To think this isn't sexual assault...

[harerunner]

I saw a story on the BBC about Jenni Hermoso testifying in a sexual assault case about her kiss with Luis Rubiales. Not having seen the kiss, I decided to look at a video of it, a link of which I've put below.

Firstly, i need to say I think sexual assault is extremely serious, and it's appalling how low the conviction rate is for sexual crimes. Men get away with far too much, and it's sickening.

However, in all honesty, i wouldn't class the kiss here as sexual assault. This is a lengthy full body embrace followed by a very brief peck of a kiss.

If something like this is classed as sexual assault, then it surely makes it impossible to initiate anything physical at all without explicit verbal consent.

Surely there's much more to this... i reckon she hated the guy before this incident and this was a way to get him back for other shitty and belittling treatment from him over the years.

AIBU?

That’s ok then if she didn’t pull away. Are you serious? Having been in a position where I didn’t react to someone putting their hand between my legs as I froze does that mean I wasn’t assaulted either?

I think we are wasting our time tbh.

Anyone who doesn't get it, doesn't get it because they don't want to get it.

21st century and we still don't seem to have grasped the idea of actual consent. 🤦

It's all oh the poor menz if they have to modify their behaviour that's the end of civilisation as we know it we must carry on letting them kiss and touch us cos we can't expect them to understand consent. Or change. Oh how can they change? Oh the humanity.

I mean, it's not fucking hard to begin by separating appropriate behaviours by situation! But oh no. A man behaving inappropriately in a professional setting means oh my god men on a date won't know if they are assaulting their date! 🙄

I would rather have had that then have someone who was supposed to be a family friend actually attempt to rape me when I was only 16.

I'm not worried about my sons at all. Because they would never forcibly kiss someone, grope them or rape them.

Simples.

It is not a race to the bottom.

I wouldn't want that to happen, of course not and I'm very sorry it happened to you. It doesn't mean that another kind of sexual assault is okay though.

It's like saying I don't care about someone punching you in the face because someone tried to murder me. No logic at all.

I don't worry about my son either. He was WTF at that kiss.

And if he ever kissed someone like that, he would apologise, not blame the victim and harrass her further.

I also wouldn't lock myself in a church to protest his innocence

So anything better than what happened to you is ok?

I disagree. I would rather what happened to you than what happened to me. What happened to you wasn’t even rape, after all. He only tried.

Of course that isn’t the case. Me getting raped doesn’t mean it was ok for that family friend to do what he did, or the football president to do what he did.

courage sisters! Never stop resisting.

Just to say; I have male friends who warmly embrace me occasionally which is fine and a very friendly thing to do. If one of them then kissed on the mouth I’d be shocked and quite uncomfortable, as that’s a sexual thing to do.

Warm embrace does not equal consent to sexual contact, no matter how carried away he got in the moment.

It’s not top trumps

I would rather have had your attempted rape than my actual rape.

Someone who was a victim of CSA by their stepdad would likely say they'd have preferred my rape to their childhood.

A child trafficked and abused by many would likely say...

Or maybe, just maybe, we can say none of it is in any way ok or excusable and there's no level it has to be above before it's unacceptable and damaging.

You know a thread has descended into the ridiculous when people are playing rape top trumps FFS

Thank you for everyone who has posted. It has changed my mind.

I think what constitutes sexual assault as opposed to an innocent misjudged action needs to be addressed, given that it's clear that even those who profess to believe in explicit verbal consent for every move quickly backtrack to an alternative when it's pointed out that it doesn't work in practice and they haven't even lived by that mantra if they're being honest with themselves.

For something to be recognised as a misjudged action as opposed to sexual assault, I'm thinking:

1. the action needs to be no more than an incremental escalation of the situation two people are in, such as going from a loose to a tight embrace, or a lips closed kiss to one with tongues....

2. the other person needs to be empowered physically to say "no" or pull away, and not unreasonably afraid of the consequences of doing so... and the perpetrator of the misjudged action must immediately stop.

Anything more than an incremental action, such as grabbing someone's crotch when you're just having a momentary greeting hug... or where someone doesn't respect the wishes of the other person to stop... or the person feels pressured by the power dynamic to do things she otherwise wouldn't do, then I'd argue that's assault.

Does that seem reasonable?

No.

Why?

@EmmaEmerald I totally agree - I wouldn’t even kiss my own kids on the lips.

@ElephantMilk just because your family did it doesn’t make it right, and certainly doesn’t make this case any less of an assault

Or maybe, just maybe, we can say none of it is in any way ok or excusable and there's no level it has to be above before it's unacceptable and damaging.

Well there kinda has to be some definition of what constitutes sexual assault otherwise we end up with....

I don't believe he forced her tongue into her mouth. The kiss was momentary.

This is why we need a better understanding of what actually constitutes sexual assault (me included), because if you defined sexual assault as you have, we wouldn't be guilty!

I meant "he" not "we"!

And that there is what we call reductio ad absurdum

@IncompleteSenten

And that there is what we call reductio ad absurdum

It is, but that's exactly why we need a definition that is robust. Simply saying something is sexual assault if there is no consent - full stop - begs too many questions, as this thread has shown.

... the key questions being:

What is consent, and how can it properly be provided?

How can we distinguish between a genuine misunderstanding of cues and sexual assault?

It is beholden on the person doing the potentially abusive thing to make sure they are not misunderstanding cues.

Not really.

If there's 'no level it has to be above' then somebody could be prosecuted for a ribald wink.

@MasterBeth

It is beholden on the person doing the potentially abusive thing to make sure they are not misunderstanding cues.

Of course it's their responsibility, but everyone is human and, misunderstandings will therefore sometimes happen. Do we criminalise them all?

If we literally criminalise every minor escalation in physical contact where the person escalating has simply misunderstood the cues as sexual assault , we're going to paralyse sexual interactions and force them to become stilted, mechanical encounters where every new move, or indeed continuation of a move (because consent can be withdrawn) needs explicit verbal consent, and the person taking the lead is always in fear that they will end up labelled as a sex offender if they even slightly stray from that consent (I said you could kiss my neck, not my ear!)

In reality of course, people won't pay any heed to that, any we'd have the muddled situation where the reality of sexual interactions don't match the unachievably high bar the society would have set for consent and assessing whether abuse has occurred.

That muddle is something that actual abusers will exploit, and the disconnect between reality and the unrealistic ideals gives them the wriggle room to obfuscate and confuse, and to get away with it.

So those that try to champion women's rights by pushing a simplistic "no ifs, no buts, if there's no consent it's sexual assault, end of discussion... and if you don't accept this without qualification, then you're enabling and excusing abuse" aren't really helping, and are actually being counterproductive, and unwittingly making things easier for abusers by giving them the space to argue their way out of their actions.