in my book. Excluding altered states from normal human interactions is ludicrous. Next we have to sign contracts on paper before sex each and every time. Women are not little weak and meek creatures at the mercy of men.

Enough already with all this political correctness. A woman has to carry the responsibility of her choices. If she chooses to have sex with a stranger, sleep with the stranger, should she really be surprised if there is renewed demand for more of the same? If a woman can not say NO to a man, can not say NO to unprotected sex, can not say NO repeatedly and say NO with the whole of her body so as there to be no mistake in her intent, she has no business being alone with a stranger in a compromising, potentially volatile situation. Sure, most women that have been around the block have made their mistakes, maybe have some regrets, but is this cause for prosecution and hanging a guy up by his balls? Now in all this I assume there has been no brutality, playful wrestling and such excluded. Any situation that escalates to serious violation of the nature of brutal rape must be prosecuted, for the benefit of all involved, and those potential future victims.

Jaclyn Friedman's demand for sexual partners to be "enthusiastic" is amusing at best, ridiculous at worst and far from the real world of so many. The vehemence in her defense of the supposed victims is very characteristic of one that is recovering from abuse and as so often, does go overboard. That's o.k., I can dismiss such as growing pains.

Julian Assange, a rising star in the progressive world, may conveniently not have been aware of the power he holds, or rather the social status he had achieved, at least likely in the minds of those two women that attended his workshop. Power differentials can wreck havoc in sexual relations be it between workshop leader and participant, teacher and student, guru and sanyasin, therapist and client or goddess forbid parent and child. We can observe again and again how the ones in power magnanimously bestow their gift, their attention and all too often their sexuality to the admirers, feeling no sense of wrong doing. Soon they will move on to bigger and better opportunities only to leave behind trails of broken hearts, shattered expectations, false promises and dashed hopes. It is never a pretty sight. And likely they will never look back.

We all really do not know what happened except Julian Assange has very effectively been linked in our minds to atrocious crimes of a vile sexual nature of which bits and pieces are now cemented in our impressionable gray matter. We respond emotionally either for the WikiLeaks hero or against the accused male rapist. Timing is not everything, synchronicity does happen. While it stinks, give it some time and space, let the dust settle and really give those women the tests on STDs they wanted all along. Time will tell if this is and should be a proper legal matter or rather should have stayed all along in the interpersonal realm. But let us not cry out for Julian's head, or balls as it may be, before even charged with a crime, much less found guilty. And let us not play him in to the hands of big powers out to get him and prevent him from the important work he has been doing. Important because as Michael Moore said, and I agree whole heartedly, the US has deceived us in to one war, toppled Saddam for the absolute wrong reasons and in so doing lost our good will and should have been on probation so to say ever since, with the light shining bright on US international affairs in particular.

If this sordid matter brings the issue of rape more in to the public domain  for education and clarification, then maybe something good can come out of this and rape can be taken seriously and can be prosecuted with renewed vigor and conviction, even in Sweden. I though doubt we will see frequent Interpol searches for the garden variety local rapist in the near future.

If I have not stated my points clear enough, please forgive me, maybe Bianca Jagger's thoughts on this matter will prove more helpful. Watch one of the very best interviews with Julian Assange here.

Julian Assange - A Hero

Since late November, 3 weeks now, I have been following Wikileaks and Julian Assange, reading and listening mainly to the progressive point of view. I feel pressure to take a stand, to declare myself for or against, but I am having trouble doing so. Maybe it is not just a matter of being for or against, maybe life in general is more nuanced?  Good try, but won't fly! While usually I feel free to express myself in most ways, the threat of being viewed by the US (far reaching) powers as abetting in espionage (no matter how ridiculous the sound of it) as unworthy of employ (and I am not in a position not to care) or as a distriutor of stolen goods, is strangely unsettling to me, surprisingly so.

"This is what it looks like when power squirms. When the US government warns its employees to steer their eyes away from the WikiLeaks documents even though they're on every front page and news site. When Sweden and Interpol, possibly in response to US pressure, pursue trumped up charges against the WikiLeaks founder. When Mike Huckabee calls for alleged leaker Bradley Manning's execution, Sarah Palin says Assange should be "hunted down," and Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.) declares that WikiLeaks should be designated a terrorist organization." Mother Jones

WWII Germans could claim ignorance from a lack of information and I might add naivete along with a blind trust in a patriarchal system that made them stand by passive when those atrocities happened. In our current so called information age we have no longer such excuses available to us. The information is out and available to anyone looking, in great part thanks to the net. Preserve net neutrality! There comes a point one has to take a stand. So here I stand symbolically in solidarity with Julian Assange first and foremost and his organization Wikileaks!

Allegations of rape are very serious, but in the context used against Assange they are ludicrous and offensive to those real victims of violent sexual abuse. Come on, invoking a law that makes a case for rape of a man, naked, standing behind, who knows maybe rubbing up against a woman he had sex with earlier! Invoking broken condoms and unsafe sex as if they were felonies? What happened to the ability of adults negotiating the terms of sexual intercourse between them? Have you ever heard of a rape victim throwing a party for the perpetrator? To lock a man in to solitary confinement for 10 days, a man that voluntarily presented himself to the authorities and has not been presented with clear charges of a crime committed, is a stunning deed to say the very least. Check out Michael Moore's open letter to Sweden where he accuses Sweden of negligence in legal proceedings of rape charges, 9 out of 10 times, while at the same time Swedes have the highest per capita rape reports! (I live in the US state with the 2. highest per capita rape reports, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It may mean that victims actually bother to report to the authorities, an important step forward.) Rape charges are serious and very offensive, but as I have pointed out before (the cases against Al Gore and Roman Polanski) not all rapes are equal.

Women Against Rape, Katrin Axelsson:

"There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety. In the south of the US, the lynching of black men was often justified on grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women don't take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst."

There are rumors that Anna Ardin, 31, one of the complainants, might be a spy. Someone will have to make a movie out of this saga. Of course for Julian Assange these smear campaigns, as he seems to call them rightfully so, are anything but entertaining. He is now out on bail under electronic monitoring through ankle bracelets and has to report in daily.

Meanwhile like in court, plant seeds of unreasonable doubt, here on the messenger of those unwanted revelations and deter attention from what truly matters. Those leaks while at first mainly diplomatic fluff, embarrassing maybe, but lacking in seeming significance have though grown in importance and cover a wide array of countries and subject, and not all bad for the US either.

One cable falsely states that Michael Moore's movie Sicko was banned in Cuba, while in truth the movie was shown to a wide Cuban audience, yet the main media did not rectify those claims did not do their homework and that is exactly why we need Wikileaks. This phenomena is a sign of our times, of a troubled media and enough discontented ones that create a demand for such endeavors like Wikileaks. (As Assange told the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year, "How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful.") The more the merrier I say to the split of one former ally in to a similar organization that wants to act as a simple distributor of leaked info with no vetting of any kind. This will require for other media to not distort or suppress info of a sensitive nature. Time only will tell on how it will work, but the truth sooner or later will have to come out. I am for transparency, especially in the public and political domain.

So I change my mind, I redact my former statement, I take a stand, and declare Julian Assange a HERO. A hero because of his courage to oppose power and secrecy and his commitment to inform and  so uphold the fundamentals of a real democracy based on educated voters. With an IQ of a genius almost, he is no fool, he knows some of what he got himself in to, but he is a man of principle, willing to put his body on the line. So I stand among illustrious company in my public support of Julian Assange, runner-up for 2010 Person of the Year .

Joe Biden called Julian a "High Tech Terrorist" so I had to look up the word terrorist: "The word was originally applied to supporters of the Jacobins in the French Revolution, who advocated repression and violence in pursuit of the principles of democracy and equality." In this sense Julian certainly is not a terrorist. He offered the material for vetting to the US and to a few chosen main media outlets. He does not advocat violence and certainly is not big on repression be that information or his own sexuality for that matter as it seems (a lame attempt at humor.) Leaked information inspires terror only in those that have something to hide.

Astrologers world wide have been erecting and studying charts for Julian Assange in an attempt to gain insight. This is one of them, likely not perfect, but workable and fascinating. Accordingly Julian is living his Aquarian destiny: 

Sex - Abuse - Massage

Once again massage therapy is linked to sex, this time in an article of our local New Mexican, where it says that massage led to sexual assault. 39 year old Marcial Zapata looks rather scary, certainly scruffy and not exactly trust worthy in his mug shot. Another male accused of the abuse of a female. Inappropriate touch is never excusable, yet sadly still rampant. My sympathies always lie with the victim.

Still, what gets me is that "the woman said she began feeling uncomfortable when Zapata's hands began sliding up the baggy shorts she wore." I say, if you are not comfortable getting a professional massage in the nude, covered only by a sheet or towel, get seated bodywork, or get the services of an Acupuncturist or Chiropractor, neither requires a state of undress. The fact that the woman wore shorts, and baggy ones on top, speaks volumes. Would we all learn to listen to our intuitions and take actions accordingly.

There are very legitimate reasons to therapeutically work on and all around the butt. For people to take offense because a professional bodyworker pulls their pantie below the sacrum is ludicrous and really hampers effective therapy. It speaks of a society steeped still in feeling prudish, unbecoming in this day and age. The times when a glance at a ladies wrist or ankle set a male in to ecstatic musings are long gone. Professional, therapeutic bodywork has constantly to contend with prudish, moral, religious and culturally based taboos. Any bodyworker worth his salt, or your money, knows how patterns of stress repeat themselves and knows of the importance of maybe touching the feet to relief a headache, maybe working the Glutes to address tight shoulders and neck. For God-dess sake, if you are uncomfortable speak up, if you don't understand, ask!

As a professional bodyworker for almost 3 decades I have had to contend with inconvenient underwear often. While current ethic laws suggest, maybe demand that we do not slide our hands under the coverings of a client's choosing, I have done so many times. Nobody ever stormed out of my practice because of pulling a pantie down so I can address the oh so very important sacral tip, the coccyx at the very end of a spin. Often though I had to explain my intent which always I was more then happy to do.

While real abuse happens and may have happened in this reported case, the details were not forth coming, some abuse may be a figment of the victim's imagination. Everything hinges on trust which is maintained only in an on-going effort at communication. We can give trust in an instant and lose it just as fast. Misunderstandings might be just as rampant as actual abuse I would venture to say!

The woman here had come back to this unregistered, unlicensed supposed 'healer' for the third time. He must have done her some good for her to have returned to him twice. License is no guarantee for quality of treatment. Neither is price, but $40 is very low for a massage, unless given by a student. 

So how do we know if any given practitioner is legit, able, capable and professional? Offering his diagnosis clearly put him outside legal parameters. Massage Therapists are not allowed to diagnose, period. I have offered my professional, educated estimation of what might help in addressing any one symptom and often was rewarded in being right on the money, or right about 'the issues in the tissues.' There are very few bodyworkers though that actually know how to palpate and rearrange organs. I have never been one of them. So I would know nothing of a diagnosis of "a dropped uterus." Correcting the positions of organs can be legitimate and possible, but should be offered only by a highly trained professional. We can always go for a second opinion, we can check the registries, but ultimately we have to rely on our intuition and ability to take matters in our own hands. We have to learn to know when anyone crosses our boundaries and then respond appropriately. We have to learn to not give our power to another, even while we are down and they are towering over us.

This guy, Marcial Zapata, may be a creep, may have taken blatant advantage of a woman in a vulnerable physical and psychological position, which would be reprehensible. Please remember though, no stoning of those not yet proven guilty, neither of those found guilty and certainly not of the innocent. Those times have passed. (At least they are long gone in our western world, while sadly in some places like Iran they still are alive and well.) We no longer throw the victims to the lions, but one would not know reading the comments in the blogosphere.

What irks me are those Puritans that cry foul play when they understand nothing about the art of bodywork or massage therapy, the wonders that can unfold, the depth of experiences that can be had and the freedom that can be felt after having shed a life time's worth of armoring and hiding behind social dos and don'ts.

Polanski

Polanski's arrest in Zurich got me stirred up and I am not even a fan of his movies. I swear the boards are the modern lion dens or witch hunts and sinister hangings of times I had believed long gone. Screams of bloody murder with the throwing of the rapist, if not in the fires of hell, at least in to prison to rot for the remainder of his life. Rape and child are the buzz words, although like any word the meaning can take on all kinds of colors.

According to the victim her experience does not qualify as rape as it lacked the violence she would associate with such. While rape is rape as concerns the lack of consent and the proceeding even while being told no, there are shades here. The child had sex before and supposedly was only weeks away from the age of 14 and the ability to offer consent legally.

A child being drugged in order to be taken advantage of, sounds so sinister, yet Qualudes were so common and so easily accessible, even to school kids that wanted them. I know, I grew up in Switzerland, it was a cinch to ask my friend's boyfriend to get me some illegal pharmaceuticals (once LSD for my mom's friend. Bless my mom's heart, I believe she never learned of this.) Offering Quaalude and Champagn seem to be equated with today's dating drug abuse scandals, while in the sixties and seventies were the social norm in certain circles.

Offering alcohol to a 13 year old in Europe is common and would never warrant the American outrage. I must say I hate the infantilization of American kids that are old enough to be sent to war, but not old enough to have a celebratory sip of alcohol. I hate that a 19 year old having an affair with a few year younger kid can be prosecuted for child abuse and even incarcerated if sex is involved. Yet I remember plenty of school mates actively in pursuit of sex at a tender age of barely noticeable sexual characteristics. I remember how at 12 years of age some men judged me to be 20 years of age, and that without any provocation, certainly not of a sexual nature on my part.

No, I do not favor middle aged men having sex with very young girls and no, rape is inexcusable. Neither do I favor the laissez fair or letting go of crimes because of times that did pass. Obviously Polanski is a fighter. He survived the Holocaust in Krakau, got over a Dad that told him to fuck off and had to deal with the brutal slaying of his wife and had to endure the suspicions of the authorities and fellow Americans. Somehow looking at the larger picture, his escape when the judge's ambition became obvious seems befitting, if ill chosen. What possibly in his past could have made him place his trust in the American legal and political system?

Apprehended now, I hope he will have a chance to finish this sordid and long overdue business, pay his debt to society without going to prison, I hope. Compensating the American tax payer with a fine that would cover the expense of keeping his case open for 30 years seems just. And I would add a punishment of having to produce films of an educational nature that have sexual abuse and boundaries at the core, suitable to be shown to kids, in various age appropriate versions. This seems to me a good and fitting punishment without wasting good talent and filling already overflowing prisons with another individual that really poses no longer a threat to society (considering no new allegations of child abuse come to the fore.)

Back to my beginning what irks me are the cries for revenge clothed in terms of Justice. Polanski admitted to guilt only as regards to unlawful sexual intercourse, not rape! The fact that he is white, rich and well connected seems to get some folks ire, as rage mounts at the thought of another aborted attempt at legal justice.

His victim forgave Polanski in 1997 and considered his 30 years in exile as sufficient punishment. No, victims are not to dictate legal procedures, but should their word not count for something? Or do we once again infantalize the victims by acting 'for their own good' while ignoring their testimony?

No, money, power and status ought to not determine the justice system. What I would like to see is a justice not based on needs for revenge, not meted out by the book, but considered with true wisdom that looks at the crime in a differentiated fashion rather then black and white and can address the real needs of society, victim and perpetrator.

Meanwhile let's keep on enjoying Swiss Chocolates!