Well that was interesting

[andrewducker]

It seems to me that part of the reason why discussions of sexual assault, get very heated very quickly is that some people view "assault" as a great big thing.  If someone was assaulted then _something very bad happened_.  This means that when something happens that they don't see as being that awful, then they object to the word "assault", because it doesn't emotionally resonate with them as feeling similar to the act that occurred.  What happened wasn't assault because it wasn't that bad (someone got kissed when they didn't want to be, it was just a hug, etc.).

At the extreme end you end up with things like Whoopi Goldberg's defence of Roman Polanski because what he did wasn't "rape rape" - because that would make Roman Polanski evil, which would make her a bad person for liking him.  At the milder end you have people arguing that kissing someone against their will isn't assault, because if it is then it means that people can be charged for drunkenly snogging someone they fancied in the pub without checking first.

In any case it means I end up with 70-odd comments while I'm away at a meeting on the other side of town, which I wasn't really expecting.

Comments

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I think you may have a very valid point here and wonder if it might justify the idea of different "degrees" of assault. When one, unqualified, phrase can cover everything from a drunken inappropriate snog up to everything bar actual rape we tar an awful lot of people, who've done a lot of very different things, with the same brush.

"Sexual assault" is a black-and-white phrase and it's not a black-and-white world.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

In fairness, there are different degrees of assault...

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

There probably are under law, but not, it seems in interweb discussions. If some folks are to be believed then you're either a rapist or a hermit :) </joke>

[marrog.livejournal.com]

but not, it seems in interweb discussions
That depends what side of the discussion you're on. What I find problematic is that people seem to be unable to see that their oppostition don't see things in black and white.

[cabarethaze.livejournal.com]

That's something I think should be addressed. I don't consider assault to only be if something Very Bad Happened, but a friend thinking there's something more to the relationship and mistakenly heading in for a kiss is heaps different from someone forcing you to have sex at knife point.

I'll admit, I have no idea what the 'right' phrases for degrees or levels of sexual assault are, but I think the phrase 'sexual assault' is sort of a catch-all that ends up meaning different things to different people. I'd say Amy was sexually inappropriate, perhaps, but wouldn't class it as assault.