Singaporean blogger and YouTuber Xiaxue has drawn appreciation from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after a tweet of hers went viral.
Interestingly, the tweet that garnered praise from Assange is about 10 months old. In May 2017, American author and activist Dan Arel was asked to provide proof for accusing someone for being a rapist. In response, he tweeted that believed victims of rape.
Xiaxue – whose real name is Wendy Cheng – replied to Arel’s tweet and accused him of rape, in a hilarious attempt to point out the fallacy in his statement:
@danarel raped me and his penis is tiny. pic.twitter.com/cJZhAJgJQp
— ???????????????????????? ♥ (@Xiaxue) May 13, 2017
Seemingly not understanding the point, Arel subsequently tried to get the Twitter mob to block and report Xiaxue for trying to accuse him of rape. When netizens pointed out the hypocrisy between his two statements, Arel made his Twitter account private.
Nearly one year later, Assange picked up on Xiaxue’s tweet and praised her online for “pop(ping) the intellectually bankrupt virtue signaling of American men”:
It took a Singaporean woman to pop the intellectually bankrupt virtue signaling of American menhttps://t.co/LdsGUsIb7g pic.twitter.com/HlkTfgx5Hq
— Julian Assange ⌛ (@JulianAssange) March 9, 2018
Assange’s views on this topic is notable since he was accused of two allegations of rape and molestation in 2010. Assange denied the allegations and has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he could face charges over the sexual misconduct allegations.
Assange – who founded the non-profit media organisation WikiLeaks that publishes classified news leaks, like Collateral Murder, the Iraq war logs and the Podesta emails that derailed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign – has expressed concerns that he may be extradited from Sweden to the United States of America because of his role in supposedly publishing secret American documents.
As for Xiaxue, she was surprised to find her old tweet find a new audience after Assange re-tweeted her. Several netizens have praised the Singaporeans for her sharp comment after Assange brought renewed attention towards it:
Interestingly, Xiaxue revealed yesterday that someone filed a complaint against her original tweet. Twitter did not find anything wrong with the tweet though:
Nice try, but @twitter took my side ???? pic.twitter.com/0Ngau4eqad
— ???????????????????????? ♥ (@Xiaxue) March 11, 2018
The Singaporean told reporters that she is “super happy to be retweeted by Assange”, and added:
“…it’s actually an issue I feel quite passionately about. I think nowadays due process is getting less and less for any sexual assault charges. Once the girl says it happened, everyone believes. Of course, not everyone is as extreme as this Dan idiot. But still, I have a son a brother and I think men deserve fairness too.
“People forget plenty of horrible women have used false rape charges — how many men go into jail wrongly for that just because women are viewed as victims?
Of course it’s not good also for women who are truly victims to not get justice, or be asked what they were wearing etc…and I know it’s difficult for real victims to be questioned, but this is what the men deserve also, [when there is] no questions and no evidence, how to find out the truth?”