Exactly, a lot of people are defending Assange by trying to portray this as some sort of extreme law that is "not like normal rape", "not a real crime". It's not just reddit, look at the comment I replied to ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4404277 )

• "the issue is about protected or unprotected sex" (er no, sex with someone asleep is one of the charges).

• "Rape has a different definition in the Swedish legal code than everywhere else in the world". laws are different yes, but the UK courts have looked at it, and decided that the charges would count as crimes if it was in UK. To re-iterate what the UK Judge said about UK law: *"in having sexual intercourse without a condom in circumstances where she had made clear she would only have sexual intercourse if he used a condom would therefore amount to an offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003" (§86 of http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html )