It's important to realize the 11% statistic is a statistic that includes non-consensual ass-grabbing in the same bucket with forcible rape, which isn't informative for most purposes and I can only imagine wasn't done in good faith.

Here is from that report, things that constitute "sexual assault":

    "Sexual attack: Forcing or attempted forcing into any unwanted sexual activity, by threatening, holding down, or hurting in some way;
    Unwanted sexual touching: Touching against a person’s will in any sexual way, including unwanted touching or grabbing, kissing, or fondling;
    Sexual activity where unable to consent: Subjecting to a sexual activity to which a person was not able to consent, including being intoxicated, drugged, manipulated, or forced in ways other than physically;
    Sexual activity to which a person did not consent, after they consented to another form of sexual activity (for example, agreeing to protected sex and then learning it had been unprotected sex)."

Those things constitute 11% sexual assault number you cite. It's important to realize that "sexual assault" to most people means rape and things that are pretty close to rape, so that's how they'll interpret the 11% number, but the criteria include "Touching against a person’s will in any sexual way, including unwanted touching or grabbing, kissing, or fondling;" and I don't see a breakdown by type. I would imagine that the vast majority of positive reports were in the non-consensual touching bucket. So we're looking at a statistic that includes non-consensual ass-grabbing in the same bucket with forcible rape. I guess I've been sexually assaulted numerous times.

Don't take this to trivialize bad experiences people have had, take it as an attack on shoddy methods that are clearly designed to stoke fires of indignation rather than shed light on a prickly topic.

>Given that last stat... I don't think you're interpreting this correctly.

I agree, bucketing all of those experiences together seems extremely misleading.

>> One in ten (11%) women students experienced a sexual assault in a postsecondary setting during the previous year. About one in five (19%) women who were sexually assaulted said that the assault took the form of a sexual activity to which they did not consent after they had agreed to another form of sexual activity—for example, agreeing to have protected sex and then learning it had been unprotected sex.

Is there a baseline for what constitutes sexual assault? Or is it entirely subjective?

Generally sexual encounters in which there is not informed consent between participants is considered assault. Someone who consents to sex with contraception when the sex doesn’t have contraception isn’t an informed consenting party.

As this is from Statistics Canada, they would be using the government definitions, which include rape on the sexual assault spectrum.

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/victim/rr14_01/p10...

Obviously rape would be at one end of the spectrum but what's the distribution of incidents over the entire spectrum?

They say in that report you linked in the OP that they include "behaviours such as unwelcome sexual comments, actions or advances" which are entirely subjective.