Most people who have had long term sexual partners have had a time or two where they "didn't really want to participate" but did anyway without much/any complaining for the sake of their partner. Are all all those instances "basically sexual assault"?
Watering down the definition of sexual assault to include instances where nobody felt assaulted in any way does not result in it being taken more seriously.
*Disclaimer: The parent post was edited after I began replying to be worded a bit less absolutely.
I'm talking strictly about situations where there is no threat of violence.
Obviously there is a spectrum of varying degrees of consent from "perfectly ok" to "definitely rape" and somewhere in there is a range that constitutes sexual assault but to say that the lack of specifically enthusiastic consent defines the floor of the sexual assault range is farcical when there are so many other variables to consider.
>Disclaimer: The parent post was edited after I began replying to be worded a bit less absolutely.
I changed the order of the three points.
>we are mapping "didn't really want to" very differently onto real examples of emotional state.
I think a lot of people find "didn't really want to" to be equivalent to "really didn't want to"
"Informed enthusiastic consent" isn't so hard to figure out, is it? If you feel like you're being pressured into something you don't want, that's still non-consensual even if you don't put up a fight.
Frankly maybe we should, but until we do it’s going to be hard to make this a bright line.