Stallman is known to be fairly academic and pedantic about how words get defined, and historically all act of sexual assault was defined in term of coercion. T

Stallman is known to be fairly academic and pedantic about how words get defined, and historically all act of sexual assault was defined in term of coercion. There are still people in 2020 that get surprised when people talk about assault which does not involve coercion. Sweden as an example updated their laws in 2018 to change from a coercion based definition to a consent based definition (Stallman post was in 2003). Stallman changed his mind in 2019, by highlighting that harm can exist even without coercion. What I recall before they changed the law, people did occasionally discussed the word definition of coercion when it came to sexual assault. It was one of the major reason why they changed it to a consent based definition. I don't know however if the US academic word had similar discussion, but I wouldn't be surprised.