Just those reported women, being alleged all over the place

  
Some people are kind of gross, you know? It's not nice to say it, but they just are. You look at them and you imagine that they probably have bad breath, or that their BO has that particular sour note that takes it from unpleasant to bile inducing. You want to look away from them and not look back. Jimmy Saville was one of those people for me. I've never seen him on TV when he was at the height of his fame, so when I finally did see clips of him, openly molesting young women on Top of the Pops (I think it was some Channel 4 nostalgia clip show), I was horrified - who is this ugly, greasy person, and why is everybody laughing like it's all just hunky dory?

Julian Assange is somebody else that I've always felt ooky about. I remember when I first ever saw him, it was a TED interview and he took his jacket off, and I swear to Dog my first instinct was to think his pits probably smell under that unwashed-looking white shirt.

So it's not my favourite ever activity to examine Julian Assange and his actions in any level of depth. I sure as hell am not tempted to read nay more lickspittle interviews with him in the Grauniad, anyway.

Still, sometimes, as in the case of cholera research and entomology, it is what disgusts us the most that contains the vital clues we need about the world and how it works. Observe:

Isn't that linguistic genius? Reported. I mean, it's true, it was widely reported that Malala Yousafzai had been shot. In the head. Aged 14. Does it really even matter that she go that treatment because she's campaigning for women's rights? Anyone shooting a 14 year old child IN THE HEAD is news. It's gonna get 'reported'.

So you know, technically, it's not like Julian Assange (who is reported to be in sole possession of the @wikileaks Twitter account these days) is lying or anything. She was reportedly shot. He is an alleged rapist. It's all fair enough, pretty much.

But it's not really fair enough, is it. See how this kind of language works asymmetrically? How it minimises the crime committed against Malala, while providing potential cover for the faeces slinging animals terrified by the idea she and girls like her may see a horizon beyond the rancid cage being prepared for them? So pants-wettingly terrified of a little girl they need to annihilate her in order to shore up their brittle manhoods?

In Assange's case, the legalistic hedge has given him just enough of a sliver of deniability to go hole up in the Ecuador embassy. And his addlepated supporters, enough of an excuse to squeal the internet down with protests that he has not been convicted of any crime and therefore it's defamation in libel sauce to say he should go on trial for rape (which is a crime, of which he might be convicted). 

In Malala's case, it means that she might have just imagined the hole in her head. I mean, it might not have really happened, yeah? It was only reported, after all. You don't believe everything you read in the papers, do you? What are you, sheeple? Stooge.

Meanwhile on the unimaginably hideous crimes that would keep you awake at night if you thought about them too much, we have this:

Women are reporting sexual abuse by Jimmy Saville literally in their hundreds. Women who were never listened to before, because their evidence - the reporting of a crime by the victim of that crime - was not seen as enough of a reason to maybe shuffle over and have a butchers. It was just the women, you know? I mean, we don't just believe people who say their car was stolen, do we? Oh, we do? Well, but these were only reported rapes, gropings, assaults, fingerings and grabbings. By, you know. Just the women.

Both Julian Assange and Jimmy Saville are disgusting human beings. Literally, as in they put me off my dinner. Clearly Assange can only aspire to the level of monstrosity Saville achieved, though there but for the grace of two brave Swedish women go we, and who knows how many others there have been. Wilful sex criminals rarely confine themselves to just the occasional tipple. It tends to be a full time habit. And how do they get away with it? Because nobody believes "reports" from "just the women". Shutting down justice for women is as easy as using the smarmy language of "alleged" and "reported". Was then, is now.

Anyway, listen. If you want cool, level headed analysis about this stuff, go read Sian. I'm too busy swallowing down the acid in my throat at the thought that someone could be so squelchingly slimy as to try to win an online popularity contest over a little girl with a hole in the head, just because he realy really wants to. All I'm saying is: reported. Useful word, eh?