That alone is not enough to be deemed even a simple assault here in NJ. I’m sure it’s similar in most places:
I’ve already said that the boxing match is irrelevant. Let the boxing commission handle the rules of boxing.
We’re talking about crimes and the legal code in this thread. And sexual offenses are crimes. And I feel that kissing somebody on the mouth without their consent should be regarded as a sexual offense. I feel it’s the equivalent of grabbing a woman’s breasts or pinching somebody’s ass or grabbing somebody’s genitals without their permission. Those are all widely treated as sexual offenses. They’re not as serious as rape but they are criminal acts.
I am, quite frankly, surprised that you see this as a normal activity. Do you see people doing it in your daily life? At your workplace, do employees unexpectedly kiss other employees by surprise? Do you see customers kissing cashiers in stores or servers in restaurants? I don’t see any of that.
The relevant bit is that “a sexual act” is here defined as “physical contact of a sexual nature, for example kissing.”
So, since kisses are considered sexual acts under Norwegian law, unwanted kisses are indeed considered sex crimes. Here’s an example of a Norwegian man fined 10.000 NOK for giving a woman an unwanted kiss on the cheek.
The two boxers were not strangers randomly encountering each other. I have compared this to a kiss at the end of date or a wandering hand by one of a pair of dance partners. They are things that can be reasonably foreseen even if they step a bit over the line, and so I would not elevate them to the level of a crime. In a boxing pre-fight conference of this nature, agreed upon by the participants, intended for the benefit of both participants, it is equivalent to a shove. In the strictest sense that is a simple assault, but not one which I believe would be entertained by the justice system as a crime, and disregarded in a civil case on at least a* de minimis* basis and possibly considered frivolous and subject to sanction in New York and other states.
As a straight man I would not be happy about being kissed by another man. Personally I think it is worse than a groping, because you exchanging fluids and it could transmit a disease.
This isn’t the first time this has happened in the fight world. She’s lucky her opponent took it better than this one: The MMA Kiss of Death - YouTube
It’s pretty obviously sexual assault to forcibly kiss someone. If I was the manager in a workplace and went around forcibly kissing employees, and the company didn’t get me to stop, the people I forcibly kissed would have an easy sexual harassment lawsuit. If forced kissing is sexual enough to be sexual harassment, how is it not enough to be considered sexual assault (or battery if you’re in one of the places that splits the two)? It might not be something worth making illegal or charging as sexual assault, much like grabbing someone’s arm is technically assault but isn’t going to be prosecuted, but the sexual nature of the gesture is obvious. If a guy kissed another guy like that (especially guys with less public appearance experience, say high school athletes), I’d expect the one kissed to say something like “I’m not a fucking queer” and deck him - clearly indicating that he’d consider it a sexual act.
And Bricker’s ‘someone must be aroused for it to count’ definition is really just bizarre. I know a number of women who get aroused watching two guys fight in MMA matches, does that make punching and kicking into sexual assault? Just about any activity someone takes will arouse some person, because people have a crazy variety of fetishes, so that definition, instead of being restrictive, means almost any conduct counts as sexual assault.
What force was used?
A sheriff’s deputy that explores body cavities when searching for concealed contraband when a prisoner is admitted to jail is not committing sexual assault.
The reason certainly is tied to the reason the deputy takes the action, not the action taken.
Now, you try to equate forcible kissing in the workplace without acknowledging that the REASON we’re confident in calling it sexually motivated is because that’s the ordinary motivation for kissing, so it’s an easy inference to make. You confuse the easy inference with some automatic conclusion.
Have you read all the posts in this thread? It’s not obvious at all as the definition varies from place to place. In an earlier post I gave a link to what constitutes sexual assault in NJ. Not even close to being obvious there:
http://statelaws.findlaw.com/new-jersey-law/new-jersey-sexual-assault-laws.html
You say this as if any behavior that one can file a sexual harassment suit over means that behavior must be sexual assault. It’s not true in any state I’ve checked.
Where? Do you have a jurisdiction in mind, or are you just assuming? I posted a link to what constitutes a simple assault in NJ earlier. Grabbing someone’s arm wouldn’t even be simple assault:
Nice barometer for defining something, but laws have definitions that make determining what sexual acts and sexual assaults are.
Or it was entirely staged.
If I kiss a woman as part of a stage play, on stage, as scripted, is it sexual assault? :rolleyes:
When a “pro wrestler” hits another with a chair, is it assault with a deadly weapon?
It’s entertainment.
It’s not irrelevant though.
The entire context of a boxing match or other fight is one in which behaviors occur that would otherwise be prosecutable under the legal code. The understood context of the preshow staredown is to impact the mental state of the opponent. Verbally threatening to cause another bodily harm is, I understand, considered assault in many jurisdictions, but is within expected behaviors for that context, and will be followed by actual attempts to cause bodily harm. But in the context unstaged threats to cause physical harm followed by successful attempts to cause such harm is not assault.
Please re-read the OP. This conversation is based on the premise that the kiss was not staged.
Is fighting the hypothetical against the stated wishes of an op assault?
Because there’s a specific law authorizing it and excluding it from being sexual assault. If someone grabs a random person and subjects them to a body cavity search, then it’s clearly sexual assault. Or are you going to argue that body cavity searches without consent (whether personal or imposed by the legal system) aren’t sexual assault in general.
Now you’re just contradicting yourself. You want to both say that it’s the ‘ordinary motivation for kissing’, and that kissing is sexual is ‘an easy inference to make’, but also that it doesn’t apply here and that I’m confused for thinking it does. That doesn’t make any sense. If I go around kissing all the men in my department to show my dominance over them, even though I’m not into guys at all, that’s clearly unwanted sexual content even though I don’t get aroused by it and none of them do. What is different about an obviously sexual kiss intended to show dominance and make someone uncomfortable and the hypothetical that makes one sexual and one not? Or are you arguing that if I as a manager kiss guys to intimidate them, my company would not be guilty of sexual assault?
The question is whether it is sexual assault at all, not whether it rises to the level of something that is currently a crime or if it’s something that should be considered a crime. If the question was simply about whether it’s a crime, the OP could just quote the relevant law and we could see if it fits.
I would consider kissing someone who is clearly not interested in a kiss at the end of a date to be clear sexual assault. The fact that you think kissing someone who clearly does not want to be kissed is not any kind of assault is pretty disturbing, frankly.
Sorry (not really) for using English words.
Have you? because you said:
When the posts in this thread have made it clear that the discussion is not whether the attack qualifies as sexual assault under a particular set of laws, or which laws to use.
So, sexual assault is whatever you want it to be.
I guess I was assaulted over and over again by my grandmother and some aunts. I wish I had realized that so I could have had them put in jail.
She was not forced to act in any way. You mean something else I’m sure, but she wasn’t forced to do anything.
Let’s go into that aunt context and explore the fuzzy edges. All clearly against your will. Assault yes or no?
Auntie kisses you on the crotch?
On the mouth sticking her tongue in?
On the mouth sloppily?
Briefly and without slobber on the mouth?
On your cheek?
Would the answers, or your discomfort even, change with context, say if you were an adult and it was a stranger on a crowded train?
A smile may be just a smile but a kiss is not always just a kiss.
Actually no that is not the OP hypothetical. *“I assume in reaching this conclusion that the gesture was unrehearsed, and unwelcome by Braekhus.”
*
The Op has made that assumption. He didnt say “for the purposes of this debate assume it was staged”.
But since it was staged it wasnt assault.
This was only a kiss. If she was kissed and then stabbed with a knife I wouldn’t consider it the same thing, but that isn’t what happened.
I will go further on this subject, not only was it just a kiss, but the state had already determined that there was no disparity in power between the two parties, and that there was no chance of communicable disease through mouth to mouth contact, and they were there voluntarily knowing this was a possible result. Further, the party alleged by some to be a victim then struck the other party, a clear battery not in kind to the harmless kiss.
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.
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.
Well, the situation was staged, which is a reason I don’t think it qualifies as a sexual assault, but we don’t know if the kissing was staged or not. It could have been though. I don’t think it’s fighting the hypothetical to consider that we can consider the validity of that assumption. We can’t assume* it was staged,* we should be able to consider that it could be staged and we can’t determine if it was. It’s a hazy point I won’t belabor though. I don’t think it turns everything around if the kiss itself was not staged.