But there are unintended consequences. Sexual assault is usually defined (for example, by American and British authorities) as sexual contact without consent. This means that the gamut runs widely, from groping to the most savage rapes. That can make it hard for those not directly involved to understand the gravity of individual cases. It might even let the most vicious rapists take advantage of a perception that perhaps they committed a lesser crime.
但也有一些意想不到的后果。性侵犯通常被定義為(例如，美國和英國官方)未經同意的性接觸。這意味著范圍很廣，從猥褻到最野蠻的強奸。這使得那些沒有直接參與的人很難理解個別案件的嚴重性。它甚至可能讓最惡毒的強奸犯利用一種觀念，即他們可能犯了較輕的罪行。
And the old words are often the most powerful. Activists have berated newspapers which reported that Jeffrey Epstein, a disgraced and now-dead financier, “cavorted” with “underage women”; he raped and trafficked teenage girls. Similarly, some want to ditch the term “child pornography”, since it refers to a heinous criminal enterprise, not consenting performances as in the adult kind. It sometimes seems people cannot talk about sexual violence except in terms adapted from consensual relations.
而古老的話語往往是最有力的。一些報紙報道稱，已名譽掃地、現已過世的金融家杰弗里•愛潑斯坦與“未成年女性”“ cavorted 嬉戲”；他強奸、販賣少女。同樣地，一些人想要拋棄“child pornography 兒童色情”這個術語，因為它指的是一種十惡不赦的犯罪行為，而不是像成人那樣自愿表演。有時人們似乎不能談論性暴力，除非是在雙方知情同意的基礎上改編的。
Now feminists are saying “we need to talk about rape”, as Deborah Cameron, a linguist, does in a recent post on her blog, “Language: a feminist guide”. Applying the right vocabulary to a crime will not curtail it, but the abstractions and legalese common in the media and politics can drain the task of urgency, by making the scourge seem less acute. Just as “murder” should not be routinely dressed up as “homicide”, nor “torture” consigned to the catch-all bin of “human- rights abuses”, so it is with the vocabulary of sexual abuse. It is hard to tackle a problem you are afraid to name.
現在女權主義者說“我們需要討論強奸”，正如語言學家黛博拉·卡梅隆最近在她的博客“語言:女權主義指南”上發表的文章中寫道。對犯罪使用正確的詞匯并不能減少它，但是在媒體和政治中常見的抽象和法律術語可以使災難看起來不那么尖銳，從而耗盡緊急任務。正如“murder 謀殺”不應該被例行地偽飾成“homicide 殺人”，“torture 酷刑”也不應該被扔進“human- rights abuses 侵犯人權”這個包羅萬象的垃圾箱，同理性侵犯的詞匯也是如此。
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