Just occurred to me, sexual harassment usually refers to a pattern of behavior, while sexual assault can be a single incident but requires touching. I was thinking that calling that incident harassment was downplaying it, but I'm wondering if it would also be reasonable to say that calling it an isolated assault would be downplaying the systematic nature of Marcy's actions. It's kinda like there's two axes of badness here, systematic repetition of events, and severity of individual events, and this one's bad on both axes.
And meanwhile, Marcy's response to the specific accusation of grabbing this woman student's crotch of "I would never touch someone I didn't know" is even more problematic in many ways. Implies that the only thing wrong with this is that he didn't know this particular woman before he grabbed her crotch. So it'd be perfectly okay if it was a woman faculty member in his department who didn't want him doing it, or if it was a woman student of his who did want him doing it.
(Reminds me of the time a student responded to the accusation of "I didn't buy this paper online; I paid my friend to write it, and they must've bought it online!")
no subject
And meanwhile, Marcy's response to the specific accusation of grabbing this woman student's crotch of "I would never touch someone I didn't know" is even more problematic in many ways. Implies that the only thing wrong with this is that he didn't know this particular woman before he grabbed her crotch. So it'd be perfectly okay if it was a woman faculty member in his department who didn't want him doing it, or if it was a woman student of his who did want him doing it.
(Reminds me of the time a student responded to the accusation of "I didn't buy this paper online; I paid my friend to write it, and they must've bought it online!")