A Disturbing Sex Trend Is On The Rise Called Stealthing: What You *Need* To Know

Stealthing, the act of men purposefully taking their condoms off without consent while having sex with a woman, has sadly become a trend. With an underground movement of guys who feel entitled to raw dog during the act, it's important you're aware. The more you know about stealthing, the better you can protect yourself against it and all of its negative implications. 

First things first: What the actual hell? This is disgusting and dangerous, and why don’t these guys care about things like STDs? Or, you know, CONSENT?

A new study has just surfaced and it looks into what stealthing is and how victims can seek justice.

Alexandra Brodsky wrote the study for the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. It features interviews with victims and contains deep research into this online community of men who say that they are entitled to having sex without a condom, both with men and women.

In the study, Brodsky argues that stealthing is gender-based violence and that it may break criminal and civil laws.

When speaking to Huffington Post, Brodsky said that she wanted to study stealthing because as she entered law school in 2013, she found that many of her female 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.”

Now serving as a legal fellow for the National Women’s Law Center, she found that many victims knew that stealthing felt violating but they didn’t know how to put it into words.

In the study, Brodsky talks about a woman who was stealthed herself and also worked for a sexual violence crisis hotline. The woman started to realize that many girls were calling to try and figure out their stealthing situation.

“Their stories often start the same way,” she said. “'I’m not sure if this is rape, but...'”

Not only are these women being subjected to deadly diseases like AIDS, HIV and other STDs, but they are feeling just as violated as women who experienced other kinds of sexual violence. One woman called stealthing “rape-adjacent,” while another said it made her feel "freaked out."

"Obviously, the part that really freaked me out was that it was such a blatant violation of what we’d agreed to,” the woman said. “I set a boundary. I was very explicit.” (It’s also worth noting that, earlier this year, a man in Switzerland was convicted of rape for this very act.)

In the study, Brodsky says, “Survivors [of stealthing] describe nonconsensual condom removal as a threat to their bodily agency and as a dignitary harm. ‘You have no right to make your own sexual decisions,’ they are told. ‘You are not worthy of my consideration’... One can note that proponents of ‘stealthing’ root their support in an ideology of male supremacy in which violence is a man’s natural right.”

Digging into the community of stealthers, she uncovered men who believe it is their right to "spread their seed." And there is lots of support, advice, and training to help men become more success at stealthing.

She believes that women (and men) have a right to justice as the act is rooted in beliefs that focus on supremacy and male dominance.

“Survivors experience real harms ― emotional, financial, and physical ― to which the law might provide a remedy through compensation or simply an opportunity to be heard and validated,” she says. “We know that the law doesn’t work for gender violence survivors,” she continues. “Many of the myths and assumptions and forms of skepticism that we see from judges approaching rape victims and other kinds of sexual assault victims are likely to be present in stealthing cases.”

She concludes her study by saying that a new statute would be helpful as it would get people talking and discussing this problem.

“The law isn’t the answer for everyone, and it can’t fix every problem every time. One of my goals with the article, and in proposing a new statute, is to provide a vocabulary and create ways for people to talk about what is a really common experience that just is too often dismissed as just ‘bad sex’ instead of ‘violence.’”

Now that you know that stealthing is a thing, be careful out there ladies (and guys).