I’m not arguing hypotheticals. I know women who have had experiences that were more harmful to them because of what was said and what that represents, more so than physical assault experiences.
I don’t know what your life is like, whether you’re friends with many women, but if you ever have an opportunity to listen to someone speak about abuse I really recommend it. You will learn so much. Abuse is so much more than what you think it is.
Physical assault is wide ranging, from unwanted groping (touching body without permission) all the way to rape. Verbal harassment is wide ranging, from something creepy said in passing to violent language used constantly.
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine being more threatened and traumatised and violated by someone in a position of privilege detailing the ways they want to have sex with you in graphic detail every day you interact with them, than threatened/violated/traumatised by a drunk person at a party grabbing at your body without permission.
My statement is absolutely true and the fact that you see harassment and assault as such black and white things makes your ignorance clear — the fact that you had to edit my single sentence to try and make your point should have been a pretty clear sign of that.
There are physical assaults that are far less consequential than verbal assaults, that’s an indisputable fact. Anyone who has experience with victims, has been a victim _or_ even just someone who uses “logic and reason” would understand that.
You can’t swing a cat without finding a victim of sexual harassment who felt violated by harassment even if it wasn’t physical. Your physical body isn’t the only part of you that exists, if you are harassed to the point where you don’t feel safe living your life because of the threats posed to you wouldn’t you feel violated? Your life has been compromised.
If you mean “physically violated” then sure, you cannot be physically violated by words, but I don’t see the value in making that distinction. If a woman is afraid to go to work because her colleague shouts obscene remarks at her every time he sees her, why does it matter (in the context of ensuring she feels safe at work) if he hasn’t escalated to committing the acts he threatens yet?
Every situation is different, for some women a physical assault can be far less violating than a daily campaign of verbal harassment.
Sure, #1 is uniquely described as “gang rape” and #2 is “verbal assault”. I don’t think verbal assault and gang rape are equivalent. That’s not what I’m arguing.
I am arguing that any form of sexual assault is predatory behaviour engaged in by an abuser and it is completely appropriate for a woman to consider someone who verbally harasses them to be a sexual assault risk.
Sexual assault is woefully under reported and woefully under prosecuted, you cannot possibly argue that we have ever applied “logic and reason” to this issue. The progress that has been made in the last decade has improved the logic and reason applied to this issue but we have a long way still to go. A few decades ago you could not legally rape your wife, how is that logical? Or well reasoned?
Evidence is evidence. Witness testimony is evidence, photographs are evidence, video is evidence, dna is evidence. All evidence has credibility, which can be challenged.
Every case is different: witness testimony can be far more credible than photo evidence, dna evidence can be less credible than video evidence.
There is — as far as I know — no legal system in the world that measures the validity of a case based on the amount or type of evidence. You can absolutely be convicted on witness testimony alone in the US. That’s very unlikely but entirely possible under the law.
They’re all interlinked behaviours. For people who are constantly at risk of being sexually assaulted, being harassed by someone is a major indicator of that someone posing physical danger. Although the verbal harasser may never escalate to physical assault, their harassment is a part of the environment that creates risk to potential victims and contributes to their fear.
As men it’s easy to think of harassment as isolated but for many women it’s a constant day to day threat and successfully managing that risk means quickly identifying potential threats even if they may not escalate beyond verbal harassment.
Verbal harassment can put someone already on edge in fear for their life. He absolutely violated her if that’s how she feels.
The judicial “beyond reasonable doubt” process is far from perfect, it has many shortcomings and is only suitable for the justice system because we’ve decided that it’s much better for someone guilty to walk free than for someone innocent to be incorrectly punished. This doesn’t work in smaller environments, like an office, because if the guilty walks free then the innocent person — the victim — suffers directly by their continued and unavoidable presence in their life.
I have served on a jury in a sexual assault trial and after what I’ve seen of the process first hand I would rather work for a company that doesn’t roleplay as the judicial system and instead believes the victim and uses the preponderance of evidence approach for determining guilt.
Most people guilty of sexual assault (in the literal sense not the legal sense) will never face any legal consequences because of how the judicial system works: I would never want to work in an office where the same was true.
I don’t know what your life is like, whether you’re friends with many women, but if you ever have an opportunity to listen to someone speak about abuse I really recommend it. You will learn so much. Abuse is so much more than what you think it is.