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Comment by spats1990 | Hacker News Reader

spats1990

On his website, for example, Stallman says that he "reject[s] the term sexual assault" completely.[1]

~edit: I have included the full quote below as I did not intend to twist/misrepresent in any way.

Stallman writes: " The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same.

There seems to be an exception for TSA agents, however.

The term is further stretched to include sexual harassment, which is not a specific act, but rather a pattern of acts that amounts to a form of gender bias. Gender bias is rightly prohibited in certain situations for the sake of equal opportunity.

I don't think that rape should be treated like stealing a kiss, so I reject the term "sexual assault" completely."

[1]https://stallman.org/antiglossary.html#assult

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I'm split on your comment.

On one side, you indeed quote Stallman itself and the source of the quote. On the other side the complete quote reads:

     The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same.

     There seems to be an exception for TSA agents, however.

     The term is further stretched to include sexual harassment, which is not a specific act, but rather a pattern of acts that amounts to a form of gender bias. Gender bias is rightly prohibited in certain situations for the sake of equal opportunity.

     I don't think that rape should be treated like stealing a kiss, so I reject the term "sexual assault" completely.

Reading the full context and your except was totally different for me. The full context, implies he doesn't accept the term, because it's an umbrella term that does more harm, than good. That's arguable, but doesn't seem a radical opinion.

In fact, IMO, I agree that using "sexual assault" for something other than rape / attempt of, is depreciating the full meaning of the term and victims are normally the first ones to be affected by it. I do agree that other crimes, born from gender inequality, are very serious as well - that doesn't mean, we should bundle them up. How would society react, if slaps started to be prosecuted as attempted murders?

Hmm. I wasn't trying to twist his words at all, so thanks for quoting in full.

If I see a problem with his characterization of the term "sexual assault" / his reasoning in rejecting it, it's that the "broad range of actions" he says are labeled with the term "sexual assault" share one common trait: they happened without the consent of one party. He kind of ignores this in favour of describing the term as "propaganda for treating [acts of non-rape] as the same". And I find the argument that "one unwanted act that I and presumably others find mostly harmless was described as sexual assault, thus this term has lost its meaning in general" somewhat hard to swallow.

Wikipedia: "Sexual assault is an act in which a person intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will."[1]

If we did away with the term "sexual assault", I'm not sure what terms we would be left with when describing such things, except to describe the exact acts themselves.

In fact, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that "the term sexual assault is losing/has lost its meaning because it used to mean rape" at all, because there has always been a word for that: rape. As far as I know, this term has always existed to describe a broad-range of sexual acts performed without consent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault

...and does a great job explaining his pov. It's not like he's saying that sexual assaults do not exist, and people should be able to rape / immodestly touch whoever they please with impunity.

> Sexual assault: The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same.

"Violent crime" also applies to a broad range of actions. It's not a propaganda term for treating all kinds of violent crime as the same. Why would that be the case for sexual assault?

I think the whole point of the Stallman discussion as of lately is that people only decide to read what they want to read, ignoring context.

> I don't think that rape should be treated like stealing a kiss, so I reject the term "sexual assault" completely.

From my understanding, he disagrees with the term because it is imprecise, and the greater of two evils might be mixed up with the lesser - with the result that the greater evil might be perceived as less evil as it actually is.

(Edit: A sibling comment gets the above thought better, describing it as an "umbrella term".)

The way you quote him, you try (seem to) to imply that he thinks there is no such thing denoting "sexual assault". Or using the same logical reasoning: Are you, spats1990, implying that rape should be treated like "stealing a kiss"? I doubt you are, but I strongly doubt he does either.

I've replied upthread and edited my post to include the full quote. I wasn't trying to twist his words.

As I wrote in my reply to the post you're referring to, I seem to think that the term sexual assault is necessarily imprecise--but in another sense, it isn't imprecise at all, as all the acts described by it share a single commonality, which is lack of consent.

He also explains why, and he raises a good point. Sexual assault covers a lot of different things, but to many if not most people it implies the worst.

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