Coercion... and Chocolate Cake
- geraldinedonaher
- Jun 30
- 3 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
With Diddy all over the news, I get a lot of questions about his behavior... and Cassie’s willingness to go along.
Though young, Cassie Ventura was not a minor when Diddy started asking her to perform for him. If she was just shy of her 18th birthday, even by just a week, this trial would look very different. She would have been a minor and he would be guilty.
But she wasn’t a minor. She met Diddy at 19. They started dating when she was 21. Cassie said she did what the 39 year old music mogul wanted because she loved him and he was teaching her about sex.
Coercion? Not necessarily.
But when Cassie didn’t want to do certain things anymore, Diddy used the imbalance of power in their relationship to get what he wanted.
That’s how we understand coercion.
As soon as someone tells you they don’t want to do something, even if they used to like it, don’t try to convince them to do it. The person said no. Respect them enough to make their own decisions and, for heaven’s sake, spare them the temper tantrum or silent treatment.
Think of chocolate cake. You can always figure out if someone is trying to coerce or manipulate you into something by substituting the image of chocolate cake for whatever they want you to do.
A beautifully frosted moist chocolate cake. You bite into it and the icing, just chilled enough to leave a smooth coolness in your mouth, is followed by the moist sensation of rich chocolate that hits the tastebuds. Sensual, beautiful, delicious.
No judgment.
But what if someone places another piece on your plate and asks you to eat it?
The first piece was good, why not? Eating chocolate cake is not sinful or illegal. It’s highly enjoyable.
And so you agree. That second piece is just as sensually delicious as the first.
This person watches, then gives you another.
Your stomach hurts and your teeth need a good brushing so you say, “No, I don’t want anymore. I am not in the mood for chocolate cake anymore.”
The person complains, “Oh, come on, you know I love watching you eat. You know you love to eat it. Do this for me. I paid for dinner. Come on. Do this for me. Try and go to the bathroom. When you come out, you’ll be able to eat one more piece.”
In the bathroom, you look in the mirror and question yourself, “I really like that cake. Maybe I can get a glass of milk and that will help me get another piece down.”
That’s what coercion does. It makes you doubt what you want. A slow build in the psyche—what you want is not as important as what the other person wants.
You tell your reflection, “I don’t want to make him mad. He’ll get mad if I don’t do it. I don’t like making him angry.”
This is another aspect of coercion. Fear.
Fear of being thrown away, hit, ignored, ridiculed, or having everything you worked so hard to achieve, destroyed.
All because you wouldn’t eat one more piece of cake.
Coercion is used in the domestic sex trafficking of minors. Many people I interviewed said that minors don’t know exactly what is happening to them at the beginning (they are targeted) until they are in too deep (they are trapped).
Diddy is coercive. He may or may not be a sex trafficker. Hopefully the jury gets it right. What I do know for certain, here in the United States, sex traffickers use coercion as the primary way to lure their targets.
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