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4 Coercion Critiques This chapter compares society’s traditional conception of coercion with many feminists’ far more expansive use of the term. As shown in chapter 2, feminists describe many women’s choices to sexually commodify themselves, sexually objectify themselves, and become full-time homemakers as forced, pressured, or coerced, in order to delegitimize the choices. The use of such coercion language is not surprising. Coercion arguments provide the simplest and most acceptable way to challenge the legitimacy and validity of an individual’s choice. However, while traditional conceptions of coercion are narrowly prescribed and can be justi¤ed on neutral grounds, many choices feminists criticize using the language of coercion are not coerced in the traditional sense and can only be explained as problematic by adopting a far more expansive and perfectionist conception of coercion. This chapter identi¤es the perfectionism hidden in feminists’ coercion-based criticisms of women’s choices to commodify their sexuality, objectify their sexuality, and become full-time homemakers. I. Traditional Conceptions of Coercion Most typically, we say a person is coerced if she is forced to choose between performing some unwanted act and having her rights violated. For example, a person may choose a suboptimal option in order to avoid a threatened violation of some personal or property right to which the individual is entitled. Because individuals should not make choices solely in order to avoid rights violations, choices made under such circumstances are generally considered coerced and illegitimate. Consider Mary, who as an initial baseline condition has the choice to run, skip, or jump, and she prefers the options in that order. Left on her own, Mary would choose to run. Assume, however, that Alex tells Mary that she must skip or he will hit her. In this case, Mary chooses to skip even though her preference ordering is clear and skipping is not her optimal choice. Mary’s choice is coerced. In order to avoid being hit, she must select one of her lesspreferred options. Sometimes, however, we also say a choice is coerced if it was made in or- der to avoid some harm to an individual’s existing level of well-being. For example, the threatened harm might not come in the form of physical abuse or destruction of property but might involve the loss of one’s job or eviction from one’s home. In this case, a person chooses a suboptimal option in order to avoid a harm to some existing level of well-being for which the individual has a legitimate expectation of stability.1 A. Threatened-Rights-Violation Version of Coercion The legal system invalidates choices made in response to threats in a number of different ways depending upon both the choice made and the threat used to induce it. For example, the legal system may (1) criminalize coercion by prosecuting the coercer and holding invalid the coercee’s submission , as in cases of extortion, rape, or robbery;2 (2) excuse those whose actions would normally be sanctionable, as in cases of duress;3 or (3) refuse to enforce contracts that are a product of coercion, as in cases of duress, or unconscionability .4 The rights-violation version of coercion identi¤es a baseline of entitlements such as physical integrity and private property. A choice is coerced when an individual does something she would not otherwise have chosen to do in order to avoid a relatively signi¤cant threatened rights violation. The classic example of a coerced choice is the one made in response to a mugger’s demand of “your money or your life.” The person who is given this choice and decides to hand over her wallet would, of course, prefer to remain in her original state in which she possesses both her money and her life. She is forced to choose a second-best option, having her life but not her money, in order to avoid her least-favored option, which entails a threatened rights violation, namely the loss of her life. The woman’s choice is, however, illegitimate and nonbinding. If the police were to ¤nd the mugger and the woman’s wallet, the wallet would still belong to the woman and would be returned to her. The woman’s decision to give her wallet to the mugger in order to save her life was not a “real” choice and is not enforced. In the eighteenth century, the law of duress only considered choices coerced and nonbinding if they were made in...

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