bendover:
If a person is given a choice to pay a debt or be punished with corporal punishment and, they choose to take the punishment, they're not coerced into anything. They were given a choice and they chose. So if their choice was corporal punishment, then it was consensual.
Well maybe it's just semantics, but I have to disagree with that.
One dictionary defines coerce as "to compel by force, intimidation, or authority, especially without regard for individual desire or volition..."
So the way I see it, coercion includes not just physical force, but almost any scenario where a person doesn't want to be punished. If someone submits only because they are intimidated by threats of a worse alternative, that is coercion, e.g.:
*School: Take a paddling or be suspended or expelled in addition to having misbehavior reported to parents.
*Judicial: Accept corporal punishment or be sentenced to imprisonment.
*Blackmail: Accept CP or have your activities exposed to a spouse or the public.
*Debt: Can't pay your rent? Let me have the fun of spanking you or you're out on the street.
That doesn't leave much as strictly consensual, which would include sex play (which could be for self-gratification or to please a partner) or to meet a psychological need to assuage guilt, etc.
But I could conceive of a number of situations that could be borderline between coerced and consensual, or may start out as coerced, but change to consensual. And I think these scenarios often make for some of the best story plots.