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Comment by shaddi | Hacker News Reader

You seem to not understand why people would call this violence, nor why serious harm could come from it. It might behoove you to take time to learn about why others might hold a different position. Not to sound sarcastic, but given that a sixth of women have experienced sexual assault in their lifetimes, it shouldn't be difficult to find someone who has been a victim of this who is willing to share their thoughts with you, especially if you approach them with a sincere desire to understand another viewpoint.

Edit: incorrect statistic.

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Here's a thought experiment. Say we define "sexual assault" as being any case where a person is touched on their skin by another person, without that other person first getting explicit permission from the "victim" person to do that. By that definition, I'd wager that 99%+ of all women alive today have been sexually assaulted -- or if they haven't already, 99% will be.

Now, in this thought experiment, let's start narrowing the requisite conditions. Say, that the area touched has to be near genitals or buttocks or breasts. Bet the percentage drops some, but still high. Let's say we widen it so it can be outside of clothing -- not necessarily on bare skin. Guess what, the percentage goes back up. Now let's specify that the touchee is not sexually attracted to the toucher. Percentage drops. Now we could narrow it further, or widen it, whatever, and we're going to end up with whatever percentage we want -- even one we want to call "high" or "prevalent" or an "epidemic", if we wanted. Let's add in some error margins and uncertainty because (1) people don't always tell the truth, and (2) people don't always remember things perfectly. Now the importance and validity of your percentage becomes, well, let's say arguable and ambiguous, at best.

Have some women been "raped" (in the clearest, most old fashioned sense of the word) -- hell yes. And that's horrible. And should not happen. But to say that a third of all women are "sexually assaulted" in their lifetimes and/or to say that that is (always and necessarily) an evil thing -- that part I'm not so sure of.

Rape? Bad.

Sexual assault? Depends on particulars of the specific case -- not what words/laws say.

First, I made a mistake: 1 in 6 women will be victims of sexual assault in their lifetime. [1] My apologies; despite the mistaken figure it's still a large number. This figure represents the number of women who will claim they have been a victim of sexual violence.

You are claiming that some (likely significant) portion of these claims do not meet your definition of harm or violence. I'm not looking to get into a pedantic argument here about what kind of touching counts as sexual assault, or how far an assailant needs to go before the victim is "really" hurt. All I'm suggesting you do is talk to someone you know who considers themselves a victim and try to understand why they do; I really think you might learn something new. All you've said so far is that sexual assault isn't really a big deal because you don't think it's a big deal -- something of a circular argument.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault#cite_note-1

This might be a bit crude.

If things truly happened as she stated in her account, he didn't touch her boob. He didn't casually touch her in a way anyone could have accidentally done in a crowded bar.

She said she was wearing a skirt and bike shorts (and presumably panties) underneath the skirt. To do what he allegedly did, he had to reach under her skirt (already not a socially acceptable action) and get past two layers of fabric and elastic (and bike shorts fit pretty tight). He didn't touch her through her clothing, or touch some 'taboo' area revealed via skimpy clothing. He would have had to physically move her clothing out of the way in order to touch her genitals after being explicitly told that she did not want to be touched by him.

I don't see why you are so up for debating the semantics of the phrase 'sexual assault'.

Here's a thought experiment. You (I am assuming you are a heterosexual man, maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but I'm betting I'm right) go to a tech conference. You go to an after-party, have a few beers, have fun, chat with your peers. Another guy comes up to you and asks if you want to talk. You say sure. Suddenly grabs you and kisses you. You shove him away and say, "Whoa man, sorry, I don't go that way." He then grabs your belt buckle with one hand and shoves the other down the front of your pants and squeezes your cock.

Do you feel violated? Have you been assaulted? Hell yes, you were just sexually assaulted, 'in the particulars of your specific case'. And it's horrible. And it should not happen.

Edited to Note:

I only chose the homosexual example to highlight the fact that the physical contact was undesired. My point stands equally even if it were the hottest woman in the world and after the kiss you said, 'No sorry, I'm married.' or any other type of no including just straight up 'No'. If after the no, she still reached down your pants and grabbed your genitals it would still be sexual assault.

And while after reading some of your other posts I gather you feel our current sexual assault laws are too broad, and I support your right to have that opinion, and indeed even open a dialogue about it or campaign to have the law changed in your jurisdiction, I find it in extremely poor taste to have said dialogue in the commentary of such a clear example of sexual assault.

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