At U-M, Sexual Violence Includes ‘Discounting Feelings,’ ‘Withholding Sex’

The redefinition of the word
violence continues among revelations that discounting
a sexual partner’s feelings and withholding sex constitutes sexual
violence at the University of Michigan. The relevant info can be
found
at the university’s “Stop Abuse” webpage:

Examples of sexual violence include: discounting the partner’s
feelings regarding sex; criticizing the partner sexually; touching
the partner sexually in inappropriate and uncomfortable ways;
withholding sex and affection; always demanding sex; forcing
partner to strip as a form of humiliation (maybe in front of
children), to witness sexual acts, to participate in uncomfortable
sex or sex after an episode of violence, to have sex with other
people; and using objects and/or weapons to hurt during sex or
threats to back up demands for sex.

Criticizing someone sexually and withholding sex are unkind
things to do, but they aren’t violent acts in and of themselves.
Indeed, a university spokesperson could only defend the definitions
as appropriate within “a larger context,” according to Derek
Draplin of The College Fix:

The definitions of behaviors of violence … describe most
accurately what occurs in an abusive relationship,” [U-M
spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald] said in an email. “Those behaviors
not in the context of violence are not abusive.  A reader of
this site would recognize that it’s described as one behavior in
the context of a pattern of behaviors to maintain power and control
over an intimate partner.”

But, as Draplin writes, universities make these slips all the
time—treating disfavored behavior and physically painful behavior
as one and the same. He cites an interview with the sexual violence
support coordinator at Brock University in Canada in which the
administrator claims
“anything that makes someone feel unsafe” counts as violence.

Institutions of higher learning should be more precise with
their definitions. Being insufficiently attentive to other people’s
feelings is not an act of violence.

For related coverage, see
“Ohio State: Students Must Agree on Why They Are Having
Sex.”