The terms surrounding sexual assault are hazy. With more people publicly sharing their stories of sexual assault, the details and technicalities have snagged. Everyone knows sexual abuse is horrific, but the vagueness of intention meeting action can create doubt. The description of assault is difficult enough to understand, but what about the other terminology?
Since the #MeToo movement, disclosure of sexual abuse has become far more common in the media. As a society, we have recognized the abuse of celebrities and politicians. Our responses have varied, not just because of the status of those accused/accusers, but because the issue is rampant. Some choose to ignore, others choose to protest.
No matter the level of abuse, words like ‘victim’ or ‘perpetrator’ can shape the way we feel toward the event, the one who caused the sexual assault, and the assaulted. Since language is a powerful tool in shaping mental health and awareness, each definition needs to be articulated clearly.
Sexual harassment and sexual assault are both used to understand various meanings of unwanted sexual attention. Is the emotional response different if a woman says she was assaulted vs. harassed? If she’s ‘underage’ or 18, does that warrant more or less comforting? Should the stress and magnitude of the abuse match the stress and magnitude of someone who displays concern from an equally murky word in a similar category? Since sexual abuse is very rarely portrayed as the complicated (knowing the abuser) and questioning (was the abused dancing suggestively?) type of trauma that it is, ‘assault’, ‘rape’, and ‘harassment’, might not accurately represent the way someone is expected to feel.
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