> He was not defending Minsky, he argued that the crime (which he states he had no reason to deny) as described was not "assault".

But he was wrong about English usage and about legal usage of the word "assault".

When we're talking about a child who has been trafficked and coerced into sex it's weird to "well actually, is it really assault?" into the conversation, especially if that's based on his misunderstanding of what the word means.

And the effect of his interject was to defend Minsky. When hundreds of people misinterpret him the blame lies with his poor communication, not their lack of comprehension.

Then I apologize on my understanding of the English language.

According to the quote I read of RMS (I did not read the original email fully) the salient part is his discussion where he claims that "sexual assault" as an expression (at least colloquially) implies the use of force/violence/aggression/intimidation/coercion/etc. by Minsky.

He claims that given the official report as true and taking the the claim of the victim as correct none of those (force/violence/aggression/intimidation/coercion/etc.) were likely.

This is independent on whether Minsky committed a crime or not. This is simply trying to properly understand what the accusations are. I honestly have no idea whether this would constitute rape/statutory rape/assault or any other crime, taking in goodwill what I have read it is likely that whatever happened (other witnesses claim to have seen Minsky decline the advances and the report does not claim any sexual encounter, "just" that Epstein instructed her to) Minsky did not use violence.

I actually believe I misrepresented RMS words here, as he truly only said that the violence implied by the word assault was unlikely.

(Also given that by other reports one of Epstein tactics was to lure guests into having sex with minors to blackmail them)

(I hope this is not entirely off topic) Since I first commented in this thread I saw a regular fluctuation in upvotes/downvtes (which is totally reasonable since the topic is divisive). I wonder how much that is due to a geographical distribution.

In this case the dataset would not be big enough to draw statistical conclusions, but this site (like most forums) slightly suffer from the duality of US-based and international, as it cannot be truly both at the same time.

I can see many reason to never implement something like a geographical indication of which countries upvoted/downvoted (especially as it would contradict the spirit of this site), but in contentious topics it would allow some useful insights.

If this is indeed the case then I mostly agree it sounds like he's arguing why it's called assault.

For example, people will call it "rape" when it's someone underage no matter the circumstance. Having willful sex with someone underage vs. physical forcing them to have sex with you are two very different things. Yet in (most?) people's minds they just call it rape, under the context that someone underage can't properly consent. Ok, but physical forcing yourself on someone vs willingly are still different things. I don't know what to call them, but calling them the same thing is completely disingenuous to the crime.

I'm guessing this is what he was going after? Maybe because when we think of "assault" we generally think it's the physical act of assault, not an emotional or control one...

According to the quote I read yes. He was pointing out that assault (at least colloquially) implies a form of aggression, which he believed to be unlikely given official reports.