Well said indeed................
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/dsk-case-gross-injustice-used-as-vehicle-to-paint-men-as-predators/story-e6frg6ux-1226119945413
DSK case gross injustice used as vehicle to paint men as predators by: Emma-Kate Symons From:
AFTER all the sound and fury that reverberated around the world, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is expected to be declared a free man today when charges of attempted sexual assault levelled against him by a New York hotel maid are dropped.
It is an extraordinary, swift turnaround and a deep humiliation for the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and his unreliable witness Nafissatou Diallo; an embarrassment for US justice; and a day of shame for the feminist movement.
Like the New York prosecutor worried about his re-election, prominent US feminists in academe and the media were too desperate to handcuff, draw and quarter their prize catch in the form of Strauss-Kahn the rich, powerful French political luminary and International Monetary Fund boss known as DSK.
Women such as gender studies guru Joan W. Scott, feminist icon Gloria Steinem, The Nation's Katha Pollitt and The New York Times's Maureen Dowd lost all sense of reality, objectivity or basic scepticism regarding the untested accusations.
They gleefully hopped on to the dirty bandwagon of presumption of male guilt the moment a woman - any woman - makes an accusation of sexual assault. This baying brigade of zealots saw an easy target for venting long-held grudges against French women, French feminists, French men and powerful men such as this "wrinkly old rutting satyr" (Dowd's call) in general. Unfortunately, they confirmed all the worst stereotypes about Americans as unrepentant puritans prone to hysteria when it comes to any whiff of sexual crime.
Rushing to judgment before the most basic checks were made to establish Diallo's credibility (bank accounts, immigration status, etc), they made wild assumptions. Bizarre cross-cultural comparisons abounded, imputing guilt not only to DSK, but also to an entire nation of complicit kowtowing "pathetic" women (les femmes francaises) and the French nation with its preference for charm and seduction over the deadening battle of the sexes.
These women on the warpath were enabled by male opportunists such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said regarding DSK: "If you don't want to do the 'perp' walk don't do the crime".
This case was unprecedented to the extent that it became a prism through which frustrated liberals and feminists obsessed with labelling most powerful men sexual predators, and rapists could vent their spleens.
The New York Post was harsh, turning on Diallo once the prosecutor did his volte-face, calling her a "hooker". But the newspaper did a justified turnaround, refusing to stick to the line that she was simply a saintly poor immigrant single mother and victim when the evidence showed otherwise. Few will dare to say it outside of Paris, but DSK has been the victim of a gross injustice. He has seen his reputation and his political career destroyed on trumped-up charges. For what purpose?
So op-ed writers like Peter Beinart, former editor of The New Republic, or Joe Nocera at The New York Times ("The DA did the Right Thing") could congratulate themselves on the genius of US justice and publish smug tripe such as : "I'd rather live here" (in the US not France).
This is beneath serious journalism, and beneath Americans, who typically are known for their healthy distrust of humbug.
DSK may well be a serial sexual predator or, indeed, guilty of repeated sexual harassment or assault. Perhaps he has a Shakespearean fatal flaw when it comes to his relations with women. But none of these claims has ever been tested or proven in court. Diallo was the first to take such claims to a judge. Tristane Banon has become a figure of ridicule in France for her belated lawsuit alleging attempted rape and her mother's revelations of consensual "brutal" sex with the accused.
Surely, DSK deserved to be treated fairly, instead of being painted as a "perv" who tried to flee the crime scene, then handcuffed, thrown in Rikers Island and released on the most draconian of bail conditions.
Vance has played the game cleverly since he began to admit in late June that there were doubts about Diallo's credibility. His office strategically leaked incriminating details about her pyramid of lies, everything from her asylum application and falsified tale of gang rape to the suspect transfers of large sums of money to her bank account and her multiple mobile phones.
This was a prosecutor reacting under extreme pressure after he got it so wrong at the outset. Vance was obliged under US law to release the details or risk criminal proceedings himself.
Right behind Vance and his feminist acolytes was a black community projecting legitimate, but unrelated, grievances about institutionalised racial and sexual inequality on to the wrong platform. It is all part of a deteriorating climate of male/female relations in the US.
As Stanford professor Peter Berkowitz wrote in The Wall Street Journal, US universities, under pressure from the Obama administration, are "abandoning any pretence of due process in sexual assault cases".So what has been the outcome of this sordid tale? Internationally, the consequences have been profound: including the forced resignation of DSK, a very good IMF leader, at a sensitive moment considering the global debt crisis. The affair has rewritten the rules for French politics, eliminating the likely next Socialist president of France from the 2012 race - a reformist most likely to drag France out of the economic morass - and probably from politics for good.
Then there is the question of what it might mean for women and victims of sexual assault. Diallo's lies have not done women any good at all. On the contrary, they have confirmed suspicions that many sexual assault claims are often made-up, extrapolated from consensual encounters, and that claimants are motivated by money.
Manifestly, all this damage was not worth it, on flimsy and likely fabricated accusations.
Mea culpas, anyone?
