Coerced? – a nuanced discourse about consent – Tracy Ofarn

The issue of coerced sex is not a simple one; regardless of how many confident opinions you may see flying about the place. There are arguments over the differences between force and co-ercion; co-ercion and manipulation; manipulation and convincing.
I am by no means an expert on this subject but I understand coerced sex to be sex or sexual activity that a person didn’t want but was pressured into having, by another person. It can be easily distinguished from sex they wanted at the time, but are now regretting. A lot of people think it falls short of rape, depending on the particular circumstance, because of the existence of technical consent.
In high school, I’ve heard coercion described as ’emotional rape’. The term covered a range of activities – begging; badgering and/or crying (people have reported this kind of bothering for hours); threatening shame and public disgrace; creating and manipulating circumstances so that the other person can’t leave a particular location; or creating physical barriers or restraints without actually forcing yourself on the victim; or sometimes just standing over the person, visibly frustrated and enraged, nursing what seems like a painful erection, until she gives in.
What differentiates coercion from what people usually consider to be rape is the giving in, or the failure to say ‘no’ (assuming the person is not incapacitated).
The reasons people reluctantly consent also vary. For some, there is a real fear of being attacked (whether the other party acknowledges it or not) or of the threat of blackmail being carried out. With others, it is a desire to stop the Other person’s apparent distress; not wanting to cause trouble; or giving in just to be left alone. Some freeze; others rationalise – with themselves and the other person – and a lot of women have been conditioned to blame themselves for being in that position in the first place.
The society’s reaction to claims, and complaints of coerced sex are also varied.
Leaving aside the issue of false accusations, the society’s first reaction seems to be outrage, that people are trying to categorise coercion as rape, or even sexual assault.
Some people think that once consent is obtained, however it is obtained, no one should attempt to ruin a man’s reputation by even hinting at the ‘r’ word. While others accept that coercion is wrong, opinions vary as to whether it should criminalised, or whether the term rape should be reserved for what is, in their minds, a very specific offence.
There are the usual declarations that women should take responsibility for their actions, which include not being anywhere alone with a man who is attracted to them, being prepared to confront or physically fight off their attacker, or to repeat ‘no’ loudly for as many times as is necessary.
In making these declarative statements, people frequently fail to take into account the different forms of coercion. There is a desire for a clean line to be drawn between rape (a criminal act that only monsters and fake men commit) and coercion (not great, but not a crime for goodness’ sake!) and convincing (oh come on! we’ve all done it). To people who consider themselves to be decent, rape is inexcusable, but coercion is debateable.
I think the reason that this has been an issue for such a long time is some problematic views about sex which are similar to views that justify or excuse rape. Society has only relatively recently begun to question long-held beliefs that men cannot, and should not, be expected to control their sexual impulses, because they somehow ‘need’ sex and the responsibility for providing, controlling, or resisting sexual activity, lies with women. This apparent ‘need’ for sex goes hand in hand with reducing women to a receptacle for that desire. ‘Sorry’ goes the traditional advice ‘this is just a risk that women have to wise up to’. The begging, lying and trickery are just things a savvy woman will have to navigate her way around (if she is lucky), all these does not make the man ‘a bad guy’, it just makes him a ‘man’.
It’s difficult to overestimate how much this mindset, that women should be in charge of men’s desires, is engrained in both conservative and liberal societies. Both factions provide different answers. Religious conservatives have preached abstinence and an iron-grip on your sexual desires as a solution while the left has gone for the more relevant emphasis on the importance of enthusiastic consent. This webpage illustrates the point – https://sapac.umich.edu/article/205 .
The left has also championed sexual liberation, particularly in relation to recognising that sex is not just something that happens to women; women have an equal say in what kind of sex takes place at all times.
However, I do get the feeling that the ‘liberation’ part of sexual liberation sometimes lags behind the sex part. The acknowledgement that people will have, quite often, creative and exotic sex outside of marriage and conventional relationships, has, for some, turned into an entitlement to that kind of casual sex.
There have been high profile cases involving men, whom many would expect to be very concerned about enthusiastic consent, but who have instead decided that any woman they fancy is definitely sexually liberated enough to be pressured unconscionably into casual sex with them. This is despite fairly clear signs that the women very much do not want to have sex with them at that moment.
So is the much-derided Matt Walsh right? Does ‘hook-up’ culture lead to rape culture (https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/476741565046476801)? Not in my view. Rape has existed since recorded history. The reason that it has been treated as a baby crime in so many societies, with the many exceptions and conditions that make detection, punishment and even identification very difficult, is that people have seen rape as an extension of men’s uncontrollable sexual desires (instead of an act of violence and the exertion of power that it is) and because women are reduced and objectified as recipients, receptacles or ‘plunder’ when it comes to sex and sexual violence.
Coerced sex is just another manifestation of this thinking, perhaps brought about by the stigmatisation of violent rape. Disregard for women’s sexual and bodily autonomy is still very much alive – as long as the hurdle of technical consent can be crossed.
Criminalising, at least, some manifestations of this behaviour is probably necessary, because they are so close to force (which is what a lot of coercion is) and removing any real choice and because some people will never really care about a woman’s consent anyway. However, I do think society needs to dig deeper – especially those of us who call ourselves liberals. If you consider yourself to be a decent human being, you can’t escape the fact that women – people – are autonomous beings. If someone does not want to have sex with you on your terms at that time, that should be the end of the discussion. If you are about to have sex with someone you despise, you’re at greater risk of turning them into an object for your desire and disregarding their wishes. If you go on a night out and your state of mind is that you are going to get laid tonight, come hell or highwater, you are probably on the way to downplaying autonomy and true consent.
There are other complicated scenarios. For instance, there is an expectation of sex in most romantic relationships. The question is when. For some it’s marriage, for others it’s on the first date. For a lot more others, it’s somewhere in between. No one is entitled to sex from another human being, but we acknowledge that if sex suddenly stops in a relationship (or never starts), it is an issue that needs to be addressed. However, in a relationship, when does a discussion about sex turn into coercion? Is threatening to end a relationship really co-ercion as the link above suggests or should people be as entitled to say they want sex as they are to say that they don’t want sex?
How about when you are the only liberated soldier in a backwards, conservative society and you are sure that the woman you are with wants you but is only being held back by outdated beliefs about what good girls do and do not do? Is it your noble duty to disabuse her of her unevolved, primitive ideas – the sex with you being just a collateral benefit, of course, hardly worth mentioning? Should you convince her that’s ‘it’s okay’, God doesn’t love you any less if you have sex with me this minute and it would definitely be the right thing to do?’
I don’t have all the answers but I feel very strongly that if someone does not want to have sex or any kind of sexual activity at that moment, deciding to co-erce, manipulate or convince them to go further shows a disturbing willingness to override their will. And the only relevant communication is what they are saying in the present; not what they have done in the past or what they may enjoy in the future. It sometimes is rape and it sometimes is sexual assault but it doesn’t have to be classified as such for it to be wrong. Consent is not a technicality to avoid trouble or a goal in itself; it is a recognition that the other person is an equal, autonomous person like yourself.
All in all, the issue of coercive sex clearly needs to be addressed and certain behaviour should be criminalised, in my view, if it is not already. But the conversation around it demonstrates the fundamental problems in how we understand and regard consent. It is tempting to demonise everybody or wish everyone would just stop wanting to have casual sex. However, the key may be to answer this question about consent honestly: if you are willing to plough ahead with sex with someone who has expressly said they don’t want to have sex at that time and/or who is clearly reluctant for whatever reason, in what ways exactly do you consider your mindset to be different from a rapist’s?

The Curious Case of D S Fapson and the Taxify Driver

On the 25th January, actress Dorcas Shola Fapson, accused, via some Snapchat posts, a Taxify driver of attempted kidnap and rape. Within 24 hours, the driver had posted a contrary account and Fapson had provided further details, including video footage of the incident – such is the power and urgency of social media these days.

I’ve found the public’s reaction to these accounts bewildering. Polarised opinions are the order of the day on social media but this case feels special. There have been disagreements on not just the story as a whole or who was right but also, the individual events which make up the story.

The only thing that everyone agrees on is that Fapson booked and entered a taxi, the trip ended badly and that pepper spray was involved. The driver says that the disagreement started when she refused to reveal her destination whereupon he stopped the trip, moved the car forward – an action which took him a few seconds – and tried to retrieve his car keys from her.

She says he tried to insist on an unregistered cash payment instead of a card payment with the company as booked, refused to take her to her destination or let her out of the car when she declined, drove her to unknown premises, tried to drag her into the building, threatened and assaulted her with a choke hold, closed the car door on her legs etc. Even stranger than the irreconcilable accounts is the focus on baying for Fapson’s blood (and anyone who tries to support her), without acknowledging these factual disparities.

While Fapson’s initial account was at first met with disgruntled silence and followed by demands for evidence, the driver’s post connected with Nigerian Twitter. Perhaps it was the perceived class differences between them but I think the real basis of the simmering rage and public outcry is the belief that this is yet another example of a woman weaponising the ability to accuse a man of rape for her own evil purposes.

The outcry fails to take into account of the fact that Fapson’s video evidence refutes some of the claims made by the driver. An example is the driver’s claim that he only drove a few yards down the road to take advantage of some security lighting. The video clearly shows him driving her to a set of gates, she stating that she doesn’t know where she is and he not counteracting that statement. He gets out of the car and hurried towards the gates, leaving his keys in the ignition (providing an answer to the stupid question ‘why would he leave his keys in the car if he meant to kidnap her?’).

The video also shows him trying to keep her in the car, rather than his account of repeatedly and politely asking her to alight and only engaging her physically to retrieve his car keys.
This is confusing because, while one could build a narrative that when she refused to get out of the car like he asked her to, he drove off to his house in frustration, reached the gates and then tried to chuck her out of the car, I can’t think of any reason he would want to keep her in the car. If he was so worried about his car, like he claimed, surely that would increase the chances of her driving off.

We do eventually hear him trying to drag her (but this is after she had asked him to let her out of the car – did he change his mind about keeping her in or was he trying to drag her on to the premises?) and we don’t see the choke hold of course. There are those better qualified than me to untangle the facts and perhaps they will get a chance to do so.

Instead of a discussion about the facts, the initial, and sustained, reaction has been one of massive outrage that Fapson dared to label this driver a rapist.

I believe this discussion sheds some light on two aspects of rape culture – the concerted effort to discredit rape and sexual assault victims for the purpose of silencing them and women who actually make false accusations that they have been raped.

In relation to the discrediting, rape is, of course, a difficult crime to prove and one way of the most effective methods for stopping victims from coming forward, is the threat that, should a conviction not occur or even before any charge is laid or prosecution carried out, the victims will be forever labelled ‘evil women’ willing to ruin lives for no justifiable reason.

If this fear affects conventional victims (raped by strangers after violence or the threat of violence), it becomes scarier when a victim has been raped by family members, close friends, relationship partners, dates or colleagues.

The silencing is perpetuated, not just by immediately assuming that the victim is lying, it includes dragging out past, unrelated sexual liaisons, slut shaming, purity culture (a woman is spoiled by sexual activity anyway – who cares whether it’s consensual or not?), spiritual blackmailing (if you don’t forgive that deacon for molesting you, aren’t you really as bad as him in Jesus’ eyes?) and questioning why she chose to drive a man to such a sexual peak that he could not help but attack her.

The culture of silencing victims is clearly traumatising and is the major reason so many victims keep quiet.

Some of these tools/weapons have already been deployed against Fapson. It is being claimed that she once begged a male singer to start a relationship with her to increase her celebrity status– information related to this incident…how?

Many people are very much aware of the above issues. While we know that too many sexual assaults go unreported because of silencing tactics, we also acknowledge that it is a terrible and devastating thing to falsely accuse a man of rape. Although it’s only fair to point out the inconsistency between Nigerians describing, on social media, the effects of rape and the effects of being accused of rape.

If a man is assumed to be falsely accused of rape, then it is a horrendous thing that will destroy his life, presumably because rape is such a terrible thing. If a man is actually proven to have raped someone then we should forgive him because everyone makes mistakes, do we want to kill him, did he kill someone, what was she wearing ……??

Anyway! False claims do happen and apart from tearing a hole through a man’s life, they drag the fight against rape and rape culture backwards. The next victim will always be prejudiced by a false rape claim.

Despite the fact that the movement for dismantling the rampant rape culture and addressing the high occurrence of sexual assaults in Nigeria is relatively new, it seems Nigerians have had enough of rape allegations already. No woman is allowed to utter the words ‘rape’ or ‘rapist’ – unless:-
(1) it has happened – I won’t bother adding ‘or is about to happen’ as, in this case, even if the attack had been in an advanced stage, some would still have insisted that Fapson could have avoided it by being polite, begged or time travelled to choose a better outfit;
(2) you have ample evidence of being raped and you are prepared to paste the evidence all over social media;
(3) you are prepared to attend a police station, even though numerous women have reported sexual assault carried out by Nigerian police officers and their reprehensible attitude towards rape victims;
(4) you never withdraw your complaint because, for the price of bringing a potentially good man down, you should be prepared to accept any and all threats to your being;
of course (5) you were the perfect rape victim – dressed modestly, not roaming the streets at night, polite and respectful to all involved, with a propensity for sprinting.

Even if you have been able to do all these and go on about it too much, Nigerian twitter will advise you to move on with your life and have some dignity for God’s sake!

There is clearly some panic about women wielding their power and privilege to cry rape at any every instance and this panic, I would suggest, is nothing new whenever there is a concerted effort to address sexual crimes. Hopefully it will pass but, when you compare the reaction to Fapson to the reaction to Kemen in BBNaija (https://talkglitz.tv/nigerians-blast-bbnaija-for-continuous-association-with-kemen-tag-him-rapst/) in April of last year, the real crime appears to be broadcasting a rape or rape attempt rather than committing one, according to Nigerian Social Media.

I hate to drag out the past but for those who don’t know the Kemen story, he was a Big Brother Nigeria contestant who was disqualified for sexually assaulting a sleeping female housemate . The real debate began after the programme concluded and Kemen was invited to join the housemates on various publicity tours and effectively resumed his status as a celebrity reality show contestant. I was grimly satisfied when the ‘woke’ people whom I follow recognised this as an outrageous endorsement of the lack of consequences for sexual assault in Nigeria. Imagine my horror and bitterness when I learned that the #freekemen contingent were not only in the majority but felt that the incident being brought to public knowledge was punishment enough and that Kemen should be allowed to flourish free from these Godless, unforgiving, judgmental people who insisted on dragging out issues that should be allowed to die down, after all ‘did he kill somebody?’ and also what was she wearing…?

Back to the recent incident, perhaps there are other ways in which Fapson could have made the incident known, if you ignore how shocking that night must have been for her. With the benefit of hindsight, maybe she could have started with a fuller account instead of short posts and labelling – but I can’t see anything wrong in her letting people know about this event, if only to stop other women from going through the same thing.

On a related subject, I notice, in addition to women who make false rape allegations, another group of women who have been condemned in this incident – women who have accused Fapson of making the whole thing up. Fapson dramatically said ‘I hope far worse happens to you, your mother and your unborn children’. Lord. Simi, in a deleted post echoing some of the sentiments that Adekunle Gold had expressed and also deleted due to the backlash from his followers (They said what to you on Twitter, Kunle? Hold my beer…..), also singled them out as being particularly reprehensible.

It is especially dispiriting when women defend sexism, rape culture and the like. It’s even worse when they take part in sexual attacks. It is surprising, as well, given that they could more readily be a victim of what they are undertaking in or failing to condemn. But I’ve always wondered (but never voiced aloud) about the claim that they are ‘worse than the men’?

It is bad for both women and men to fail to address or participate in rape culture. Men do it because of the obvious privileges of being able to act badly or not without many consequences; women do it to align with or identify with the conventional society, to cement their status as ‘good or sensible women’ and ‘not one of these crazy feminists’ and probably for other reasons, like protecting themselves against male (out) rage or even maybe because they genuinely believe what they are saying. Both have their reasons and both are equally bad, in my view.