Well, while the legal definition of assault is based on contact in general, I would guess that notahacker is talking about injurious violence, or at least a solid threat of it, as 'real assault'. And probably 'real' in terms of 'sexual' would mean something sexually motivated.

That's the problem with categories; a whole range of behaviors end up with the same name, and now we're wasting time with semantics instead of worrying about the rights violation.