Would not a threat to shame them if they don't have sex be a crime?
So, when I said "shame", I was thinking specifically teenage types of social manipulations, such as revealing the the person refused to have sex because they are afraid, a prude, a virgin, etc.. Thus, essentially things directly tied to the refusal to have sex itself and the refused person's subjective opinion about that. It doesn't seem like that form of shaming would be a crime, since clearly people cannot be prohibited from talking about events that happened to them and their opinion of the others involved.
Also, I was focussed on the the legal definition of "under duress" (a term Malintent referred to) which seems to say that the threat must be in itself a criminal act or threat to do something criminal, such as commit violence, destroy property, or say false slanderous things.
However, on further reading if the "shaming" involves revealing unrelated information about the person, then whether it is rape is variable and unclear.
General "blackmail" statutes seem to say that demands for $ or other property can be via a threat to merely publicly reveal any information (even if completely true) that the other party does not want revealed. Blackmail laws were written to only be about demands for some form of financial compensation resulting in a permanent loss of property for the person, and not demands for other forms of favors or behavioral actions, whether sex or household chores or doing someone's homework, or climbing a tree to get get a lost frisbee. However, some States have recently amended blackmail laws to include sexual favors specifically (not other non-financial acts).
This requires evidence of a direct threat is which the person states that information will be revealed, unless sexual acts are performed.
This is an odd and questionable legal approach because it preferences sexual favors over all other kinds of favors, including those that put the coerced person into far greater risk of bodily harm. For example, I can use such threats to get you to do all kinds of stupid stunts and acts that put your health or life at risk, but if I use them to get you to show me your boobies, then its a crime.
I am curious how often this approach has led to successful rape convictions. Blackmail is hard enough to prove and usually it involves repeated interactions where the specific $ for silence threat is made and can be recorded. Also, the exchange of $ or material goods leaves and empirical trail and it can be argued that their is no other plausible reason why the victim would have given that $ unless under duress. Plus, the blackmail often comes from a person who would have no motive to even find out let alone reveal the info unless they were blackmailing. In contrast, in a sexual context, there is unlikely to be any evidence of a direct threat, little basis to claim that non-coerced consent to sex would be implausible, and little basis to claim that the defendant would have no reason to reveal the gossip unless it was for sexual favors.
All the cases I can find involved additional crimes or evidence that the private information was obtained via illegal or fraudulent means, which would strongly support in intent to use the information for extortion (as opposed to information easily obtained within the person's social circle and that is of the sort commonly gossiped about without threats of extortion).
