It's not a matter of excuses. They both fucked up.
I thought that was one of the more interesting points of S6, actually; the Big Bad turned out to be someone just as souled as anyone else whereas Spike, sans soul, sought out a way to ensure that he couldn't ever do anything to hurt Buffy like that again and was judged by the criteria of someone who was souled already.
It also felt like a point was being made to compare Buffy's actions with Spike's. He tried to rape her but the time that she beat the crap out of him and left him for dead was treated with nearly the same degree of condemnation and had a similar impact on her actions, with Buffy realizing how far she'd gone and taking steps to prevent it from happening again.
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I thought that was one of the more interesting points of S6, actually; the Big Bad turned out to be someone just as souled as anyone else whereas Spike, sans soul, sought out a way to ensure that he couldn't ever do anything to hurt Buffy like that again and was judged by the criteria of someone who was souled already.
It also felt like a point was being made to compare Buffy's actions with Spike's. He tried to rape her but the time that she beat the crap out of him and left him for dead was treated with nearly the same degree of condemnation and had a similar impact on her actions, with Buffy realizing how far she'd gone and taking steps to prevent it from happening again.