The NYT “no pattern of sexual misconduct except for the pattern” line is a good illustration of why I think a civil rights, rather than criminal, lens on sexual harms is so important. This is a little wonky, but I think it matters:

Under civil rights law, sexual harassment is an expansive category of conduct that includes, but is not limited to, sexual assault. What connects behavior within that broad category is that it is unwanted, and that it is “on the basis of sex”

“On the basis of sex” can mean many things, and encompasses harassment against people of all genders. The best theorizing talks about how harassment is both rooted in and perpetuates sex-based inequality and stereotypes.

Plainly, it is dehumanizing and degrading, and stands in the way of victims participating fully in public life. In the case of working women, it is often based in, and entrenches, a fundamental disbelief that women will ever really be workers before they are sex objects.

Under a civil rights frame, in short, all kinds of degrading behavior are part of the same “pattern.” All of it is a threat to freedom, dignity, and equality. It doesn’t have to be physical to “count.”

Criminal law is a whole other world. Different kinds of sexual assault are placed in a strict hierarchy. Definitions are narrow. Lots of sexual harassment simply isn’t a crime.

So many of us are used to thinking about sexual harms as a crime and only a crime. But they are threats to civil rights, too. And I think that lens gives us a more expansive view of the many forms violence takes, and why it matters. It allows us to see patterns.