Theft is theft even if not all thefts are bank robberies. What would make this not rape? Rape by handjob is not possible because there is no penetration involved? “Pulling” and “trapping” would make it seem that force was involved. And the perpertrator being older makes it so that threat of violence is in play (would they have done it to someone their own size?) . And this is presumably also against the sexual orientation of the target. It was also a pattern of abuse. It is not rape if you submit to it? It is not rape if there is no assault going with it?
Grabbing people by the crotch when you know they do not want it is quite a hefty violation of sexual autonomy.
It’s clearly sexual assault, and in most jurisdictions a criminal act. It may or may not be classified as rape. But that doesn’t matter. It’s both wrong and criminal, and it’s abhorrent that it happens as often as it does and that it’s so easily ignored. None of that is the point of this post.
The victim was harmed, but feels like they’re being further harmed by the common assumption that it should have harmed them more deeply and more permanently, and that they should somehow visibly display that harm so the crusaders have a clear victim to worry about (ok, this last part is my interpretation).
In fact, many people who’ve suffered superficially-similar invasions HAVE been permanently altered—I know a few, and it would be both incorrect and insensitive to tell them “it’s no big deal”. For them, it was a big deal. I ache for them, and it is a pareto improvement to reduce that frequency and severity of such crimes.
That doesn’t invalidate the point of this post—https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy is a fallacy—people react differently, have different expectations, different social support, different prior experiences, etc. It makes things WORSE to treat everyone as if they’ll have the same reactions to events (from crimes to classrooms) - you’ll overreact in some cases, causing harm as they question themselves about everything, or you’ll underreact as they REALLY question themselves about everything.
I tend to believe that under-reaction to this kind of violation is a lesser harm than over-reaction (as long as the reaction is somewhere near the median “proper” reaction), but acknowledging variance is way way better than either.
You are playing with words here. /u/green_leaf’s point is that there are greater degrees of violation of sexual autonomy than what OP suffered through and that rape is usually used to describe something more severe. If someone used the word “rape” to describe OP’s experiences out of context to me it would be meaningfully misleading.
That sounds to me like saying that it is misleading to call somebody a thief when they are a shoplifter rather than a bank robber. Or that frauding for 2 million is not really theft when bank robbing for 100 000 is what theft looks like.
There are already quite a lot of intensifiers, so I have somewhat trouble thinking what would bump this to “proper” rape. It already has long duration. It already has threat of violence. I guess it doesn’t have lasting injuries or threat of death.
What kind of things would feel mislead about if encountering such a out of context representation? I think I am having a genuine grouping disagreement rather than just word-label disagreement.
I guess this kind of stuff is what they meant when there was an issue about whether to center the criminal definition of rape around use of violence or lack of consent.
While rape is usually used to describe something more severe, it’s also often pointing to one experience. The OP suffered regular sexual assault over months which is worse than just having one experience of sexual assault.
This isn’t rape for the simple reason of no sexual intercourse happening. Rape denotes non-consensual vaginal, anal or oral sex or non-consensual digital penetration.
Forcibly touching someone’s penis is really bad, and it’s not non-violent rape, because it’s not rape (ironically, it is violent, which makes the “non-violent” part mistaken as well).
Well that concept-delineation makes sense, even if I disagree that it would not be good to employ that concept. So the case is that its impossible to rape anybody with a handjob if the target has a penis as the genital.
I could see someone more successfully arguing that a handjob could constitute rape if there was an erection and an orgasm involved (which doesn’t seem to be OP’s case), but what’s important is that events colloquially called rape are significantly more traumatizing than forcibly touching someone’s penis, which is what creates the meaningful distinction (rather than his sexual assaults not fitting the definition of rape).
(Edit: I decided to cross it out in case someone wouldn’t be significantly less traumatized by that rather than by an actual rape.)
Theft is theft even if not all thefts are bank robberies. What would make this not rape? Rape by handjob is not possible because there is no penetration involved? “Pulling” and “trapping” would make it seem that force was involved. And the perpertrator being older makes it so that threat of violence is in play (would they have done it to someone their own size?) . And this is presumably also against the sexual orientation of the target. It was also a pattern of abuse. It is not rape if you submit to it? It is not rape if there is no assault going with it?
Grabbing people by the crotch when you know they do not want it is quite a hefty violation of sexual autonomy.
It’s clearly sexual assault, and in most jurisdictions a criminal act. It may or may not be classified as rape. But that doesn’t matter. It’s both wrong and criminal, and it’s abhorrent that it happens as often as it does and that it’s so easily ignored. None of that is the point of this post.
The victim was harmed, but feels like they’re being further harmed by the common assumption that it should have harmed them more deeply and more permanently, and that they should somehow visibly display that harm so the crusaders have a clear victim to worry about (ok, this last part is my interpretation).
In fact, many people who’ve suffered superficially-similar invasions HAVE been permanently altered—I know a few, and it would be both incorrect and insensitive to tell them “it’s no big deal”. For them, it was a big deal. I ache for them, and it is a pareto improvement to reduce that frequency and severity of such crimes.
That doesn’t invalidate the point of this post—https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy is a fallacy—people react differently, have different expectations, different social support, different prior experiences, etc. It makes things WORSE to treat everyone as if they’ll have the same reactions to events (from crimes to classrooms) - you’ll overreact in some cases, causing harm as they question themselves about everything, or you’ll underreact as they REALLY question themselves about everything.
I tend to believe that under-reaction to this kind of violation is a lesser harm than over-reaction (as long as the reaction is somewhere near the median “proper” reaction), but acknowledging variance is way way better than either.
You are playing with words here. /u/green_leaf’s point is that there are greater degrees of violation of sexual autonomy than what OP suffered through and that rape is usually used to describe something more severe. If someone used the word “rape” to describe OP’s experiences out of context to me it would be meaningfully misleading.
That sounds to me like saying that it is misleading to call somebody a thief when they are a shoplifter rather than a bank robber. Or that frauding for 2 million is not really theft when bank robbing for 100 000 is what theft looks like.
There are already quite a lot of intensifiers, so I have somewhat trouble thinking what would bump this to “proper” rape. It already has long duration. It already has threat of violence. I guess it doesn’t have lasting injuries or threat of death.
What kind of things would feel mislead about if encountering such a out of context representation? I think I am having a genuine grouping disagreement rather than just word-label disagreement.
I guess this kind of stuff is what they meant when there was an issue about whether to center the criminal definition of rape around use of violence or lack of consent.
While rape is usually used to describe something more severe, it’s also often pointing to one experience. The OP suffered regular sexual assault over months which is worse than just having one experience of sexual assault.
I basically agree, as far as that goes.
This isn’t rape for the simple reason of no sexual intercourse happening. Rape denotes non-consensual vaginal, anal or oral sex or non-consensual digital penetration.
Forcibly touching someone’s penis is really bad, and it’s not non-violent rape, because it’s not rape (ironically, it is violent, which makes the “non-violent” part mistaken as well).
Well that concept-delineation makes sense, even if I disagree that it would not be good to employ that concept. So the case is that its impossible to rape anybody with a handjob if the target has a penis as the genital.
I could see someone more successfully arguing that a handjob could constitute rape if there was an erection and an orgasm involved (which doesn’t seem to be OP’s case), but what’s important is that events colloquially called rape are
significantlymore traumatizing than forcibly touching someone’s penis, which is what creates the meaningful distinction (rather than his sexual assaults not fitting the definition of rape).(Edit: I decided to cross it out in case someone wouldn’t be significantly less traumatized by that rather than by an actual rape.)