You tell me. You’re on a bus and someone gives you an open-mouth kiss on your jacket. How do you feel?
Now the person has licked his fingers and is trying to press them to your mouth. How do you feel?
I don’t think you really trust the police to decide when something is sexual assault. Otherwise, why are you posting in this thread?
If we want equal protection under the law (admittedly an American concept) we have to let trivial offences go unpunished with anything other than a reprimand - I’m guessing there are too many unwanted kisses in Italy to bring them all to court, so then none can be prosecuted by a just system, because the only cases that are brought forward are done for ulterior motives.
Oh no, no ! Complaints is next door ! This is abuse !
Seriously though, this healthy chorus is one of the reasons why I, for one, like this site.
Interesting!
Although…
Maybe I’m over thinking it, but the part that seems significant there is that it’s the workplace (and that he’s the boss) - similarly in this case the significant bit is that the one in control is the one that was harassed. If police officers were running around kissing protestors the situation would, at least in my eyes, be quite different.
That doesn’t have anything to do with my hypothetical though, to be fair. Maybe you’re right and I’m underestimating how much trouble I could get in for jacket kissing. I mean other people, how much trouble OTHER people could get in… shit.
Totalitarianism is back on and in big way. Free speech is under direct attack by the world powers. Government and institutional reform is the way forward. What does a person have to do to actually experience freedom, liberty, and democracy?
Weird, I didn’t realize that sexual assault can’t take place if you are armed.
I am not a friend of the police, but what if it was a male protester planting a smooch on a female cop’s helmet? What if it was a male protester attempting to plant a smooch on a female protester? What if it was a male protester that felt like stripping everything off and jiggling his junk at the police?
It is sort of a fine line and I honestly feel that if it was some greasy, lanky-haired, dirty, gross guy slobbering all over a female cop’s helmet that everyone wouldn’t react quite the same way.
Of course, the fact that the two situations are completely different have nothing to do with it…
Kiss riot cops.
Ah now, you’re twisting things. I’ll respond without twisting things:
I would feel pretty weirded out if someone kissed my jacket (it’s a closed mouth kiss though), I would ask them to move away. Contacting the police would likely involve filling in a form and never hearing from them again.
If I were in a position of authority, attempting to coral people, wearing full body armour, and someone kissed my helmet and tried to put a wet finger near me, I’d restrain/detain them for disturbing the peace (if asking them to move away didn’t help) - and possibly call them weird to their face (as I have that power).
I don’t think in either situation I would feel as though I were being sexually harassed. What’s sexual about it anyway?
If I were a male (you seem to be one of those people that thinks that gender is relevant in this discussion) police officer and a lady was chasing me around grabbing my arse and trying to cop a feel of my dick - then I;d bring her in on sexual harassment charges. Just in case you need an example of my own personal definition of these things.
On a bus as a private citizen with no context or other motivation, it could easily be assault. If I was unarmed on that bus, I might even feel threatened. For a police officer on duty in riot protection gear, armed with a baton, teargas, mace spray, handcuffs, near his colleagues, he’s clearly under no real threat, and it’s clear that the protester is making a provocation. The police officer would have the technical right to assert that he was assaulted, but in my estimation he would be a coward to do so, given the context and likely motivation of the protester
I didn’t say “men”, I said “policeman” – it’s a specific event with its own circumstances, where the cop and protestor’s embodiment of state power, gender and relative capacity for violence is obvious. She’s making a public, political statement, on camera, in kissing the officer’s helmet, and is clearly no threat to him whatsoever. The idea that what she’s doing here is analogous to men sexually assaulting women in other circumstances is ridiculous; yet the fact she is a women making a political gesture of defiance to a male authority figure is noteworthy and salient.
I was waiting for you to get here!
Edit: Removed because I misunderstood the context
Steady on, Imma editing my quickly-made post to make it clear!
Too much editing! We’re in an editception.
I don’t think I twisted things, and I would like to find a way for you and I to agree.
Let’s start from here.
This is my position:
Consent is always necessary for physical contact between two humans.
Do you agree or disagree with that?
I can’t not reply, you’re being too civil!
Aaaahhhh, yeees, kind of. But not always actually. I don’t want to go into pedant land by giving benign examples, but there are several cases where non-consensual physical contact is totally OK, and even in cases where it’s unwanted, is still not a criminal act. Especially in Southern Europe where they kiss each other all the time anyway.
I’m not sure if that’s a good start to us agreeing with each other though 
Well, not when one of them’s a riot cop, no. The fact that they’re armed, armoured and protected by the law when they are ordered to physically attack you. See, if that happened, what would be your feelings re: consent? Your argument is very silly indeed.
(edited for swear removal. I too am polite, honest 
)
tl;dr: We have laws that are written to not exclude anything that might be assault, so there is a lot of discretion in how they are enforced. By choosing to enforce them here I would say that: 1) the police are acting within the law (assuming things about Italy’s laws); and 2) the police are being real assholes.
I think there are two issues that are getting confused here. One is a community standard for when police get involved in things and the other is the definition of sexual assault that is written into criminal laws. As many others have said, Italy may be different here, but I doubt it’s really all that different (especially given the charge being laid).
The power relationship is probably very significant to enabling such a situation, but it really has nothing to do with what is or is not sexual assault. I notice you say “harassed” instead of “assaulted.” We think of this as harassment, not as an assault, but it is an assault and the police could be called.
So as to whether she actually sexually assaulted the police officer I would imagine she did not (because there was nothing sexual about it) but she certainly assaulted him. In your example of someone kissing your jacket, kissing is way more than is necessary. If I simply purposely put my hand on your jacket that would be assault.
The issue is that obviously the police wouldn’t be very interested in someone putting their hand on my shoulder on a bus. They wouldn’t really want to deal with a boss flipping up his employee’s skirt unless there was a long standing issue, there were numerous complaints from different people, and they got a really bad feeling about the guy (this is probably what it would come down to). I bet the police would react to someone kissing people’s jackets on public transit because that’s just so weird, though they wouldn’t like to because they don’t like mental health issues. Of course these kinds of things are all about local norms, so police are going to behave very differently from city to city and even from neighbourhood to neighbourhood within cities.
I think it’s a good start. I recognize that different cultures have different approaches to physical contact. But even in Southern Europe, I think there’s a kind of implied consent. While the threshold for physical contact is lower there, people still understand that there are lines, and where those lines are.
I understand that there are gray areas and uncertainty, but I think a safe way to navigate those areas is to always get consent, all the time. If you follow that rule, then you can’t accidentally find yourself on the wrong side of the line.
What do you think?
