- "Suppose we grant that this would be rude.
Then can we say that just because someone is engaged in some sort of sexual
activity in public, does that mean that he is being
sexually forward with those around him?"
In the context of our culture and the conditioning it produces, it
can reasonably be counted on to make others feel like he's being
forward. This is not something that a few paranoid individuals
dreamt up the day before yesterday, like "visual assault" (the
concept that looking at a woman is a form of sexual assault). This
is deeply ingrained, and even in relatively relaxed settings, I
haven't seen people be comfortable with this. It's a matter of
consideration and making the effort to appreciate the emotional
impact of one's actions on those around one.
Sexual arousal, or that unnamed brand of revulsion and degradation
felt when one feels the hunger of one who one is repulsed by (a
negative sexual arousal) are psychological phenomena, and to
knowingly engage the emotions creating those states is to be
sexual, regardless of the goal of the action. The relevant question
is one of responsibility. Is that unwanted psychologically sexual
contact taking place because the one suffering it has conditioned
him or herself to be unreasonably easy to unintentionally contact,
or because the one making contact has not bothered to think about
what he is doing, or doesn't care about its impact?
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