Pleasure Can Hurt: The Erotic Politics of Sexual Coercion

Abstract

Sexual coercion is an unstable practice, often performed nervously on the boundary between flirtation and violation, flattery and coercion. While it is true that sexuality may sometimes be lived on a liminal fourth dimension, where it is immunized from morality by the press of (mutual) desire, it is also true that desire can be commandeered by all manner of malignancies which coopt the erotic into a traumatic register. This essay takes sexual coercion on its face, and explores many of its grim varietals, while also seeking to deconstruct the alchemy of sexuality, awash in its painful pleasures.