# Sexual  Assault - We need to expand the vocabulary

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sexual-assault-we-need-to-expand-the-vocabulary/803905>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [December 8, 2017, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sexual-assault-we-need-to-expand-the-vocabulary/803905 "2017-12-08T14:37:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2018, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sexual-assault-we-need-to-expand-the-vocabulary/803905/61 "2018-04-19T13:22:11Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> No, not everything defined as “sexual assault” should be a firing offense. Take the example of patting a woman on the butt. Joe is showing something on his computer to Mary, in a crowded cubicle farm, so Mary’s standing behind Joe’s chair. Phil is walking past to his own desk, when suddenly Mary shifts position to better see something on Joe’s screen. It sometimes happens, in a situation like this, that Phil’s hand and Mary’s buttocks will come into contact. Was it deliberate? There’s no way to know, at least for the first offense (if it happens multiple times, that might be a pattern, or might just be a coincidence). But if the office’s policy is that any contact with a co-worker’s buttocks is sexual assault, and any sexual assault is a firing offense, then Phil’s going to get fired just for walking through a crowded cubicle farm.

I don’t believe that this is a significant concern. In crowded spaces, people bump into each other. And when someone by accident brushes up against someone else’s rear or chest or other intimate area, that someone almost always immediately pulls back their hands and apologizes profusely, which makes it clear that it was an accident. In your scenario, Phil’s reaction would be immediate and show emabarassment and he’d pull back and apologize, and Mary would almost certainly recognize that this was an accident and brush it off. That we’re more concerned now about sexual assault and harassment doesn’t make it more likely that Mary wouldn’t accept his apology, or realize it was an accident, ISTM.

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**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2018, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sexual-assault-we-need-to-expand-the-vocabulary/803905/62 "2018-04-19T19:04:02Z")

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> [@Jasmine](#):
>
> Humans tend to go from extreme to the other. Protecting women shouldn’t mean that men are afraid to even breath when there is a woman in the room. Protecting women should mean what the term clearly states, no “Sexual Assault”. That means “hands off”, and it means no lewd, demeaning, or sexually suggestive language. Sounds pretty simple and straight forward to me. What am I missing here?

You are missing that there are a lot of people who strongly disagree with a definition that you just presented as if it was obvious.

There are many MANY people who believe that “hands on” without excessive force would rarely if ever qualify as assault, and some of the same people would say that language (of any kind whatsoever) might be bad but is definitely never an assault.

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