A new study addresses the growing prevalence of "stealthing"—the act of secretly taking a condom off during sex without your partner's consent. In the report, Alexandra Brodsky, a Fellow at National Women's Law Center, discusses this behavior and how the law can help stealthing victims move forward. Brodsky told the Huffington Post that she wanted to investigate this topic because many of her friends were "struggling with forms of mistreatment by sexual partners that weren’t considered part of the recognized repertoire of gender-based violence, but that seemed rooted in the same misogyny and lack of respect."
In her report in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Brodsky calls stealthing "rape-adjacent," and with good reason—this is a dangerous form of sexual assault that violates even the most basic definitions of consent.
Consenting to have sex with someone using a condom isn't the same thing as consenting to have sex with someone without a condom. "Let's say I've said, 'I'm OK with kissing, but I'm not OK with you touching my body,'" Brian Pinero, Vice President of Victim Services at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), tells SELF. "If you choose to touch my body, you've violated my consent." This can apply to anything—kissing, touching, being naked, having sex, using a condom, and so on. "I'm giving you permission [to do something] because it's what I'm most comfortable with in that moment," Pinero explains. Once you go beyond that, you've crossed a line and violated your partner's consent.
And just because you've consented to something before doesn't mean you have to consent to it again. "Consent starts when it's given and stops when it's taken back," Pinero says, explaining that people have the right to change their mind and revoke consent at any point—even in the middle of the act.
For starters, condoms protect people from STIs and pregnancy. If someone doesn’t want to have sex without this protection, forcing them to is a violation of their rights. That's all there is to it.
But there are other reasons why people might want to use condoms during sex, as well. "Maybe I see having sex without a condom as more intimate than I want to be with you," Pinero says. He cites other examples—people could have been hurt before, had their trust violated, or been sexually assaulted. No matter their reasoning for wanting to use a condom, the point is that you have to respect their wishes.
"Because the definition [of assault] is different from state to state, we refer people to the state definition," Pinero explains. "But if you have given consent to have sex with a condom and the condom comes off, your consent has been violated."
Pinero notes that this topic can be confusing for many people, because we don't really have a vocabulary for it. "It's creates feelings of invalidation when people can't even describe what's happened," he says. "But we have to believe victims when they bring things like this up." Too often, Pinero says, the burden of proof falls on the survivor of a sexual assault. They're asked to prove that something problematic transpired, or they're dismissed when they're unable to explain their experiences. "It's not hard for us to see that [stealthing] is something that can happen or does happen," he says. "It's not too far out of bounds that this is an experience someone has had."
Like Brodsky, the report’s author, says, there’s a need for the law to address this specific type of sexual assault. But while your state might not legally classify "stealthing" (or any other similar act) as a form of sexual assault, there's no denying it's a violation of consent. It's never OK for someone to do something you don't want them to—something you haven't explicitly consented to—and we should keep talking about it until people realize it's wrong.
One thing that gives us hope? In January, a Switzerland court found a French man guilty of rape because he'd removed his condom without his partner's permission. His partner, a Swiss woman, didn't find out he'd stealthed her until afterward. The woman's lawyer argued that imposing unprotected sex on someone should be considered rape. The reason being: If the woman had known the man wasn't going to use protection, she wouldn't have had sex with him in the first place. The Switzerland court agreed, convicted the man of rape, and gave him a 12-month suspended sentence. Maybe we'll see other countries adopting similarly comprehensive definitions of sexual assault sometime soon.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673). More resources are available online from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
Related:
- Want To Know Why Women Don't Report Sexual Assault?
- What Counts As Sexual Assault (And What Doesn't), According To The Law
- What if Guys Were Treated Like Women When They Report Sexual Assault?
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