Google Dictionary’s definition of rape: “No definitions found.”

Sexual assault. Sexual abuse. Sexual aggression. Sexual violence. Sexual predator. Sexual coercion. Sexual misconduct.

To them all: “No definitions found.”

Considering 2017’s Person of the Year is the collective of people who had the guts to #MeToo, it would seem pressing for Google to define such terms. In fact, the terms sexual assault, sexual coercion, and sexual misconduct trended more in 2017 than at any other time since Google started keeping track.

So what’s going on when our go-to search engine trending the ilk of Harvey Weinstein and James Toback and Bill O’Reilly and Mark Halperin and Bill Cosby and Kevin Spacey and Donald Trump and George H.W. Bush and Terry Richardson and Danny Masterson and Russell Simmons and Roy Moore and Larry Nassar and Dustin Hoffman and Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer and Louis C.K. and Kevin Costner and Morgan Spurlock and Mario Batali and Charles Dutoit and Tavis Smiley and Marshall Faulk and Ike Taylor and Heath Evans and Ryan Lizza and James Levine and Garrison Keillor and Glenn Thrush and Jeffrey Tambor and Al Franken and Bill Clinton and Matt Zimmerman and Andrew Kreisberg and Steven Seagal and Ed Westwick and Brett Ratner and Jeremy Piven and Michael Oreskes and Leon Wieseltier and John Besh and Bob Weinstein and Oliver Stone and Ben Affleck and Roy Price and Alex Kozinski and Gene Simmons and Warren Moon and Peyton Manning and Ruben Kihuen and Blake Farenthold and Nick Carter and John Lasseter and John Conyers Jr. and Gary Goddard and Eddie Berganza and Matthew Weiner and David Guillod and Jeff Hoover and Andy Dick and Hamilton Fish and Knight Landesman and Lockhart Steele and Chris Savino and Trent Franks and George Takai and Charlie Sheen and Richard Dreyfuss and Tom Sizemore and Giraldo Rivera and Lorin Stein and Matt Dababneh and Israel Horovitz and Justin Huff and Johnny Luzzini and David Sweeney and Stephen Bittel and Larry King and Geoffrey Rush and Steve Jurvetson and Eric Davis and Donovan McNabb and Shervin Pishevar and Benny Bedina and Dan Schoen and Tony Cornish and Rick Najera and Tony Mendoza and Andre Balasz and Robert Scoble and Sylvester Stallone and Steven T. McLaughlin and Cliff Hite and Ken Friedman and Benjamin Genocchio and Kirt Webster and Andy Rubin and Raul Bocanegra and Eric Weinberger and Ken Baker and Peter Martins and Mark Schwahn and Bruce Weber and Avery Bradley and Miguel Sano and Jarryd Hayne and Albert Schultz and Ed Murray and Paul Haggis and Carter Oosterhouse and John Hockenberry  and James Rosen and Joel Achenbach and Corey Lewandowski and Mystikal Rodney Anderson and Max Landis and Steven Seagal and Franco Zeffirelli and Nelly and R. Kelly and Tariq Ramadan and Andy Signore and Jon Heely and  Clarence Thomas and Woody Allen and Stan Lee and Casey Affleck and Seal and Aziz Ansari and Michael Douglas and James Franco [catching my breath] has none of these definitions?

So I sent a press inquiry to Google. They never replied, probably because I’m not a member of the press. So I googled it.

Turns out, Google used to define rape.

It started like this: “The crime, committed by a man, of forcing…” It came with two example sentences: “he denied two charges of attempted rape,” and “he had committed at least two rapes.”

On January 9th, 2012, a complaint was posted on Google Search. “This is incorrect,” the complaint read, “women are capable of committing rape as well. I feel that it is entirely inappropriate … to be providing such a skewed and incorrect definition. Please update this to include females, both in definition and example.”

On August 14th, 2012, one Barry Schwartz posted a screenshot of the definition on Search Engine Roundtable highlighting “by a man.” The screenshot showed Google had removed the example sentences. Schwartz also referenced a Google Help thread from the previous day where “a couple of people” were “upset with the definition.”

“[C]ouple of people” literally meant two people; one person posted the definition, with “by a man” bolded, and one person replied “I hope this will be dealt with quickly … this is extremely sexist to say the least.”

Also in 2012, a Change.org petition stated “Google: change your dictionary’s definition for rape.” They aimed for one hundred signatures. Fifty-five people signed.

Could a Help thread with seventy-eight views over five years, an esoteric Search Engine Roundtable post, and a lapsed petition failing to reach even sixty percent of its goal hold such sway over Google? Maybe.

Google has a history of listening to complaints about sexism in definitions. Maddie Crum, in a piece for Huffington Post titled “It’s 2016, and Even the Dictionary is Full of Sexist Disses,” spotlighted the campaign #redefinewomen that uses Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter to point out problematic sentence examples such as “nagging wives,” “heartless and conniving woman,” “flighty Southern belle,” “she’s a wild, promiscuous, good-time girl,” and “shrill of women’s voices.” Less than a year later, all of the above examples were changed. Now it’s “heartless and conniving person” and “promiscuous teenagers.”

Though not all revisions eliminated the sexism: “‘For God’s sake!’ shrilled Jan.” and “She constantly nags her daughter about getting married.”

Willingness to revise does not, however, explain why Google nixed rape from its lexicon.

Google could’ve mimicked the Oxford American College Dictionary (OACD) by using qualifiers: “The crime, typically committed by a man” (emphasis added). In fact, Google has no problem using qualifiers:

          sexual harassment: “harassment (typically of a woman)”

          molest: “assault or abuse (a person, especially a woman or child)”

          sex discrimination: “against a person (typically a woman).”

The OACD is even what Google used for the two example sentences for rape. In fact, in the OACD under conniving you will find “heartless and conniving woman”; nagging brings up “nagging wives”; flighty brings up “flighty Southern belle.” Comparison between dictionaries shows a pattern of Google using condensed versions of the OACD.

Yet, the OACD has a definition for rape, sexual assault, etc.

And we can’t say Google dodges controversial terms. Google defines rape culture, statutory rape, marital rape, date rape, date-rape drug, acquaintance rape, gang rape, sexual harassment, sex crime, sex discrimination, sex typing, sex tourism, sex object, sex offender, sexual politics, and sexual equality.

Analyzing included-terms versus excluded-terms is bewildering. Google doesn’t include sex addict, but it does have sex maniac? No sexual predator, but date-rape drug and sex kitten are there in black and white? What’s more, molest includes the synonym rape with a link to “No definitions found.”

One “top contributor,” when I started a Google Help thread, replied “Why bother with it. [sic] A dictionary made up by unverified entries of unknown origin shouldn’t be taken really serious [sic] in the first place.” Isn’t such a nebulous resource problematic? Google receives 4,464,000,000 searches a day. I’m sure one or two seek word definitions. Such influence should require at least the same level of credibility as a freshman English paper.

Maybe, if this post reaches 79 readers or a petition racks up 56 signatures or we get a few people complaining about this, Google will at least include definitions for rape and sexual assault in the world’s most depended-upon resource.