Don't rush to support Assange in his personal life

Emily sent me this (I cite with her permission):  "The timing of the investigation, the fact that Assange is being pursued internationally and with such vigilance, is  suspicious; that doesn't mean the accusations (which were made in August) are necessarily baseless, nor that the accusers should be slut-shamed and slandered (as in this repulsive Counterpunch piece or Naomi Wolf's smug editorial), their personal lives probed and dissected, their views on women rights trotted out as evidence of a conspiracy. As with any rape case, the women bringing the accusations don't control the prosecution process and subsequent media furor. Too many on the left want to basque in their hero worship of Assange, rather than distinguish their defense of Wikileaks' work from the charges against him. This is counterproductive. We do not yet know what happened; much of what is being reported to pooh-pooh the charges -- particularly about Sweden's laws, which allegedly make unprotected sex or 'sex by surprise' a crime-- is evidently not even true.   What's particularly awful about this is how so many commentators-- including, on the left-- have relished the opportunity to trot out tired chauvinist tropes about women being alternatively vengeful, militant feminists or attention-seeking, petty groupies. The consistent assertion that women regularly go to the police to get attention, notoriety, revenge,etc is absurd-- and dangerous. From reading these commentators, one would think the gender system is rigged in women's favor, that the world (or Sweden) suffers from draconian women-friendly rape laws, and that women make up rape charges ALL the time. So its not just particular to Assange's accusers, but it's also being used to set a dangerous precedent, where people are being led to believe that rape charges are somehow more often than not fabricated for petty revenge, rather than the far more prevalent phenomenon of them going woefully under-reported. Even in Sweden, which -- according to so many articles I've read -- is apparently run by deranged menopausal feminist legislators.
This New Statesmen article says it better than I do:
And this article dissects the Counterpunch article's very thinly veiled, misogynistic and pathetically sourced claims."