What Is Coercion?

Here's a fairly radical definition of a central anarchist term:

Coercion is the existence of a difference in power, where power is the ability to exert one's will on the world.

I haven't seen this explicitly stated anywhere, although you can see it in Crispy (and others') idea that it's impossible for a citizen to consent to be ruled by the state that they were born into.  Holding my definition entails believing that coercion is always present and unavoidable, and that you can at best minimize it. It also entails believing that there's no such thing as a non-coercive hierarchy of power.  Lastly, and most importantly, it entails believing that we need to exert constant effort to avoid coercing others. There's an ethical imperative here that, in areas where you're privileged, you should take steps to reduce your own power.

An interaction between a citizen and a policeman can never be entirely free of coercion, since both parties know that the policeman has a huge power advantage conferred by his job (if he assaults you, then it's your word against the cop's, for instance.) The policeman, then, is obliged to try and minimize this power by doing things like setting up or at the very least allowing himself to be recorded.

An interaction between a man and a woman can never be entirely free of coercion, since both parties know that men have much greater social privilege (if he abuses her in a non-obvious way, the legal system will unofficially presume that it was her fault, she was asking for it, and so on.) The man, then, is obliged to try and minimize this power as best he can - avoiding all implied physical threat, whether in jest or not, for instance.

Of course these interactions can have coercion of a different kind flowing the other way - if the woman's a cop, for instance, or if the citizen is rich. Mostly, I suspect, this won't be the case.