“Sexual Assault” and Other Buzz Phrases that Need to Die

• Published in: Society (New Brunswick) Vol. 55; no. 4; pp. 318 - 322
• Main Author: Fleming, Bruce
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.08.2018; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Academic staff; Aggression; Aggressiveness; Analysis; Automobiles; Campuses; Childbirth & labor; Criticism and interpretation; Cultural appropriation; Cultural identity; Driving; Law; Laws; Objectification theory; Political Science; Scholars; Sex crimes; Sexuality; Sleep; Social Sciences; Sociology; Symposium: The New Shapes of Political Correctness; Terminology; Training; United States; Paradigm shifts; Derrida; Linguistic over-reach; Gender; Cultural appropriation; Sexual assault; Objectification; Foucault; Said
• ISSN: 0147-2011; 1936-4725
• DOI: 10.1007/s12115-018-0261-y

Academics nowadays have invented many phrases for which they demand widespread acceptance that do not accurately represent reality, or which make no sense when we consider them closely. Prime among these is the concept of “sexual assault,” which has made its way into state laws and the UCMJ since its coinage in the 1960s and 1970s and is now a mainstay of training on college campuses. This concept is flawed because it includes all sexual actions under the rubric of the noun “assault,” as if we spoke of “driving aggression” rather than “aggressive driving,” to color all driving with the possibility of aggression. It is simply not true that sexuality is nothing but one more form aggression, and that all sex is potentially aggression if it is perceived by one partner as such. Another false coinage we are asked to accept is the notion that men “objectivize” women. In fact few men want to sleep with or get an erotic charge from objects; if anything the issue seems to be focus on physical details. Then there is the widely repeated assertion that “gender is assigned at birth.” Rather than debating whether or not this is so we should ask whether the concept itself makes sense. Assigned? By what entity? Just at birth? These are examples of linguistic over-reach, the attempt to change the world with words rather than letting a change in the way we see the world (Kuhn’s paradigm shift) produce corresponding words in a more gradual way that most of us can accept. Just because we hear these phrases all the time from professional wordsmith academics with axes to grind, we need not feel constrained to accept them if they are not accurate representations of the world.