Life is not black and white. What you're describing is more akin to sexual harassment, not the same as sexual assault. And again, emotionally manipulating someone into having sex with them is a very shitty thing to do, but it is not sexual assault. There has to be at least threat of violence for it to be sexual assault. By her own blog it doesn't sound like there was one.
Ok? No shit?
No, you're wrong. No shit its not the same, the problem is you don't know what sexual assault actually is. Its as simple as that. Harassment can include sexual assault, but harassment is typically verbal (and some even indicate its basically almost only in certain situations like at work; although she did apparently work for his company). If there is
any sexual physical touching as part of that, it becomes full on sexual assault (as a separate aspect). Yes, often times harassment is used to enable assault, but you are simply wrong in your assessment if you think him having sex with her (at least one time she clearly indicated non-consent, which is why he then made the comment to get her to agree to it) was not sexual assault. You'd be ridiculously wrong to claim it was sexual harassment but somehow not sexual assault as well once it became physical after the harassment.
Again, a government website:
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm
It is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person’s sex. Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.
No it doesn't. You're 100% wrong on that. No threat or violence is necessary for it to be assault. Its literally any explicitly sexual touching that was not actually consensual. Now, maybe you're trying to argue that well she did consent to it, or you might not see him threatening to break up with her as a threat, but a threat does not have to be explicitly violent/physical for it to be a threat. And FYI, yes the full situation would absolutely make her claims of it not having been consensual be valid as he clearly was manipulating her (so it can't be harassment but not assault if he had physical sexual contact with her after the harassment). If you manipulate someone to have sex with them, that's both sexual harassment
and sexual assault. The harassment would make the consent invalid for any physical sexual contact. That's why sexual harassment is taken so seriously, because it often explicitly enables sexual assault to happen. The harassment is used to enable the person to commit the assault without having to do harm (which again, does not have to be violence or even anything directly physical; hell it doesn't even have to be an explicit threat, meaning that someone having to choose "well do I give my boss oral sex and they'll give me a raise/promotion, but if I don't, they're not going to be happy, so there is likely going to be some repercussion for that" there was no express threat that they would even suffer any consequences for not doing it, but that would absolutely count as sexual harassment, and so if they actually went through with it they could absolutely claim the sex act then made it full on sexual assault).
Now, its possible that depending on the state it would fall under other definitions (for instance, how some places have sexual battery as a separately defined thing from sexual assault), but generally unwanted sexual physical contact is sexual assault. That doesn't mean it would actually be charged (and often, yes, its not even brought to trial), but that's a separate issue (from talking about what defines sexual assault vs sexual harassment). Yes there are other aspects that muddy things up (like how some places didn't even have laws about rape and assault between married persons).
This was added later:
And before this turns into "well its not the same as Cosby/etc", yes, but trying to act like its not heinous is what lets them go from this level to that level. I can basically guarantee that there is escalation, so if you let this type of behavior slip by, it definitely has a strong likelihood of becoming worse.
Yes, relationships are complex, but the allegations made here are pretty clearly horrible. Yes, you can see minor aspects of similar behaviors in a lot of "regular" relationships, which is why its the sum of the factors. And yes, it doesn't matter if its a man or a woman doing this shit. But yes, there are lots of guys that end up in similar situations, and they'd get little sympathy for it, let alone get taken seriously if they started talking about it being assault, and that is awful and bullshit.
That's why I think its important to take a strong tone about this and be like "yeah, this type of shit shouldn't fly, that's not a healthy relationship at all" so that people don't go in thinking its ok to be asking for that type of shit in the first place. But sure, stuff like that works for some people, but then you wouldn't typically have such allegations when that's the case so I think that's a fairly self-defeating argument.
If this behavior seems normal to you, I'd strongly suggest that you need to have a discussion with your partner and see if you're actually on the same page. I'd even say this works as a sorta Rorschach test where you both read it and then write out how you felt about the various parts, and then read what the other wrote down. And maybe think about what aspects of this behavior seems familiar, and think if it actually was fine. I don't think it has to turn into freaking out about every little thing, but it'd be healthy to talk about the relationship and what is and isn't ok. You might find that you were doing something that you thought was ok but the other person wasn't ok with, and vice versa (the other person was doing something that they thought was fine, but you weren't ok with).
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