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Comment by poet | Hacker News Reader

At the minimum it is sexual battery [1] and sexual imposition [2] and it could be argued that it was gross sexual imposition [3]. Ohio doesn't even use the phrase "sexual assault" in its laws about sex offenses [4]. The point is, quibbling about terminology is silly. Any reasonable human being understands what the author of the blog post is getting at. She was touched in a sexual way without her consent, without any foreknowledge of the event, and under some duress. Whatever you want to term the event is irrelevant.

[1] http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907.03

[2] http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907.06

[3] http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907.05

[4] http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2907

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"Quibbling about terminology" isn't "silly" when someone is making a public accusation of a sex crime. Neither of us are lawers, but right there in the statutes you've posted is the line "Sexual contact means any touching of an erogenous zone of another, including without limitation the thigh, genitals, buttock, pubic region, or, if the person is a female, a breast, for the purpose of sexually arousing or gratifying either person." [emphasis mine].

I don't think that brushing up against erogenous zones as part of a search procedure constitues "sexual contact" even though I agree that the TSA employee appears to have failed to give adequate warning and shown a lack of discretion in singling out a new mother in the first place. I don't doubt the indignity of her experience may have been shocking and upsetting, but it stopped well short of sexual abuse.

As other people have pointed out in this thread with rather more eloquence than me, the semantics actually are important here (i) because sexual assault is a very serious crime with significant consequences for both victim and perpetrator (ii) because hyperbole detracts from serious scrutiny of the boundaries of acceptability.

The funny thing about your line of argument is that she didn't make a "public accusation of a sex crime" because "sexual assault" is not a sex crime that is defined in Ohio. If we're going to try to be pedantic here, let's actually be correct.

What definition of sexual assault are you using exactly? Your original contention is that the author is trivializing "real" sexual assault by using the phrase "sexual assault" in an inappropriate way, yet in Ohio no such a thing exists. So it's inappropriate according to what definition? What you're actually doing is inventing in your own mind what you think sexual assault should be and then getting angry at the author for violating your contrived definition.

Do you see why it's stupid to be pedantic about the specific phrase "sexual assault"? The author used the phrase sexual assault not to conform to a definition, but because she was touched in a sexual way and felt assaulted. In my opinion such feelings are perfectly reasonable in this situation. I would have felt assaulted had I not been given a warning.

Anyone who is quibbling about terminology in this thread is guilty of the phenomena that happens when nerds meet reality: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1880553.

Slightly against my better judgment (good link btw) I'm going to post again...

I don't think there's anything novel or "contrived" about assuming the phrase "sexual assault" implies some form of illegal gratuitous behaviour with a sexual motivation, regardless of what jurisdiction you live in (sexual assault is a crime where I live, and the Ohio state government appears to use the term frequently with respect to supporting abuse victims). I also interpreted the author's repetition of the phrase in conjunction with other carefully selected terms like "incident" as a conscious attempt to draw parallels between her experience and that of the victims of sex crimes.

I don't doubt that she's drawing those parallels because she's sincerely upset, but I do think there's a dangerous line being crossed when we start equivocating intentional assaults and incidental contact, and leave it up to the accuser to define whether conduct was abusive or sexual. I also think it would be doing a disservice to people who've been wilfully abused for others' gratification to suggest that their treatment is akin to what some people experience going through airport security. I hope that clarifies the original intent of my comments.

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