Can a kick in the balls be sexual violence?

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This question explicitly excludes self-defense.

I’m asking about non-defensive attacks that deliberately target the genitals — not to stop a threat, but to humiliate, dominate, incapacitate, or emasculate.

When this violence

targets the victim because of their sex
targets sex-specific anatomy
exploits a vulnerability that is deeply tied to shame, identity, and sexuality
publicly strips agency and dignity through incapacitation
induces fear (and real threat) around sexual integrity, agency and being
is reinforced by social minimization, ridicule, and lack of moral correction

is the resulting trauma really best understood as non-sexual?

A comparison:

Pulling down someone’s pants in public is widely recognized as sexual violence.

It isn’t erotic or lust-driven. Its purpose is humiliation, domination, and the exertion of power — motivations that are understood as central to sexual violence.

In genital assault, sexual anatomy is not exposed but directly attacked.
What is exposed instead is the person’s sexual vulnerability, helplessness, and loss of dignity.
Functionally, the violation operates along the same dimensions.

Trauma psychology and international humanitarian law already recognize this as sexual violence.

This classification does not depend on severe injury, lasting physical damage, or erotic intent.

Sexual violence concerns violations of:

sexual anatomy and bodily integrity
sexual agency and autonomy
psychological and identity-level security
dignity and social standing

It it not dependent on the perpetrator’s internal motivations.

Relevant research:

In Nonsexual Assaults to the Genitals in the Youth Population (download pdf from University of New Hampshire here), sociologist and expert on child sexual abuse David Finkelhor questions whether the absence of sexual gratification is sufficient to classify genital assaults as “nonsexual.”

The study later presents findings that the patterns of psychological harm in boys match those of recognized forms of sexual violence — most notably “significantly higher levels of posttraumatic and depression symptomatology than boys without such assaults”.

Cultural framing:

Even outside academic definitions, cultural intuition often treats genital harm as sexually meaningful.

This can be demonstrated through revenge psychology in film and TV.
To be optimally satisfying, revenge has to cover the same dimensions of violation as the original act.
A groper gets kicked in the groin, a rapist gets violently castrated.

In the case of castration as revenge for rape, the shared dimensions include:

targeting of sexual anatomy
exploitation of sex-specific vulnerability
annihilation of sexual agency and sexual being
humiliation and domination
identity-level harm
enduring fear around sexuality
perceived irreversibility of harm

When a writer — male or female — thinks of the “best”, most horrible way to violate a man as a male, in regard to his manhood, to the greatest depth and extent possible — they converge on violent castration.
They acknowledge the testicles as the most violable part of a male, the greatest locus of vulnerability — physically and psychologically — and their destruction as the greatest extent of that violation.

And the viewer is satisfied with it, as revenge for rape.
It’s not “not enough” — it is satisfying. What does this mean?
Why do we acknowledge the weight and violation of this act, when it is used as come-uppance, but not when plead to protect boys and men?
Does a kick in the groin not touch the same dimensions of vulnerability and violation — even if it doesn’t reach the same depth?

Intuitive Acknowledgement:

Here are two pieces — an article by a female author, and a twitter thread by a male author (which had multiple articles written about it) that independently arrive at female on male genital violence as the most fitting analogy to male on female sexual violence, in a thought experiment urging men to understand rape culture.

Traumatic Sexualization

It’s also worth considering whether fetishization of genital harm in men represents a trauma response.
Trauma psychology recognizes that survivors may sexualize feared or overwhelming experiences as a way to regain control in a consensual, non-harmful context.
This is known as traumatic sexualization.
Implying “they like it so it can’t be bad” repeats the same myths historically used to dismiss other forms of sexual trauma.

Relevant definitions of sexual violence

National Library of Medicine and World Health Organization (WHO)
“Sexual violence is any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion”

Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY) (pdf)
“Acts of sexual violence … include … electrocution and beatings of genitals …”
(the intensity of the violence has no bearing on whether it is sexual or not. There is no erotic intent or gratification. The violation is sexual, because it violates in sexual dimensions)

International Criminal Court (ICC) (pdf)
““An act can be ‘sexual’ even without physical contact, such as psychological violence that arises from threats of rape or genital mutilation.”
(An assault on the genitals is both — physical and psychological violence, but erotic neither in intent nor as an act. The threat of genital mutilation is inherent to it, and can cause fear of it even without severe damage)

Council Of Europe (COE)
(Gender-based violence)

DePaul University (pdf)
(definition of and myths around sexual violence)