Seductive Coercion

Calling seduction a form of coercion rather than its alternative is the move the whole entry rests on. Force compels against a person's will and seduction works through their will by shaping what they are drawn to and repelled by, and Marsh treats both as coercion because both determine an outcome the person did not independently arrive at. What makes the seductive form harder to resist is that it produces no sense of being coerced. Two mechanisms are named. Manipulation and control of information by an authoritative endoreality determines what a person has to think with, and shunning and inclusion determine what they are drawn towards, since inclusion supplies anima and shunning withdraws it. That grounding is what separates her account from ordinary persuasion, since the attraction being exploited is a real need rather than a preference. Marsh describes it as increasingly the focus of attention in recent years, manipulation of how we think and how we react to ideas, using our emotions to drive us towards or away from things. The framework gives the term a book of its own, Free Will and Seductive Coercion, which places it alongside will and volition rather than alongside propaganda. Hostile seductive coercion is the subcategory where the external force has interests opposed to the subject, which implies the ordinary case is not hostile, since a great deal of what holds any group together works this way.

Philosophy distinguishes manipulation from coercion by whether the will is bypassed or overridden, and generally treats them as separate wrongs. Coercive control, Evan Stark's concept, is now criminalized in several jurisdictions and describes domination through isolation and regulation rather than violence. Persuasion research, nudge theory and the dark patterns literature all study the shaping of choices without force. Marsh's collapse of the distinction is the substantive move, since treating seduction as a species of coercion means the absence of felt compulsion is not evidence of freedom, which reverses the criterion most of these traditions rely on.