This Girl's Worth

I don’t like talking about my experiences often because they are uncomfortable, but my earliest experiences were sexual coercion. You know, the experiences where you say no a million times, express boundaries, someone pushes past your boundaries or works to manipulate you into pushing physical boundaries? Yeah, those were my experiences.

I didn’t want to cross certain sexual boundaries before marriage. I also didn’t know how to set sexual boundaries. Parents teach you how to say no to adult violators as a child. They teach you that you don’t have to do anything you want to do. Parents, however, never teach us about manipulation or coercion. We’re raised just expecting to be smart enough to recognize it.

Here’s the thing, normal people are not walking around life expecting someone to try and violate them. A healthy sense of the world goes about it with a sense of freedom and awareness. Anyone can fall prey to coercion.

Coercion favors the innocent, naive, trusting person. Coercion is when a person aims to manipulate, deceive, or break down the will of a person to reach a goal. Here are some examples.

1. A sales person offering different discounts after you repeatedly say no until you finally say yes.
2. A child asking mom for something, she says no, so the child asks dad, who says yes.
3. A boyfriend asking his girlfriend on every date to have sex with him after she repeatedly says no.
4. Someone throwing an unbearable temper tantrum every time someone says no.
5. A man negotiating sexual favors with a woman. She says no to sex, so he asks her to sext or send a naked picture.
6. A boyfriend doing a sexual act on his girlfriend first to create obligation so she will return the favor.

The very nature of coercion is to behave in a certain way to influence the behavior of another individual without consideration of this person’s well-being or boundaries.

I struggled with this the first time I experienced sexual coercion. A guy I’d become good friends with and talked to everyday for years suddenly expressed interest in me. I didn’t like him enough to date him, but he began pressuring me, constantly finding ways to isolate me from our friend group, and eventually, he began pressuring me to have sex with him. He violated me so many times, from rubbing against me when he had an erection to laying on top of me, to biting my lower lip, to forcing himself on me to kiss me. I exchanged text messages I regret with him thinking it would help divert attention (young and dumb and inexperienced), and just numbed myself when he pressured me. My response to trauma was freeze.

It wasn’t the only time I experienced coercion. The most coercion I experienced was when I was in a relationship. Every physical progression in the relationship came with a little bit of pressure. There were times my no was blatantly disregarded. Sometimes, he’d ask and didn’t even wait for me to respond. I didn’t even understand it was coercive or manipulation until 2 years into the relationship.

It is always unsettling to think of your first experiences as sexual coercion. Most people don’t know how to interpret when this happens, so they blame themselves for putting themselves in a bad position or exercising poor judgment. This negative thinking trap actually makes us fall prey to sexual coercion because instead of holding the other person accountable and deeming them unsafe, we control our actions. Shame makes us freeze. This is partly true that we might not have properly assessed the situation. We can be more perceptive to avoid danger, but what’s tricky is that coercion doesn’t always initially look like danger.

It’s unfair to think when we are sexually coerced/violated that we need to control our actions because we can’t control theirs. We have to accept that those who chose to violate us and ignore our boundaries are at fault. Our only job is to accurately access the situation and make ourselves safe.

Of course, you don’t walk into dangerous situations unguarded, preferably, at all. However, in situations where you don’t expect to even have to guard yourself, it is easy for you to fall prey.

That’s what’s so tricky about coercion. It typically happens in safe environments, familiar environments, and people you know. Most coercion happens in a dance. They ask for a little and take you much further than you asked. A friend you’ve known for years asks you to come over for a movie night. He says he likes you, but after you chatted, you expressed you are better off as friends, and he seemingly agrees calmly. Yet, during movie night, he keeps trying to physically make moves on you. You push back on him. At the end of the night, he says sorry, and he won’t do it again. You’ve known him for years, so you believe this is an outlier. Then, he says he wants to see you again to hang out. He comes to pick you up, except this time. He puts a movie on and inches closer and closer to you. Things seem calmer than last time, but he’s being as playful as he usually is. Next thing you know, he’s tickling you, then somehow he is on top of you as you’re weak from laughing, and he sticks his tongue down your throat. You are confused. Depending on if you’re naturally passive or a fighter, your response will vary.

Wisdom tells you not to hang out alone with men who are trying to pursue you, even if you are friends. As young women, you might think that because you are friends, they are not a threat. After all, you know them. Everyone knows them as harmless. As a young woman, you think you are hanging out with your friend, whom you love, as a friend. To the “friend,” he is trying to isolate you and create situations where you will acquiesce on boundaries you clearly expressed because he wants something from you. He knows if he were to ask outright, you would say no, so he finds another way to get what he wants from you. He will wear down your will or catch you off guard.

This is the dance of coercion. You walk right into danger and do not perceive it, and then someone attempts to negotiate your boundaries. The other person refuses to leave with nothing from you, so they will maneuver anyway possible to get their needs met. You are oblivious, and by the time you wise up, it’s too late, and you are already in a trap or uncomfortable situation where you don’t feel free to act or move.

I’ve had too many experiences to the point that I don’t give evil a chance. I don’t hang out alone with men. I don’t let men touch me, even playfully, constantly that I am not in a relationship with. I don’t spend time alone with men in rooms. I hate that I have to think this way, but I don’t want to be ensnared in a trap.

Coercion happens when someone tries to get you to negotiate your boundaries or someone forces you to do something you expressed you do not want to do.

When it’s something sexual, it’s uncomfortable, but I know so many women that wouldn’t send a nude, but sexted or wouldn’t go all the way but touched him just because a man’s sexual desire was so strongly expressed, they felt pressured. Women numbing themselves during sexual experiences to just get through it is also very common. In almost every conversation I’ve had with women, they’ve had this exact experience.

I hope we can raise our children to understand sexual coercion and coercion in general. People need to be actively taught about manipulation, because if you were raised in a world where manipulation was taught as wrong and evil, as it is, you will be shocked to find half of this world thinks manipulation is simply a tool to get what they want, and you will end up on the other side of their manipulation.

It’s no one’s fault. We’ve all been used by someone to meet their needs, but we can definitely start educating ourselves and then educating others and our homes to protect our children from evil in this world. ❤️