Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
I mean, being acquitted doesn't mean you're innocent, but that's probably just semantics. My real question is, what do you think is the fundamental difference between sexual assault and other kinds of violent crime?
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Well, first of all I consider crimes against a person to be manifestly different than crimes against property, I don't think this is that radical a notion, I think most people-and the judicial system agrees.
Secondly, I find sexual assault to be different than other types of assault because of the way it relates to power dynamics between people. Sexual assault is fundamentally a revocation of another person's agency over their own body. I can see an argument that a violent assault has a similar effect, but I would argue that sexual assault is different because the acts that take place within the context of a sexual assault, in another circumstance would be not only consentual, but actively sought out and pleasurable.
Though people may in some circumstances consent to be 'assaulted' (I box, for example) getting punched and hit is never pleasurable. Essentially all the acts in any form of a sexual assault could be-in the right circumstances.
It is this specific perversion of normal, pleasurable acts into violence and assault, the revocation by one person of another person's agency over choosing to engage or not engage in those acts, which, in my mind, establishes sexual violence as of a fundamentally different kind of violence than simple assault.