What the actual fuck? They are saying that by calling it a game, others are insisting there must be a winner and loser. They are saying it shouldn’t be thought of as a game, because there shouldn’t be winners and losers. And by no means are they implying, even a little bit, that in their own sex life there are winners and losers. If anything, they are implying the opposite.
Are you serious? Are you actually serious?
And how did I reply to this point?
So… you are saying that news reporting doesn’t have to keep a legal sense in mind when choosing what words to use in reporting?
As I said. You don’t know what “edgelord” means, Mr. I’m A Journalist And I Know Words.
With the point I addressed in the second part of my reply, namely that you can’t say one of them “doesn’t count” for purposes of complaining about it.
Not in a general news story where the legal sense is at odds with what the average person uses the term to mean. Obviously it’s a different kettle of fish for legal stories or court reporting.
In this example I said “edgy”. Different word and absolutely correct in this context.
That poster said that normal behaviors in the bedroom invariably end up with a loser. I suppose I came to a hasty conclusion because that poster might only be engaging in abnormal behavior in the bedroom. Don’t come after me because other posters are riding you.
Fair enough, I can read it that way.
The passage you refer to here ignores another thing I wrote, which is I’m not wedded to the idea of calling every non-consensual touch “assault” anymore. Sure, I said I still think that’s the technically correct postion, but I’m not really interested in arguing for it anymore.
What one person calls “diluting a term’s significance” another calls “pointing out that lot of things we thought weren’t significant actually are significant.” I think the best way to do this is to re-define the term, in light of current events and trends, so that it encapsulates what is fundamentally wrong with assault, and then make the difficult discussions ones about which non-consensual touchings are okay and how okay and are they really okay or just acceptable in some sense or other etc.
The alternative, insisting on only using the term “assault” in the more serious sense (which btw has yet to actually be defined in this thread, only gestured at or described more or less vaguely), leads, instead, to an inflexibility in willingness to regard behaviors not traditionally called assault as being more serious than people have acknowledged in the past.
But anyway. Whatever. People won’t do this. Listen to Spice Weasel, she is wiser than me.
…trying “to engage in sex any legal way you can” should not be normal behaviour. Because there are plenty of “legal ways to convince someone else to have sex” that leaves the other party distressed, or worse.
“That poster” has a name: and I did not say this at all.
Can I suggest if you want to “come after me” you firstly you quote me and address me: and secondly you do it in the appropriate forum.
…on that I think we would have near-universal agreement.
Martini, if John Doe is arrested for assault, can a journalist responsibly report that they were “arrested for assault”?
I ask this question not as an illustration of exactly the issue I was bringing up before concerning legal language, but it’s a related issue and one more central to our dispute: The question of whether there are important differences between everyday usage and journalistic usage.
Oi. I don’t understand the point of your saying this.
I don’t care what you think the norms should be. I don’t want sex police. Education is the solution to these problems so that people are freely choosing to do what they want to do instead of trying to conform to someone else’s norms.
Try following your own advice.
Following back the thread of conversation:
An edgelord takes a controversial stance just to be controversial, for no constructive purpose. You just said you don’t think I’m doing that. Hence, since you don’t think that, yet called me an edgelord, you don’t know what an edgelord is.
It looks like you think “edgelord” is basically synonymous with “weirdo” or perhaps “weirdo who enjoys displaying their weirdness”, but I’m not certain so I’m not going to assume that’s what you think.
But if that’s what you think, you’re wrong. Mr etc etc
It would depend on what they’d done, what the specific chargers were, and how much space the journalist had. But if Mr Bloggs was arrested for grabbing Mr Smith by the arm but not injuring him, I would not report that as “Mr Bloggs is facing assault charges” but rather “Mr Bloggs is facing charges relating to the incident”, or something along those lines.
If Mr Bloggs punched Mr Smith in the face, I’d be comfortable stating Mr Bloggs was facing assault charges.
There’s a lot of rules about reporting anything which is likely to end up in court (or is in court) so we’re really moving from “general news sense” to “legal reporting” there, though.
From a journalistic sense, a general news story about an armed robbery in which “The victim was assaulted with a cricket bat” would be conveying that the victim was hit with the cricket bat - not that assailant proddded them lightly in the stomach or something like that.
I think my question wasn’t clear.
I wasn’t asking whether you should report that they were charged etc.
I was asking whether you should report using the words “arrested for assault.”
If he was in fact arrested for assault, should a story about the arrest say “John Doe was arrested for assault”? I mean exactly those words.
No, because that’s not how reporting on legal or criminal matters works here, at least in my experience.
So, that’s all I’m saying. That journalistic usage and everyday usage can often differ.
In everyday usage, in that situation, it is in fact a true statement that John Doe was arrested for assault. The general usage sense of the phrase “arrested for assault” makes that true.
But in journalistic usage, that phrase is not to be used for that situation. Journalistic usage diverges from everyday usage.
Would you not say so?
…I’m agreeing with you. I think she’s wiser than anyone in this thread: I didn’t mean “just you.” She’s wiser than me, thats for sure. 
No, I wouldn’t.
Like I said, pretty much no-one except you and lawyers thinks grabbing someone’s arm constitutes assault. The police probably wouldn’t even arrest anyone in a situation like that, unless there was a very good or an aggravating reason for it.
My apologies!
You’re… not following. Like. I am not talking about any of that.
This is a separate conversation about a specific point concerning whether journalistic usage reflects general usage.