Julian Assange says “Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism” and he is a victim of “revolutionary feminism”

Oh good. Julian Assange keeps talking. In a recent interview, he said he was bewildered by the sexual assault allegations against him. He sees himself a victim of radicalism:

“Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism,” he said. “I fell into a hornets’ nest of revolutionary feminism.”

Honey, I wish Sweden was a nest of “revolutionary feminism,” but I really don’t think it’s quite there yet.

Maybe Assange is confused because he doesn’t seem to grasp the basics of consent. He says one of the women “arrived at a lunch in a revealing pink cashmere sweater, flirted with him, and took him home.” And the other woman took a “’trophy photo’ of him lying naked in her bed.” Well, ok, that’s nice. And also totally irrelevant to the accusations against him, since both women have said that the sexual encounters began consensually but at some point stopped being consensual. That pink cashmere might have screamed “unprotected sex against my will” to Assange, but I’m guessing that wasn’t the woman’s intention.

And then there’s this charming quote:

“She says they had consensual sex but she woke up the next morning to find him having intercourse with her to which she had not consented.

When she asked him if he was wearing anything, he had allegedly said: ‘I am wearing you.’”

Not ok, dude. If you think it’s fine to penetrate a woman when she’s asleep, without a condom when she’s explicitly stated that she has not agreed to unprotected sex, respond with a line as god awful as that, and still claim to be positively baffled by the complaints against you, I really can’t help you.

We don’t know if Assange is guilty of these allegations. But between these quotes, his truly terrible OkCupid profile, and the leaked excerpts from his diaries, I, for one, am ready to definitively conclude that–at the very least–Assange is a huge tool. And supporters of “revolutionary feminism” worldwide should probably boycott having sex with him ever again.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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