Clearly not. I am a part of the left and I'm shocked by my comrades' positions.

Already is.

You misunderstand me. My disappointment is that this position, which you and I evidently share, is not universal among Wikileaks supporters.

So you are saying that unprotected sex where consent was only given for protected sex—that is, nonconsensual sex—is not rape, and on a jury you would not convict nonconsensual sex as rape? Gee, and you wonder why I'm so upset by the moral positions of WikiLeaks' defenders.

Any nonconsensual sex is rape. That's a tautology. And when you're using the exact language of Todd Akin you may want to look at yourself in the mirror.

Who knows? That's something an investigation might ask. But hey, you might not know this... some people have sex with the lights off. Some people, in fact, have sex with their eyes closed. It's also possible that she discovered the transgression sometime during the sex and was either unable to stop it or did stop it. We don't know a lot. That's why there should be an investigation, like any other similar allegation.

But claiming she must have known and therefore silently consented is a tremendous assumption, and one for which there is no evidence at all.

According to the allegations, it was not sex between two consenting adults. One of the adults consented to an activity that was not performed and explicitly did not consent to the activity that was alleged. This doesn't require legal language or a lawyer, it's a simple fact of the two sex acts being different. Any person engaging in sexual activity can agree or decline to engage in specific acts. If she had agreed to, say, vaginal penetration but not anal penetration, and he had elected to penetrate her anus anyhow, it would be disgusting to frame that as "did not go exactly to plan". Consent can be conditional on specific actions, period.

We weren't in the bedroom, nor were we in her head. We can't know that she could stop at any point; we can't know that she was even aware that he wasn't wearing a condom. Furthermore, this logic essentially discards date rape as real rape. There is a huge set of possibilities here. According to her allegations, she did not agree to sex without a condom, which occurred anyway. She isn't responsible for that.

I didn't say it can be retroactively revoked, not once. I'm saying it was never given in the first place. She, again according to her allegations, did not consent to unprotected sex at all. You can't frame this as something that happened after the fact.

It may or may not have been rape. But if her allegations are true, it certainly was. Denying it by assigning blame to her for something she didn't agree to do is rape denial, period.

It may or may not be a frame, that is why there should be a serious investigation; that requires a guarantee against extradition for unrelated issues. But we can't know whether or not the allegations are true at this point, and unless you're privy to some information that isn't public, you can't either.

And I must disagree, there are numerous people defending rape. They are saying that it is okay to agree to wear a condom, then fail to wear a condom, but proceed to have sex anyway. They're blaming the alleged victim by saying that she should have known; they're comparing agreeing to protected sex to agreeing to walk the dog. This is rape denial and rape defense, of a very obvious kind. And they're by and large doing it according to political motivations, which shows just how morally twisted even elements of the left can be.

Rape is sexual assault. The sexual assault described is rape. It's not uncommon for warrants to be issued under the terms of the classification of crime, rather than the specific crime.

According to her allegations, she did in fact have an issue with it.

According to her allegations, she didn't give consent in the first place. She consented to an entirely other act, which didn't take place, namely sex protected with a condom.

I'm not advocating throwing anyone in jail at all. I'm advocating rising to the moral level of knowing what rape is. Furthermore, allegations are not nothing. Authorities investigating those allegations believe he should be questioned. Julian Assange believes he should be questioned. But putting all of that aside, it's disgusting that people are, for political reasons, defending sex without informed consent. That is what I'm on about.

Stay classy.

What you're suggesting is that a woman must have a certain level of vaginal sensitivity (according to you) in order to assert a right to not have unwanted sex? If she doesn't know, from sensation—either from lack of experience or sensitivity—whether the penis penetrating her is covered with latex, she cannot complain that it wasn't covered with the latex she stipulated it must be before it penetrated her? Or are you saying that there is a statute of limitations on withdrawing consent; after she has realized the penis penetrating her isn't protected as she stipulated, she must accept the penetration? Are you suggesting that sex without adequate lighting, narration, or other sensory aids that would indicate a missed cue, is not really sex? Do you have a vagina? Do you know what it feels like to be penetrated with a penis with or without latex covering? Any penis? Every penis? Under any circumstance? Who the fuck are you?

Yes. That's what I said already. You haven't even offered a disagreement, only really stupid fucking questions.

What does sex have to do with it? If he had stipulated a condition for consent, and she had agreed, and that condition was omitted but the sex still occurred, that is rape. Consent is a mutual agreement; there's no condition of who has which genitals when consent is achieved or withdrawn.

According to the allegation, she didn't go along with it. She agreed to sex with a condom; she didn't agree to sex without a condom; the latter is what occurred; she didn't consent to the sex that happened, she consented to entirely other sex.

It's called consent. Learn what the fuck it is.

Yes, actually it is. Any matter that concerns consent is a legal contract. It's a verbal contract, which isn't the same as a written one, but it's a contract nonetheless. In sex, consent is a contract. You can withdraw consent (and rescind the contract) at any time. So can your partner(s). It is every involved party's responsibility to achieve and maintain consent; failure to do so is rape, because sex has happened without consent. That is a fact. It's not a matter of opinion.

Have you had even a little bit of sex? Do you realize that you have to wear a condom during the sex? I hate when Slashdot commenters make fun of sexual experience, but here it matters. Do you not realize that the prophylactic is required during the time the penis penetrates the vagina? The requirement that a condom is worn is no different than a requirement that a hired driver obtains liability coverage; the consent is void unless the other party is protected.

If you genuinely think that it's okay to tell someone that you will have sex with them under conditions that you violate, and you think this isn't a violation of their consent to sex, I genuinely hope you never ever have sex. If you do, you are a rapist.

According to the allegations, she didn't consent at all. She consented to an act that didn't take place, and not to the act that did. Protected sex and unprotected sex are not the same thing; it is possible to consent to one and not the other.

I am not saying Assange did or didn't do any of the things above. I'm talking in the abstract, as the parent post did. If the fact is that someone, anyone, agreed to wear a condom and did not, it's fucking rape.

If Assange's defenders could rise to the moral level of accepting what rape is and accepting that the allegations are rape, we could rise to the moral level of Assange himself and accept the seriousness of the charges. Then we can discard the potential for extradition by demanding he stand trial or face charges for his alleged crimes, with a guarantee that he won't be extradited for unrelated reasons. If you read the other responses, you'll see that the left has not risen to this moral point, and instead has become rape defenders.

I am a WikiLeaks supporter. I even think Assange has been a positive force in terms of journalism. That doesn't mean he isn't a rapist.

Pretending that violating sexual consent is anything other than rape only undermines WikiLeaks and Julian Assange's journalistic work. And it ensures that he can be extradited for unrelated reasons by muddying the waters.

Agreeing to wear a condom as a condition of sex, then having sex without a condom, is a violation of the terms of consent that led to the sex. That is, sex without consent. That is, rape. A serious sex crime. In any sane country. Period.

News flash: Todd Akin didn't make rape denial okay.

Based on the responses I've gotten so far, why the hell am I not a Canadian resident?

Awesome. That kind of attitude potentially bolsters a source's credibility. It's easy to be critical of those we despise; being critical of those we adore is a hallmark of introspection.

Like many fallacies, this falls on a continuum. An information source does have a track record, and any thinking person familiar with that track record will consider it when digesting new information. It doesn't mean that once blemished, a source cannot be valid; it just means that trust is a part of evidence, and relying on trust is one of the tools at our disposal in validating information. It's not perfect, but it's not the same as argumentum ad hominem.

There are many other ways "consider the source" is used that highlight its potential validity. Campaign ads in many places must disclose their origin, because an important part of processing the information they contain is understanding the origin's motives in using certain facts, language and framing. Independent investigation of institutional crime is important because the institution can't necessarily be trusted to expose its own errors.

Not that I disagree that Canadians have it better than us in many ways, but to be fair, my experience has been that purchasing power is lower per dollar because goods tend to be more expensive in Canada. Has anyone done the math on purchasing power of minimum wage workers in Canada versus the US? That would be very interesting.