5 Types of Unwanted Sex and Their Consequences
Research from the Kinsey Institute on coercive and consensual, unwanted sex.
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“I think it is incumbent on all human beings to oppose injustice in every form.” -Hugh Masekela
RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, reports sad statistics: 1 in 9 girls, and 1 in 53 boys, undergo sexual assault or abuse from an adult; over 80 percent of victims under 18 are female; and young women between the ages of 16 and 19 are at 4-fold greater risk compared with the general population. RAINN goes on to report that mental health issues are more common among victims, who are 4 times more likely to develop drug abuse or PTSD in adulthood, and 3 times more likely to be diagnosed with major depression later in life.
Societal attitudes about sexual abuse and assault are, as with other forms of trauma, characterized by maladaptive destructive attitudes — victim shaming and blaming, denial and rationalization, stigma, and generally cover-ups to avoid family and institutional consequences and exposure.
Given the continuum of unwanted and coerced sexual behaviors, from active to passive coercion, to intoxication and manipulation, to having unwanted sex to achieve goals or avoid problems, gaining understanding of areas of difference and overlap is critical on several levels: for individuals and their loved ones seeking to understand and deal with their own experiences, for perpetrators seeking to understand their own motives and behaviors, for clinicians, for policy makers, the criminal justice system, and collectively.
Classifying Unwanted Sex
Researchers Kern and Peterson of the Kinsey Institute (2019) conducted research with victims of assault and coerced or unwanted sex to define categories of coerced sexual activity and correlate them with various psychological outcomes, from PTSD to attitudes about oneself and the world, to attributions of blame.
Using participant samples from in-person and online survey respondents, they identified a group of 276 participants who reported one or more experiences of unwanted sex, about 55 percent of whom were women, 4 percent nonbinary, and the remainder men. Ages ranged from 18 to 66, average age of just…
