On Assange, #Mooreandme and rape culture: feminists are not valued players on the progressive team

I was surprised by my own reaction to the treatment of Julian Assange’s rape charges and the resulting  #Mooreandme Twitter campaign. I’m not a rape survivor and am lucky enough to say that I’ve never even been victim to attempted assault. (Although as Andrea Grimes points out, it is statistically probable that that will change.) So while the way this case has been handled absolutely appalls me, I suspect my feelings are very different than for those who have experienced sexual assault. But it’s some progressives’ response – mainly, although not all, men – to the situation that gets me. It’s been more than disappointing. It speaks to the fact that feminism is still not automatically included in core progressive values.

Over a week of valiant, constant,  near-soul-crushing activism on Twitter on the part of Sady Doyle, Jaclyn Friedman, and a veritable army of others in many ways culminated last night when Michael Moore  admitted to Rachel Maddow that any rape charges, no matter how suspicious their timing, should be taken seriously and investigated with the full force of the law. (He also subsequently sent Doyle a direct message on Twitter explaining his silence.) While it’s not the apology that we had been hoping for (and the Twitter campaign continues to ask for that apology), it was a pretty incredible moment, considering his first stance was that the rape charges were “hooey.”  Keith Olbermann, who hosted Moore’s misguided explanation of his support for Julian Assange on his show and then  committed mistakes of his own, has also apologized via Twitter (although activists are still hoping he will go further). None of this would have happened without feminists’ concerted effort to explain to Moore and Olbermann where they went wrong as progressive men who should be feminist allies. As exhausted as I know Doyle must be, I hope she is also proud. This is what successful activism looks like.

But it shouldn’t have had to be this way. That’s the point that most stayed with me, even after I watched Moore discuss rape on camera with nuance. The way he spoke about it with Maddow was the way he should have from the very beginning. It shouldn’t take a week of explaining, coaxing, badgering and practically screaming at a staunch progressive like him to get him to see things our way.

Admittedly, this was a tricky issue, particularly for progressives. As Maddow put it, it doesn’t fit nicely on a bumper sticker. Many of us support Wikileaks’ work to bring transparency to governments and expose the truth. We value freedom of the press and feel that Wikileaks should be protected under that value. And yes, the timing of these charges and the way the Swedish government has handled them are pretty suspicious. There may be political motivation at work on the part of governments who got pie in their faces from the recent Wikileaks release. But none of that should be reason to treat the women who came forward against Assange as liars (or CIA operatives) or to dismiss their claims as nonsense. If you pay attention to high-profile rape cases, this is what often happens to the women who bring charges – they get smeared, threatened, called liars and whores. Some eve end up dropping the charges altogether because of this pressure, even as they never waver from the assertion that rape did occur. This is what we mean when we talk about rape culture. The more intimidation women see of those few who bring charges against their rapists, the less safe they feel in coming forward about their own assailants. It creates an environment where men are less accountable for sexual assault because the knee-jerk assumption is that the woman is suspect, not the man. And it leads to a dismal report rate for rape in the US.

Fighting rape culture is a huge feminist priority. So when the charges against Assange were made public, most feminists worked hard to make sure they got the real story (not a false one) and treated the situation with subtlety. But as Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, and even Naomi Wolf made clear, many progressives’ knee-jerk reaction was to suspect these women of all the things rape victims get suspected of. Their support for Julian Assange’s work blinded them to the possibility that he sexually assaulted two women. Keeping the two things in your head at once won’t make it explode. It just requires learning to walk and chew gum at the same time and holding your feminist values at the same high level as other progressive ones. But other values, like exposing truth and freedom of the press, quickly trumped women’s rights.

Feminism isn’t just about fighting the far right when they tell us what to do with our uteruses and our lives. It’s also about making the struggle for women’s equality mainstream. Real progressives are feminist allies, no matter their gender. After Keith Olbermann called the movement to demand an apology from him on Twitter a “frenzy” and then blocked most of the users, Maya at Feministing summed up her feelings well: “I can’t think of anything that’s a bigger slap in the face to feminists who genuinely believed – or at least dared to hope – that we were valued players on the team.” The need for the #Mooreandme campaign has taught me that feminists are not valued players on the team. We’re still sitting on the sidelines of the game. But we should be on the starting line-up. -Bryce Covert

Bryce Covert is a journalist and blogger who writes on feminism, politics, and the energy industry. You can find her atwww.brycecovert.com and www.twitter.com/brycecovert.