[artnep]

The more serious problem with these studies is that the definition of sexual assault is often unclear and constantly changing. What's classified as sexual assault by some definitions would be considered by others to be "boys being a bit too pushy because they don't know any better".

[gluelogic]

The debate around sexual assaults on university campuses today seems to be a frontier for identity politics/gender warfare, and I am worried that this will have a dangerous, harmful kind of fall out.

[malandrew]

I also suspect that the identity politics and gender warfare is conditioning people to consider certain acts to be assault that absent the conditioning would not have been viewed as assault previously.

You can see this in societies that value "honor" where culturally people take offense and feel victimized or disrespected by statements or actions that would be inconsequential in another culture.

For example, while the actual prevalence is hard if not impossible to measure, it's not uncommon to hear about incidents of "sexual assault" where the the victim determined/concluded (for whatever reason) that what transpired was sexual assault after the terminus of the act. These cases of sexual assault are qualitatively different than acts where the victim is cognizant during the act that the act is assault and unwelcome, and makes that known to the assailant in non-ambiguous terms verbally or through resistance.

The trickiest cases are those where the "victim" is intoxicated (but most likely both parties are intoxicated and both may be making poor decisions) and the following day determines it was assault. These examples, when they happen, illustrate the impact of cultural conditioning to how people perceive such events. In our society today, when someone has intercourse with someone who when sober they consider sexually undesirable, we condition men and women to perceive such an event differently. Men are conditioned to view sleeping with someone that they wouldn't sleep with sober as an poor decision and to brush it off as a mistake ("keep on keeping on"). In prior decades, women generally viewed such encounters the same way as men do ("Ugg, I fucked up. I should have drunk as much and shouldn't have slept with him"). Today, however, the identity politics and gender warfare happening on college campuses are teaching women to instead have the reaction "He took advantage of me when I was drunk. I'm a victim and have been assaulted" (despite the fact that that other person was probably intoxicated as well).

What's most unfortunate about such conditioning of one gender to view themselves as a victim after the fact in ambiguous situations is that it delegitimizes real claims of assault and leads society to question and doubt that sexual assault occurred in situations that are unambiguous. Getting drunk and sleeping with someone and regretting it the next day and claiming rape is an insult and disservice to those people who actually are sexual assaulted against their will.

I would be nice if we didn't use an ambiguous catch all term like sexual assault and instead used a variety very specific terms for the different acts that people currently lump under sexual assault. People who get drunk and sleep with someone they regret sleeping with should not be using the same term to describe what happened as someone who is attacked and forcefully penetrated while walking late at night or someone who is sent to prison and victimized physically by another prisoner.