Not stealthing?

[FelixTheHamster]

I recently related to a male friend how a female partner had initiated unprotected PIV sex without having asked first and after I'd expressly said I wanted to use condoms until we'd both had negative STI tests. I stopped her immediately, and her excuse was, because neither of us have had another sexual partner for years, we must both be "clean" and as she can't get pregnant, why would there be a problem?
Later, she said that, because "all men want sex without condoms", she assumed I was just insisting on condoms for her benefit.

Much to my surprise, my male friend said he thought it was nothing like stealthing because of "who was penetrating who" rather than being anything to do with consent.

Your thoughts, please?

Is the essence of your post supposed to be that women are just as bad as men for stealthing?

I think anyone, male or female, who tries to have unprotected sex without the other person consenting to it is disgraceful. And I don’t agree with your friend suggesting it was less serious if a woman tries to do it to a man. There are potential consequences either way round (stds, unwanted pregnancy) which is why it is equally serious whether it’s a man or woman doing it.

No it's not stealthing because you are the one pentetrating her with your penis. The man always has the upper hand when it comes to intercourse. It's also why a woman can't be a rapist by definition in UK law.
It's not great behaviour on her part if you had expressed beforehand that you would not do it without a condom but you were always in control and it was your responsibility to put on a condom, unless there is some reason you are vulnerable and incoherent.

It’s not stealthing in the same sense as a man doing it because as the man, you would be aware if you have a condom on or not!

If you don’t agree to unprotected sex, you just don’t put it in without one on. If a woman doesn’t agree, there is always the chance the man could either not put one on at all or take it off without her knowledge.

It’s not the same for a man, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel put off by a woman trying to have unprotected sex when you don’t want to.

The clue is in the name: "stealthing" is something that goes unnoticed by one party. Just asking to or simply proceeding without protection on assumed consent is obviously not "stealth" (doesn't make it OK of course).

That's really not the purpose of the question. I'm absolutely not trying to score points.

I agree that it's not stealthing as such, due to the lack of deception.
I'm surprised about the gender biassed definition of rape, not least as I've heard, first hand, two female lawyers use the term to describe female transgression against a male partner in the context of control, coercion and consent. That said, the internet agrees it's correct. As someone who has been on the receiving end of someone ignoring my consent, I find that pretty offensive, but there you go!

It’s not stealthing as you would know you aren’t wearing a condom.

One would assume you are stronger than her so you have an opportunity to ‘forcefully remove yourself’ if you didn’t consent.

I must admit, I actually googled rape prior to writing this as I had (wrongly) assumed if consent was not given, regardless of sex, then it’s rape. However, it turns out a woman can only be charged for rape as an accomplice.

I know that’s not the question you were asking but i would assume stealthing is classed as rape even if sex was consensual.

Well there was nothing ‘stealth’ about what she did as others have said. But obviously you stopped her and won’t be seeing her again, so if it makes YOU feel validated to consider it stealthing then why not?

The way I see it is, sometimes out vocabulary hasn't fully developed the correct terms to help us address the world as it is.
If that's the case, then we need new vocabulary or we need to adjust the definition of words we've always used.
If the word stealthing doesn't quite cover what you've experienced, OP, then that just means we need a new word for it.
Not that your sense of indignation isn't valid or justified.

In my opinion, whenever someone initiates sex without protection, despite having received explicit instruction otherwise, they're crossing a very serious boundary and it should be taken seriously. It doesn't matter that OP noticed and intervened. It's about the intention this woman had, wich was deception and boundary crossing. If he hadn't noticed, then he would have been no less of a victim than when a man does this to a woman.

In that same way, I absolutely strongly disagree with English law in that supposedly only men can commit rape. Because if we're following the premisses that it's only rape when someone physically overpowers you and forcefully enters their genitals into yours despite explicitly being told no, then we're also excluding a lot of female victims from labeling their experiences as rape. And victims are victims, no matter what their gender is.
The more we limit the definition of things like rape, stealthing, abuse, ... the more we make people feel invalidated when they experienced real trauma.

If anyone feels victimised, let's all just focus on helping that person heal and feel heard, rather than nitpicking at whether or not they used the right words to describe their experience.

Rape in the UK is specifically defined in law to require a penis to be doing the non-consensual penetrating.

Other non-consensual sexual acts that don't involve the perpetrator using his penis are of course also illegal, but they're not rape.

My husband also considers himself to have been 'raped' by a woman (short story: she gave him enough ketamine to knock him out, which he DID consent to, later he woke up to find her on top of him having sex, he didn't want it, but was too drugged up to throw her off). He says he doesn't care, next morning he marched her to the doctor to get the morning after pill, and he chalked it all up to experience.

That's the sex power imbalance right there, in case we ever doubted it existed. Imagine ladies, marching your rapist somewhere the morning after.