Boorish Sexual Pressuring and Significant Moral Risk

Abstract

Sexual pressure can range from egregious to relatively mild. Here, I focus on relatively mild forms of sexual pressuring deployed among people who do not know one another well: attempts to obtain sex by pestering, wheedling, minor intimidation, minor deceits, threats of slightly adverse consequences, and emotional manipulation. Many prominent philosophical views condemn such sexual pressuring while others, also prominent, imply that it is innocuous. I will argue that neither of these sorts of views gets things quite right. On the view that I defend, such pressuring always imposes a risk to the individual being pressured that is morally problematic. And sometimes, this morally problematic element suffices to render relatively mild sexual pressuring on balance immoral. Acceptance of this view may have some important practical implications, and I close by discussing them.