On Naomi Wolf and Julian Assange

Posted by therhodesproject on January 17, 2011 · 5 Comments 

I have been very concerned over Naomi Wolf’s public response to the Julian Assange sexual assault accusations. Wolf, whose infamous outing of renowned Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom in 2004 made her a symbol of empowerment for victims of harassment, has been loudly insisting that Assange’s accusers have no grounds to make an accusation of rape without explicitly stating a lack of consent, and frequently criticizes the women for maintaining their anonymity.

In her testimony as a survivor in New York Magazine in 2004, Wolf decried the legal system for its role in silencing victims and for re-victimizing women brave enough to come forward with their allegations:

All the women who have come forward want only to fix what is broken. Critics of sexual-harassment standards argue that you can’t legislate passions; true enough. But you can legislate what to do about people who act on them improperly. Powerful men and woman who belittle and humiliate their subordinates manage not to belittle or humiliate their supervisors. Neither men nor women tend to harass upward in a hierarchy.

There is something terribly wrong with the way the current sexual-harassment discussion is framed. Since damages for sexual misconduct are decided under tort law—tort means harm or wrong—those bringing complaints have had to prove that they have been harmed emotionally. Their lawyers must bring out any distress they may have suffered, such as nightmares, sexual dysfunction, trauma, and so on. Thus, it is the woman and her “frailties” under scrutiny, instead of the institution and its frailties. This victim construct in the law is one reason that women are often reluctant to go public.

In 2011, she sings a very different tune, asserting unsympathetically:

If you don’t want to issue a police report, and you don’t want to [pursue] further action, you have the choice to remain anonymous for the rest of your life.

She encourages victims to “come out” and take responsibility for the “public action” of naming their attackers in court; in her article for the Guardian, she demands that rape be treated “like any other crime” less it be infantalizing to women.

Ms. Magazine has published an excellent article excoriating Wolf’s approach, offering a neat summary of the hefty body of research contradicting her claims. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here’s a taste:

Wolf’s argument that naming rape victims will force institutions to take rape seriously ignores all sorts of evidence of crimes not being taken seriously despite the fact that the accusers are known. How about assaults against people of color, the disabled, gays and lesbians, genderqueer and transgender people, prostitutes or the homeless? These victims often get little respect, culturally or institutionally, even when their names are publicly proclaimed.

So, leaving the counter-argument to the ever-capable Ms. Magazine and the feminist blog-o-sphere at large, we are still left with the question of why Wolf has turned on her own. She too was assaulted by a highly respected man, silenced by a major institution, held out as a political target when she finally came forward. Experiencing the constant degradation and dead ends of attempting to make an accusation, Wolf took twenty years and several major pieces of feminist scholarship to finally come forward, although she now bandies about her survivor status with confidence. The author of The Beauty Myth knows full well that gender equality is still a work in progress, to say the least, so how can she blithely comment that “feminism shouldn’t mean special treatment for either gender; it should mean absolute fairness and equity in the rule of law,” without recognizing that the level playing field we would all prefer does not yet exist?

And on top of her whiplash intellectual change of heart, Wolf has also adopted a nasty and dismissive tone in her vocal response. Her piece in the Huffington Post spits vitriolic sarcasm at the complainants, deriding the frivolity of their claims and attributing their impetus to Interpol. Spending fewer than three-hundred words on the subject, her tone is incendiary and she waves her “longtime feminist activist” status around like a flag. There is no consideration of the fact that Assange’s accusers have not yet asked for a trial, but merely extradition. There is no consideration of their reasonable desire to have their partner, whether consensual or no, tested for STDs that have serious health implications, nor is there an acknowledgement of the appropriateness of their actions under Swedish law. Both women worked for Assange and greatly admired his work, but even though they too claim to have been assaulted by a powerful and respected man, as did Wolf, she still does not hesitate to cynically assume ulterior motives. Knowing as much about the case as the rest of the reading public, Wolf has attempted to assume the authority to write them off for us all. I well know that the timing around Assange’s extradition has emotions running high and Wolf’s sensitivity to the misuse of feminist rhetoric in this case is understandable, but her choice to unilaterally attack the complainants is not.

The debate over Assange’s case appears to be another variation on the classic liberal crisis of conscience that appears every time “freedom of speech” is used to rebut “abuse of women [or really any protected class].” I wrote about this phenomenon after the Yale fraternity incident earlier this year, using Wolf’s own words to support an argument that personal safety and autonomy deserve at least equal respect; Catharine MacKinnon’s  seminal work on hate speech, Only Words makes the definitive point. Many have praised Assange for his courage and the valuable transparency that Wikileaks has provided; they seem to believe that one good act absolves him of any possible wrong-doings. But as Wolf herself pointed out when grappling with the harm that Harold Bloom, a celebrated scholar of unquestionable import, had done to her, a person’s moral compass can swing:

Is Harold Bloom a bad man? No. Harold Bloom’s demons are no more demonic than those of any other complex human being’s. Does this complex, brilliant man’s one bad choice make him a monster? No, of course not; nor does this one experience make me a “victim.” But the current discourse of accused and accuser, aggressor and victim is more damaging than constructive.

Then, Wolf offered a sympathetically and appropriately complex picture of her attacker, an impressive feat of compassion. Today she allows for no grey area in the Assange case, a move damaging to public discourse in general, and to two women in particular. Countless commenters have left links to the New York Magazine article in response to her media tour; it is an eloquent piece, highly relevant for these times, and I can only hope that Wolf takes the time to re-read it.

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