In the group chat, Madison discovered that her story about David was actually tame compared to others’. Many of the women said they had experienced manipulation and pressure to have sex with him and make sexual videos for him. They said he continued to ask them to perform sexual acts and record these videos even after they’d refused, and that he had sent messages to many of them for months, persuading them that the more videos they sent, the more extreme the sex acts, the more he would like them. When they’d told David they weren’t comfortable with something sexually, he would talk them out of their hesitancy, they said. “Some men … believe that to get a ‘yes,’ they have to go through a couple ‘no’s first. But is that really a yes? Is that really consent? No, it’s not consent. It’s coercion,” said Rebecca Ortiz, the Syracuse professor.

“If you have to talk the woman into doing something she originally says she didn’t want to, that’s pretty messed up,” Jenny said. Some of the women in the group chat claimed that he’d lied to them about being monogamous, possibly putting their sexual health in jeopardy because he’d said he didn’t want to use condoms.

“It was pretty overwhelming for all of us,” Jenny said, particularly because some of the women believed that they were dating the actor. Those women “were heartbroken” to find out that there were dozens of others, she said. But the group was cathartic. “Every woman was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I have clarity I haven’t had, and I’ve been just suffering. I’ve talked to friends, to family, and nobody can give me that clarity, because nobody knows what it’s like, especially to have gone through it with the same person,’” she said. “In sharing our experiences, we really felt validated. … It was so relieving for all of us, like, we’re not crazy. We’re not being too emotional.”

Not all the women in the group shared negative comments about David. Jenny recalled that one person said she’d had “a pleasant experience” but was respectful of the others. “They were still very supportive of validating and listening to the ones that did have different experiences,” Jenny said. “Nobody was like, ‘Oh, well, that’s not what I had. He’s just a nice guy.’ It was like, ‘I’m so sorry that that happened.’”

Jenny and Madison believe David’s behavior with them was coercive. Andrew Pari, a counselor and expert on sexual trauma, said some of the behavior outlined by the women I spoke to could fall within what some psychologists refer to as a “gray area” of consent — and that men are usually aware when a woman doesn’t completely consent. For instance, Pari said, a man asking for explicit pictures and videos after a woman said no, even if she eventually agreed, could be construed as coercive.

But according to legal experts, that doesn’t amount to assault. “Verbal ‘coercion’ just by constant pleading or persuasion isn’t enough for rape or any other crime,” Stephen J. Schulhofer, an New York University law professor who studies rape and consent law, told me in an email. “Only if the verbal coercion is a threat of physical injury, then it’s rape.”

Susan Estrich, a law professor at the University of Southern California, gave this hypothetical. “If he finally said, ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t do it,’ [then that’s assault],” she said. But if he said, “‘Can I ask one more time?’ And she said, ‘Oh, alright,’ that’s known as persuasion.”

Still, Pari said, the cultural conversation around #MeToo hasn’t caught up to the nuances of coercion, exploitation, and abuse. He said a person would be acting ethically if they explained that they were not interested in a relationship and acted accordingly. “But if he’s seriously dating and acting like there’s a deep relationship forming when there isn’t, then that’s abusive and coercive,” Pari said. “Most predators will use the least invasive method of getting what they want so that they can create the false impression in the mind of their victim that they were consenting and complicit,” he said.

The conversation about consent has come a long way. “I used to fight with people literally about whether no meant yes,” Estrich said. “Now, I think everybody agrees that no means no.” But, Estrich said, both conduct and context matter. “The fact that sex may be inappropriate doesn’t mean it’s unlawful … unless it’s nonconsensual. And traditionally the law required force or threat of force.” However, she cautioned, “I don’t think we want to infantilize women. We don’t want to assume that we’re not capable of acting as autonomous people.”