*An excellent article, in case you haven’t seen it yet, and these excerts are my favorite key points.*

Let’s get this out of the way: Sweden does not have a “broken condom” law. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was not arrested because his contraception failed mid-coitus. Nor is he charged with “sex by surprise.”

Everyone from Fox News’s Glenn Beck to feminist writer Naomi Wolf is getting in swipes. Beck told viewers that Assange is being investigated for “sex by surprise” (again, not a real law) because of a “radical” feminist bent on revenge. Wolf wrote a snarking letterto Interpol in the Huffington Post, arguing that the accusers are using feminism to “assuage … personal injured feelings.” And AOL News writer Dana Kennedy dismissed the incidents as a simple “condom malfunction.”

The allegations against Assange are rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. He’s accused of pinning one woman’s arms and using his body weight to hold her down during one alleged assault, and of raping a woman while she was sleeping. In both cases, according to the allegations, Assange did not use a condom. But the controversy seems to center on the fact that both encounters started off consensually. One of his accusers was quoted by the Guardian newspaper in August as saying, “What started out as voluntary sex subsequently developed into an assault.” Whether consent was withdrawn because of the lack of a condom is unclear, but also beside the point. In Sweden, it’s a crime to continue to have sex after your partner withdraws consent.

It was only two years ago that Maryland overturned an archaic court rulingstating that if a woman withdrew consent, any sex that followed wasn’t rape. In 2007, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals justified this old ruling, explaining that anything after the initial “deflowering” of a woman couldn’t be rape because “the damage was done” to her virginity and she could never be “reflowered.” In fact, the injured party, according to this ruling, wasn’t even the assaulted woman, but the “responsible male’s interest” - that of her father or husband. It took until 2008 for the state’s highest court to change this.

In fact, some activists and legal experts in Sweden want to change the law there so that the burden of proof is on the accused; the alleged rapist would have to show that he got consent, instead of the victim having to prove that she didn’t give it.

If anything, this means we can’t stop at changing legislation. For true justice, there needs to be a cultural shift in the way Americans think about sex, consent and rape, so that when women come forward - whether they’re accusing a celebrity, a sports star or a neighbor - our immediate reaction isn’t to misconstrue or speculate about their motives, but to listen.