Everyday Coercion: Men’s Use of Routine Sexual Coercion Within Heterosex

Everyday Coercion explores men’s routine use of sexual coercion toward women in ’everyday’ social and dating interactions, and how such sexual coercion has been normalized within a landscape of heteronormativity, rape culture, and binarized gender roles.

A groundswell of activism over the past decade has directed attention to the epidemic of sexual violence around the world. Women are seeking to make sense of why they are so commonly subject to sexism, misogyny and sexual violence, and why they and their behavior are often socially interrogated, instead of those causing the harm. With unapologetic curiosity, Wilson shines a light onto this contradiction by unpacking the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours we’ve been encouraged to see as ’normal’.

Drawing on participant insights about coercion, masculinity, sex and consent, Everyday Coercion unpacks contemporary themes like unacknowledged rape, victim blame and performative naivety. Bringing together women’s stories of sexual coercion, and men’s insights around having enacted coercion, Wilson has a unique vantage point from which to expose and de-normalize sexual coercion.

Mardi Wilson is an Adjunct Academic at Griffith University, Australia. Mardi works in the domestic violence sector supporting, advocating, and facilitating groups for people who experience domestic abuse perpetrated by men. Her research on men’s use of normalised sexual coercion has been published in The Journal of Sex Research. She co-hosts feminist podcast Sex and Consent.