Yes, my first impression is that she's very fragile and passive. "Assault" is a too strong word if the guy let her go when she left for a smoke. And why didn't she punch the aggressor? Friends can be punched too. Saying "no" isn't enough to claim she resisted. If someone uses his physical force against us, we're not supposed to just say "please stop" as if the guy were respectful enough to obey. And she went back to work for him? The girl doesn't know how to survive in a tough world.
I am very sad to read this comment. Instead of writing ten paragraphs, I'll just try to write a little story:
Imagine you are in a building that has suddenly started to shake violently - and in slow motion you realize that this is your first earthquake, you are in a place without good building codes, and this area is capable of intensely destructive earthquakes - you may panic, feel a huge wave of paralyzing confusion, feel your brain flood with adrenaline, forget all your rational thoughts and fall down in shock as shattered glass falls on you and hurts you. Then a friend (who was in a stronger part of the building and didn't panic) finds you and helps you out of the shaking building. Later a person asks - why didn't you just duck under the table? Only idiots get hurt in earthquakes.
Ideally we'd have a world in which everything happened in the same way up until the moment he french-kissed her. Then she would indeed have punched him and said "you crossed the line". He would say "sorry, my alcohol-infused mind judged the situation wrongly, I should not have done that and will not do it next time". In this ideal world, he'd mean that. Everyone would accept the miscalculation and everyone would get on with their lives, without anyone holding anything against anyone else.
You know why the world isn't like that? Because of beliefs and expectations.
You are judging this situation in the abstract and in hindsight. That is pointless and leads to callous conclusions that do not do justice to the complexity of these situations. It lacks empathy and respect for the complexity of the situation and differences between people. Try to imagine the scene, the days leading up to it, put yourself in the shoes of a woman, imagine the beliefs she has about how she should behave, how others will behave, about what is expected of her. The situation becomes complex, muddy: so many variables to consider! As someone else said: put yourself in a gay bar, with a score of gay colleagues, including your boss, and this happens to you. What if you worked in a larger company? What if the company was in bad weather and perhaps people need to be let go? So many variables!
It was totally an aggression. My point is that she hadn't learn to live in a world where aggressions happen (capitalism maintains most of humanity in poverty, how surprising is it that this world is tough?). She shouldn't have been in shock, she should totally have resisted physically (in this context, sometimes resisting is dangerous) and she should have felt nothing but anger afterwards. Instead we had the story of a little bird who went out of her parent's nest for the first time and got hurt. You can't afford to be fragile and passive if you were born in a battlefield. Children shouldn't just be protected from the violence, they should be trained to survive it. Maybe schools should teach martial arts instead of volleyball.
Regardless of shock or not, it was her responsibility to pull away and not let it go any further. Maybe she was really drunk and it didn't hit her that this was happening. Yes unwanted sexual contact happened but to make her as a pure victim is passing judgement on Joe with even asking him his side or any of the witnesses. Yes bad things happened but it is not this clear cut and one-sided. Sorry to break it to you.
So if someone starts fingering a random girl in public and she freezes in shock and fear, it's not sexual assault because she couldn't gather her wits in time to resist? Because that's what happened.
I know we're all programmers here but stop trying to build rules and logic around this. We all (should) have the common sense to understand when something is rape and when something is not. There is no trigger, there is no conditional, there is no callback, it just is and people who fail to understand this make me sick.
A number of people's lives have been forever changed by the recently surfaced actions and instead of focusing on the "what ifs" and the hypothetical situations we focus on fixing the underlying problems within our community.
I think you've forgotten that alcohol is such a drug that makes it harder to resist. It doesn't matter why the drug is in your system. So this situation goes back to the rape category.
Guess which of us that makes more likely to be morally right about this issue. I'll save you the trouble; it's me. If you are wrong about what is not rape, you've raped somebody. It's not hard to get clear consent.
Yes, actually, I don't have any doubts about it. I'm removing the capacity for doubt by being responsibly cautious. That's my responsibility. That's our responsibility. It's not even remotely fantasy to consider this.
...yes, it is. Of course it's not as simple as saying "yes" or "no" in real life, but the point is that if a person is communicating something less than an obvious yes - for example, if a person is unusually quiet, has closed-off body language, isn't reciprocating, is hesitant, or seems uncomfortable - then the other person needs to stop and check in to find out what's going on. The uncomfortable person doesn't need to verbally say "no".
That article makes some good points but ultimately describes a fantasy world (that I would like to live in!) in which women are not hesitant to unambiguously initiate romantic relationships and sex and then unilaterally places the burden on men to act as if that were the world we live in and risk being called rapists if they don't.
That article's explanation of consent easily supports a world where a lot of women hesitate to unambiguously initiate romantic relationships and sex. For example, the partner can listen to her hints, ask to confirm that his guess is correct, proceed when she gives him a reasonably clear confirmation, and keep his eyes open for signs that he made a mistake. It's about paying attention.
And the article explains that the burden isn't unilaterally on men - that men also benefit from partners who care about consent:
> Consent is not just about what you aren’t willing to do, it’s about being willing to talk, to communicate openly and without reservation with your partner about how they feel and how you feel. It can be intimidating, especially for guys, to take ownership of their feelings about sex, especially if they don’t want to have it. Many men feel that they have to have sex, even when they’re not comfortable with it, because they’re men and that’s what men do so they have to suck it up. There will be times that men will feel pressured, even coerced, just as women do.
If she'd punched her aggressor, people would instead be complaining about how she overreacted, and how their first impressions are that she's very hostile and aggressive, and she should just have said no again more firmly (I can remember this happening before). Female rape and sexual assault victims basically can't win no matter what they do.
How about a compromise, walk away. Pull away. Or clearly say Stop it or No. All those would of worked just fine. What I am saying is that a victim usually has no alternatives when they are victimized. From her own account, she had the ability to exercise any of the items listed above to remove herself from this situation.
Actually yes, yes it is enough you sick, perverted fuck. "No means no" isn't just a slogan, and it isn't "No, along with some physical resistance means no".
