If you don't work in the domestic violence, cult, human trafficking or domestic abuse fields, you may not have even heard of the term coercive control. But even if you have, unless you have taken it upon yourself to get educated on coercive control, you probably don't know what it is or why it matters. (Of course, if you have survived coercive control, you probably understand it on a deep level).
The term coercive control was coined in 1982 by Susan Schecter, and popularized by Evan Stark in his ground-breaking book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. Stark introduced the framework of coercive control as a way to more fully, and accurately, understand domestic violence. When I spoke for the Conference on Crimes Against Women, The International Cultic Studies Association Conference and the Domestic Violence Symposium in 2021, I referred to Stark's coercive control framework as a new lens through which our systems could transform to better serve those harmed by coercive control and domestic abuse, if applied properly and systemically.
Whether you view coercive control as a new lens, a new perspective or a new paradigm, naming the pattern of behavior that traumatizes those victimized by it, provides an opportunity for addressing it. Without a name, social issues cannot be addressed.
So, what is coercive control? In the years I have been studying coercive control I have heard many different definitions. My favorite is one by Evan Stark.
"Coercive control is the perpetrator establishing in the mind of the victim the price of her resistance". (I use the word target instead of victim, but victim is the word Stark uses).
This definition of coercive control really cuts to the heart of the matter. In one short sentence we learn:
This definition beautifully portrays the trap of coercive control. Along with the visual images of The Quicksand Model™, we can envision the terror that coercive control creates for the target.
However, what this particular definition of coercive control leaves out is HOW. How does the coercive controller use coercive control to establish in the mind of the victim the price of her resistance?
Here's another definition that I feel answers the HOW question well.
Coercive control is the pattern of behavior that uses force, fraud or fear to control and dominate a person or persons.
This is one of my working definitions of coercive control. The Oxford dictionary refers to "force, threats or causing fear" in its definition, but I feel like threats cause fear, so I took threats out. Also, their definition doesn't include fraud, which I heard referenced in a wonderful episode of the Indoctrination Podcast on consent.
In that episode Joyce Short referred to coercive control as an ongoing pattern of consent violations. I thought that was a great way to look at it. So, when she said that consent is violated anytime there is force, fraud or fear, I incorporated fraud into my working definition of coercive control. (I am also partial to alliteration, so I like the three Fs).
Because coercive control often happens within intimate relationships, I would also like to point out what coercive control is NOT. Coercive control is NOT love! It may masquerade as love, especially in the beginning when manipulative kindness is common, but it is not love. (This is why I don't use the more well-known name for this tactic, "love bombing"). Coercive control is the opposite of love, because its goals are control, domination, destruction and annihilation of the "other", and harming others in these ways is never about love.
Coercive control is a complex and nuanced pattern of behavior, and not all that easy to recognize, detect or pin down. In my next blog I will discuss the first Double of The Quicksand Model™ of Coercive Control... #DoubleStandards. #DoubleStandards are one of 7 strategic tactics in the model for violating a person's consent and establishing a pattern of coercive control that entraps the victim in the quicksand of coercive control.
Stay tuned...
