# Mikaela Lauren kisses Cecilia Braekhus -- sexual assault? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 19, 2017, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294 "2017-10-19T15:55:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2017, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/161 "2017-10-22T08:07:02Z")
Down goes Lauren as Braekhus gets payback! > **[Cecilia Braekhus Stops Mikaela Lauren in Six To Retain](https://www.boxingscene.com/cecilia-braekhus-stops-mikaela-lauren-six-retain--121659)** > > The outcome was the same - except it ended even sooner than their first meeting. Welterweight world champion Cecilia Braekhus (32-0, 9 KOs) stopped Mikaela Lauren (29-5, 13 KOs) in the sixth round to retain her WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO belts on Saturday... ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2017, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/162 "2017-10-22T09:13:00Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Further, you are a doctor. Do you ask permission before touching a person in an examination? Your status doesn’t entitle you to touch a person in just any way without their permission or against their will. Is it any kind of assault if you touch a person in a way that should be expected in a medical exam without obtained their express permission ahead of time? Of course not. This is not quite the same thing, but far closer than your hypothetical examples of the fuzzy edges. That’s just an issue of implied consent. You came into the doctor’s office, so you have implied consent to touch them in in a way that is necessary for the job. The kiss does not have that implied consent. It’s not like they were in a romantic situation or anything. It’s not as if it’s a normal part of our culture for two sports rivals to kiss. There is no implied consent to kiss someone in this situation. Also, I will note that doctors who do things unnecessary for their job, like Dr. Nassar who used his medical license to molest female gymnasts as young as 13 in the guise of medical treatment, are definitely committing sexual assault. That’s even though the girls actually gave him permission due to his lie that it was a needed treatment. So it was uninformed consent, which is not good enough. So a doctor only has implied consent to do what is absolutely necessary for their job, nothing more. You can’t argue that kissing your opponent is something needed to do your job as a boxer. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2017, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/163 "2017-10-22T09:14:53Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > What force was used? The force of reaching her lips over and putting them on the other person. She was not given a choice to move out of the way. Therefore she was forced. Why are you arguing such weird things? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2017, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/164 "2017-10-22T09:24:36Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > Whether the assailant experiences sexual pleasure doesn’t mitigate the impact on the victim; hence, the crime. I can assure you as someone who was the victim of sexual assault—the term the police used–by a stranger when I was 14, there is nothing more terrifying nor more humiliating than having the most vulnerable, private parts of your anatomy touched with absolutely no power to stop it from happening. It may be somewhat less terrifying, but it’s undoubtedly no less humiliating when it happens not via force but by surprise—that is, the victim has neither time nor warning and so cannot prevent the assault. > > Whatever distinction you want to draw between simple assault and sexual assault, and which designation you’d give a kiss on the lips, sexual desire on the part of the instigator shouldn’t be a factor. You are right, of course, that the perpetrator being aroused or not is not relevant. What is relevant is the sexual nature of the actions he committed. He could do it for whatever reason. He could want you to be aroused, he could want you to feel violated. He could do it for his own pleasure, or because he’s mad at you. He could even do it because someone told him to. That said impact on the victim is not how we determine crimes. If the guy you described were to have somehow done what he did on accident (and I’m not saying that was necessarily possible), then it would not have been considered a crime. It’s the fact that he intended to touch you in a sexual way without your consent that makes it sexual assault. What’s more, if you’d have not felt anything at all from it, it still would be sexual assault. It’s not what it did to you that matters. It’s what he did and whether he intended to do it. Still, I agree it was sexual assault, and I am very sorry you had to endure that. I hope that you, the police, and the prosecution able to get the guy legally punished in such a way to make it where he would be less likely to do this to anyone else. And, no, I’m not necessarily saying that the sexual assault being discussed here is as severe as the sexual assault that this poster has described. Kissing strangers is (I argue) sexual in our culture, but not as sexual as groping or other such actions. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2017, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/165 "2017-10-22T12:45:28Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > … You can’t argue that kissing your opponent is something needed to do your job as a boxer. > [@BigT](#): > > It’s the fact that he intended to touch you in a sexual way without your consent that makes it sexual assault. … Kissing strangers is (I argue) sexual in our culture, but not as sexual as groping or other such actions. Okay. Now to apply those standards to the circumstance. First not a stranger. Second (assuming not staged) not sure it was intended to be touching in a sexual way but as a means to psychologically put the opponent off balance in a context in which other physical contact and behavior that would be assault otherwise is acceptable. Context matters to determining that standard of intent. An aunt kissing a peck on a child against their will would be understood as having no intent to be touch in a sexual way. A sloppy tongue thrust one after taking the child alone to a bedroom would be seen as a sexual intent kiss. How is it understood in this specific context? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2017, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/166 "2017-10-22T13:51:26Z")
[quote=“BigT, post:162, topic:799294”] That’s just an issue of implied consent. You came into the doctor’s office, so you have implied consent to touch them in in a way that is necessary for the job. The kiss does not have that implied consent. It’s not like they were in a romantic situation or anything. It’s not as if it’s a normal part of our culture for two sports rivals to kiss. There is no implied consent to kiss someone in this situation. [quote] I contend that the law is not clear enough in this situation to determine whether there is implied consent. I haven’t argued that the fighter did not step over the line, I argue that it wasn’t sufficient to make the act legally an assault, sexual or otherwise, because the law was not intended for this situation, just as it was not intended for two people on a date. > [@](#): > > So a doctor only has implied consent to do what is absolutely necessary for their job, nothing more. You can’t argue that kissing your opponent is something needed to do your job as a boxer. This is incorrect. Implied consent requires much more context to interpret, a doctor can’t assume an implied consent to do anything even if they feel it is necessary. The patient is entitled to object to any type of contact from the doctor. But it does allow the doctor to touch a patient in a way that a reasonable person would expect in an examination until there is an explicit objection. Professional boxers who agree to participate in a stare down should expect that there may be physical contact as part of an attempt to intimidate their opponent because it’s happened before, and without legal consequences because it does not necessarily rise to the level of an assault. > [@BigT](#): > > The force of reaching her lips over and putting them on the other person. She was not given a choice to move out of the way. Therefore she was forced. > > Why are you arguing such weird things? It’s not weird, she was not forced to do anything. There is the concept that a kiss can be ‘forced upon’ a person. That is not the same as forcing someone to do something against their will. When the boxer struck her opponent after she was kissed we don’t say she ‘forced a slap upon her’, we just say the she ‘slapped her’, that is the use of force because it is physically harmful. A kiss is not physically harmful. If she were held so that she could not get away from the kiss then force would be in play there, if her head were pulled forward to conduct the kiss she would be forced, but she did not act in any way at all, she was not forced to do anything, any more than she was forced to strike in return, which she did, committing a physical harmful act much closer to an assault if not for the circumstances. These little distinctions all make a difference. I’m not going to get into an argument about what the informal definition of sexual assault is, you can call it anything you want, the legal definition is what matters here, and these distinctions are significant, as is the distinction about what the law was intended to cover as opposed to possible literal interpretations of a law that disregard the context in which the law is applied. To be clear, I don’t say this act can’t be interpreted to be sexual assault, I’m saying it cannot be interpreted in a way that would result in a legal conviction, largely because of the context of the situation. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2017, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/167 "2017-10-22T16:27:46Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > So, sexual assault is whatever you want it to be. Posting this as a response to someone discussing whether something is a sexual assault in a thread that is literally about defining sexual assault indicates that you’re not actually planning to participate in the thread in any meaningful fashion. > [@](#): > > She was not forced to act in any way. You mean something else I’m sure, but she wasn’t forced to do anything. I posted a definition that clearly supports my usage of the word and that such usage is an ordinary part of the English language. If you want to engage in weird semantic arguments where you redefine words and demand that people use them only in ways that fit your definition, I’m sure someone else will join in that game eventually. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2017, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/168 "2017-10-22T16:36:21Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Posting this as a response to someone discussing whether something is a sexual assault in a thread that is literally about defining sexual assault indicates that you’re not actually planning to participate in the thread in any meaningful fashion. I’ll apologize for this because it wasn’t directly addressing what you are saying. My argument is focused on legality. You are looking at a narrower aspect of the acts. I am saying that the definition of sexual assault doesn’t necessarily make it illegal within the context specific to the OP. > [@](#): > > I posted a definition that clearly supports my usage of the word and that such usage is an ordinary part of the English language. If you want to engage in weird semantic arguments where you redefine words and demand that people use them only in ways that fit your definition, I’m sure someone else will join in that game eventually. And on this matter I have ended up being nit-picky about things that are not even relevant to my argument. I only recall you being fair and straight-forward in your arguments in the past. My apologies again, and to others, I’ll stick to the basis of my argument for the rest of this. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2017, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/169 "2017-10-23T01:03:09Z")
In my state, it would very likely be misdemeanor battery if a jury believed that it was an intentional “offensive” touching. Assuming it was not staged, a kiss in that situation was meant to be offensive and a reasonable person in that situation would believe that a person could be offended by such things. Sexual assault, as noted above, in my state also requires a touching of certain naughty bits with the intent to arouse or gratify a person. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2017, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/170 "2017-10-23T01:08:19Z")
\*double post ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/171 "2017-10-23T17:16:24Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Sexual assault, as noted above, in my state also requires a touching of certain naughty bits with the intent to arouse or gratify a person. Are you talking about WV? I looked up sexual assault there and I can’t find anything about intent being required. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2017, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294/172 "2017-10-23T23:05:35Z")
> [@W.Va. Code 61-8B-1 (6)](#): > > “Sexual contact” means any intentional touching, either directly or through clothing, of the breasts, buttocks, anus or any part of the sex organs of another person, or intentional touching of any part of another person’s body by the actor’s sex organs, where the victim is not married to the actor and the touching is done for the purpose of gratifying the sexual desire of either party. You are right. All three degrees of sexual assault (same article, subsections 3 through 5) require “sexual intercourse or sexual intrusion.” (definitions not relevant here). Sexual abuse (same article, subsections 7 through 9) which would apply to anything sexual that is not intercourse, has the above definition. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mikaela-lauren-kisses-cecilia-braekhus-sexual-assault/799294.md?page=8)