#2(p. 19) How can
one go about deciding whether sexual acts have been performed with
consent or have been coerced? Does the presence of coercion always
mean that the act was not performed with consent; does the absence of
coercion always mean that the act was done consensually? Do we often
legitimately coerce or put
pressure on people to do things they prefer not to do?
To
determine the role of coercion in human sexual relationships, as well
as in any other sort of relationship, it will serve to first briefly
delineate the terms involved. “Coercion” is held here to be any
application of pressure or influence by one party on another toward
some particular end. “Consent” is meant as the mutual
willingness or agreement
by agents to participate in some end; as no consent is necessary for
independent acts, it is held to be a relational term, describing only
interpersonal activities.
These
terms, to be sure, require some explanation of their own; coercion
is, after all, often meant to describe the overriding of another's
unwillingness to engage in an act by force, whether physical,
emotional, economic, etc. Such a definition is problematic, however,
because it presupposes the existence of a static will on the part of
its object; one must assume that there is a particular thing person A
wants, that they cannot ever want anything contrary to this, and then
characterize any activity by person B which results in person A not
pursuing their one desire as coercive. It is by dismissing this idea
of a static will, or unchanging mind, that one is left only with the
application of influence by person B on A as an adequate example of a
coercive act. Consent, similarly, may be uselessly complicated by
the suggestion that a paradoxically free and unchanging will is
present for all involved parties. There is a distinction, after all,
between what one chooses and what one wants; while some debate is
appropriate to determining which drive properly constitutes one's
“will”, except in the case of children at least, one is unlikely
to find in practice that the term applies to both.
In
this context, coercion and consent lose any mutual exclusivity;
unless one or more parties involved lack the status of being willful
agents, in fact, coercion of some sort becomes necessary for there to
be any relational act to be consented to. To explain this, let us
trace the progression of such a scenario: two strangers of
independent will and no previous experience with or influence on one
another exist such that they may
interact; neither is subject to any influence other than their own
will and, potentially, that of the other. What happens?
If
any interaction is to occur then, as the term is defined here, some
coercion must take
place: an influence of or by one party on the other must occur for
interaction, by definition, to be the case; to interact,
one must act upon
another, and vice versa. This influence may be unintentional, to be
sure, as in the case of person A being independently attracted to
some external quality of person B; such would be a case of the
influence of B on A,
as opposed to an influence by B
on A such as active manipulation or seduction. In either event,
however, an overriding of A's existing will by B can be said to
occur, since that will is changed from its original state as a
consequence of B. To speak to the legitimacy
of this changing seems fruitless, since A might just as easily
respond to unintentional qualities in B which he or she did not wish
to respond to as to intentional ones which he or she did; whether it
was a desire or a decision which prompted A to interact with B, it is
conceivable that it would not be both at once. To say that the
intention of B in this instance determines the legitimacy of their
coercion seems speculative, since intention cannot be externally
determined by A.
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