Katha Pollitt dedicated her most recent column in The Nation to discuss the left’s reaction to sexaul assault charges against Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks.  Pollitt writes, “What’s disturbing is the way some WikiLeaks admirers have misrepresented the allegations, attacked the women and made light of date rape.”  I particularly liked the last few sentences, which sums up the whole point of her piece:

One reason the Swedish rape conviction rate is low is that, thanks to thirty years of feminist progress, the law defines sexual violence and coercion broadly, but as in other countries, police and juries often do not. The same seems to be true of large swaths of the American left.

WikiLeaks is revealing information citizens need to know—it’s a good thing. Assange may or may not have committed sex crimes according to Swedish law. Why is it so hard to hold those two ideas at once?

Read Katha Pollitt’s full article, “The Case of Julian Assange,” here.

–Rosamund Hunter