Sexual Assault Does sexual gratification/intent have to be involved for it to be sexual abuse/assault/harassment?

[Movingforward10]

I think you’d know best, here. To be honest. This sounds/feels right.

Yeah, I think, having had a break from thinking about this and being less agitated again, that I fall back to this ^^.

but I like the legal definitions

Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about legal definitions. The british definition of rape is only about a penis and no other form of penetration, which I think is very limiting. I like the American definition much better. And the British definition of sexual exploitation is also too limiting, as it says there must be a transaction. And there isn’t sometimes. I define some of what happened to me as sexual exploitation given the social context to it and the sort of recruitment/encouragement of it in a broad sense, and I didn’t really receive anything from it (didn’t expect anything), there was no material transaction.
so I don’t rely on legal definitions solely. but I do agree sometimes going to legal definitions helps to frame things. It’s a place to examine from.

I’m (maybe rightly, wrongly, unhelpfully) of the opinion that people have gotten too keen to lump things in the ‘sexual abuse/harassment etc’ category because it feels more validating of their pain and suffering. Just because something maybe doesn’t fall under the category of sexual, it doesn’t mean that event wasn’t distressing, harmful, hurtful, abusive and that needs just as much validation and causes just as much suffering.

Yeah, I agree.
I think I am back to “my mum has been inappropriate with me and my body as she lacks boundaries, is a narcissist and thinks she owns me, and there is a sexualised element to it but it’s not sexual abuse“ as my definition.