The Office on Women’s Health defines sexual coercion as any “unwanted sexual activity that happens when you are pressured, tricked, threatened, or forced in a nonphysical way” often making you feel as though owe someone sex. In other words, sexual coercion is a form of forced consent. Yep, “forced consent.” Even that term is tricky because there should be no such thing as consent that is forced—consent inherently can’t be forced (more on that later). Sexual coercion happens when a person feels—for one reason or another—that they must concede or else. They may recognize it at the moment, or they may not even realize what dynamic took place until after the event.
For example, you and your BBF always laughed at the fact that she only hooked up with that one guy who always had a crush on her because he had planned a lavish date and she didn’t want to make him feel bad. While the story passes as banter at brunch (and so many people can relate for sure), when you look back at it, you realize the story she told maybe concealed that she partook for reasons outside of actually wanting to. The dynamic is stickier than straight-up consent.
Or, consider this story about an awkward date published in the New Yorker back in 2017. The gist: Twenty-year-old Margot went on a date with 34-year-old Robert and while things got off to a rocky start, he acted like a gentleman, enough for Margot to want to go to his place. Once there, things got hot and heavy but she, at some point recognized she really didn’t want to go forward. She still ended up having sex with him, however, because she a) felt guilty because she was the one who initiated and b) she was afraid he would get mad at her and it was unclear what might happen to her thereafter since she was at his place.