All just a little bit of History Repeating...

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Julian Assange v2.0.

Or should that be Polanski v3.0?

Yet another story about how if you're powerful or rich enough, you can get away with... well, not actually murder, but certainly rape. Which is at least a similarly heinous act.

And this isn't the first time he's done it either!

This guy is described - even by this woman's *mother* as "otherwise warm, sympathetic and extremely talented"... honestly, this guy tries to rape her daughter, and she still thinks he's a decent guy for the most part? It's just sickening, the whole idea that only "good" people can be raped, and otherwise "good" men can't be rapists. News flash, people - rapists are not some special kind of person who can be easily identified because of their stench of evil and horrible behaviour at all times...

Dear God... I'm half tempted to draw up a bingo square of cliches surrounding rape, and see how many this case checks off, just to keep from banging my head against my desk in despair.

The whole thing is another (as if we needed another) example of how victims of rape are pilloried - or at the very least disbelieved.

The writer, who was a close friend of Strauss-Kahn's daughter Camille, said she was forced to fight him off. "It finished badly ... very violently ... I kicked him," she said. "When we were fighting, I mentioned the word rape to make him afraid, but it didn't have any effect. I managed to get out."

Explaining why she had not pressed charges, Banon said "I didn't want to be known to the end of my days as the girl who had a problem with the politician."

People who go on about how a charge of rape ruins a man's life should take heed. When a) someone brings up as a reason for not reporting a crime that they, not the criminal, will be branded with the stigma of association forever, and b) the threat of being reported for rape has no effect at all, we really need to take a good look at our preconceptions here...

I'm sorry this post hasn't been as coherent as usual, but I'm very tired of having to bang the same drum again and again and again and again ad nauseam. This has got to stop.

Oh, and I would have posted this link on my facebook while I was having a discussion about these issues earlier, but I think I would have ignited a flame war from people who wouldn't appreciate its tongue-in-cheek-ness, and its value as a thought experiment.