Dear Luv Doc,
What’s up with stealthing? What’s the appropriate punishment for this act?
– Shelly
Stealthing is sexual assault, and sexual assault is considered a second degree felony in the state of Texas. If convicted of sexual assault, the perpetrator of said assault faces anywhere from 2 to 20 years imprisonment and/or a maximum fine of $10,000. Now, for anyone who might think that fine seems a bit hefty, just consider the fact that it’s a relative slap on the wrist when compared to the exquisite irony of spending time in prison finding out what it’s like to be on the wrong end of sexual assault. Yes, the paths to empathy are many, but that one’s a particularly rocky road.
Now, some of you innocents are probably wondering: “Luv Doc, what is stealthing?” Well, my sweet lambs, stealthing is when a man removes his condom during otherwise consensual intercourse. Several media outlets have described this as a “disturbing new trend” and it very well may be, but I personally do not know nor have I ever known anyone who has bragged about/admitted to removing a condom in the middle of sexual intercourse.
Why? It might be because to do so would be to out yourself as a total douche bag – similar to when our president admitted to grabbing women by the pussy.
And there’s the rub, right? Nearly half of the electorate of the land of the free and the home of the brave voted for a man who bragged about committing sexual assault. I think everyone can unilaterally agree that if some orange-haired despot in the Baltics popped off with some shit like that we would waste no time in smart-bombing him into a greasy pink mist. Here in America, however, we are still deeply mired in a largely unacknowledged culture of patriarchal entitlement and victim shaming that makes it exceedingly difficult to prosecute the type of extreme douchebaggery that stealthing represents.
What to do, what to do? Here’s my short answer: I don’t know whether stealthing is actually a “disturbing new trend” or not. What I do know, however, is that the mindset and culture that would lead someone to believe stealthing is even remotely OK is disturbingly old. We should be way, way better than this, and maybe we aren’t because we continue to allow this mentality to exist in a thousand little ways instead of calling it out every single fucking time – even in ourselves and in the people we love.
This article appears in May 19 • 2017.
