Quote Originally Posted by Monty92 View Post
Firstly, I obviously agree. Secondly, I don't actually think anyone is suggesting they should be treated the same in any meaningful way. That's a bit of a straw man. No-one thinks a man who touches a woman's knee should be jailed.

A lot of people are pushing back against the idea that hands on knees are trivial because that doesn't tackle the 'culture' of masculinity that we both acknowledge exists. But anyone sane and worth listening to KNOWS it's trivial. The divergence comes when people claim that we need to have a zero tolerance approach to ANY expression of masculine sexuality in ORDER to tackle the more serious stuff.

We both think this is ****ing stupid.
Men put their hands on women's knees because they fancy them and wish to express the fact - however clumsily. It is not an assault and neither is it particularly traumatic. I'm not saying it's ideal, but it is ultimately pretty trivial. The point is that there has to be a hierarchy of behaviours that acknowledges the triviality of one behaviour in order that we can acknowledge the seriousness of another. To lump all transgressive acts in as suggested does serve to lessen the impact of the more serious ones while blowing the smaller ones out of all proportion.