Over the last week, the Huffington Post broke a story about the practice of “stealthing” – removing a condom during sex without the knowledge of one’s partner. According to HuffPo – and the many outlets that boosted the signal – it’s a practice that’s on the rise, with online communities devoted to teaching men how to “stealth” others.
Now, while it’s arguable whether this is a trend or media outlets trying to make fetch happen, it is important that we talk about stealthing. Regardless of any secret cabals – real or resulting from the media outcry – stealthing does happen, and with great frequency. In fact, it’s happened to several friends of mine. The “growing new trend” may not be real, but stealthing is part and parcel of the conversation we need to have about consent, rape, sexual assault, and what we can do about it.
What Is Stealthing?
The increased visibility1 of “stealthing” came with the publication of the study “‘Rape-Adjacent’: Imagining Legal Responses to Nonconsensual Condom Removal” in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. Study author Alexandra Brodsky interviewed multiple women who had been victims of “stealthing” by their partners and explores the possible legal options victims may have.
Other parts of Brodsky’s study focus on the online communities where “stealthing” is not only advocated but taught – at times in increasingly baroque ways, including sabotaging condoms in advance.
One thing that’s important to note: stealthing isn’t something that exclusively happens to women. In fact, nonconsensual condom removal happens to gay and bi men with similar levels of frequency. Blogger Mark Bentson of the now-closed iBlastInside, for example, had an extensive write-up about stealthing primarily for tops who want to trick bottoms into bareback sex.
Reading the interviews is harrowing, as are several of the stories that Brodsky links to. Almost every time, the victims report feeling violated and humiliated… but also unsure of what to do. From Brodsky’s interview in the Huffington Post:
“Their stories often start the same way,” Rebecca said. “’I’m not sure if this is rape, but…’”
That phrase, “I’m not sure if this is rape,” is telling. Despite the violation and betrayal, very few people are willing to call “stealthing” rape.
This is actually incredibly important. As other writers point out: giving it a cutesy name like “stealthing” makes nonconsensual condom-removal seem like a lark, a prank, a goof. The name carries the implications of it being a naughty game, something wily men pull on their partners.
This light-hearted treatment of the subject matter is why it’s important to talk about stealthing… and the motivations behind it.
It’s Not About The Condom (Or: It’s Consent, Stupid)
When the topic of stealthing comes up, there’s almost always immediate pushback. One of the most common responses is a tu quoque fallacy- insisting that this is no different than women lying about being on the Pill or sabotaging condoms to get pregnant. Others will call for a slippery slope argument, insisting that penalizing stealthing means that condom slippage or breakage could lead to a man being thrown in jail for rape.
First, it must be pointed out that nonconsensual condom removal and lying about fertility aren’t equivalent.The fact that someone lies about their fertility in order to get pregnant is abuse, don’t get me wrong. But whether it happens or not doesn’t mitigate or change the situation when a partner removes the condom.
(Also: it’s not a woman-only issue. Male abusers will sabotage their partner’s birth control to get them pregnant and use that pregnancy as greater leverage.)
The issue isn’t pregnancy – after all, stealthing happens to gay men as well as women. Removing condoms during sex also exposes the non-consenting partner to potential sexually transmitted infections that could lead to blindness, infertility or death. Considering how many people are unaware of their STI status or who don’t care, this is has significantly higher consequences than just pregnancy to the non-consenting partner.
But the arguments about equivalency is a derailment, not a legitimate rejoinder. The problem is that focusing on the condom – or about issues like fertility fraud – miss the forest for the trees. The issue isn’t that the condom came off, it’s that the condom was removed. This is the critical difference.
People who’re having sex accept that there are certain risks and that, frankly, shit happens. Condoms break, especially when they’re not applied properly. Condoms fall off on occasion. Best practices during sex mitigate the likelihood, but it doesn’t reduce it to zero. It’s understood that sometimes shit happens that’s nobody’s fault and that’s one of the risks of sex.
However, a condom being removed isn’t an accident; it’s a deliberate choice by the person doing the removing – and that changes the equation dramatically.
It’s Not About The Sex, Either
Another reason why the practice of “stealthing” needs to be talked about is that it is often a distraction. Part of what makes the conversation around it troublesome is the idea that we focus on the act and not the motivations behind it. When we talk about things like removing the condom during sex, it’s often seen as being about sexual pleasure. Discussions abound about how condoms don’t feel the same as fucking raw or why it’s so much better without protection. Even movies treat faking putting a condom on as a lark, a puckish prank instead of a violation.
But that violation is the whole point. The reason for stealthing isn’t because of “how much better” it feels, it’s overriding the other person’s boundaries. It’s about what the penetrator feels is his rightful due. Brodsky quotes several commenters in her study that make it clear that the point of removing the condom is because ejaculating into her is his right.
“To me you can’t have one and not the other, if she wants the guy’s **** then she also has to take the guy’s load!!!”.”
Similarly, Bentson treats bareback sex as something he gets to do, regardless of the expectations of his partners.
This implicit trust is by one party. I have not verbally acknowledged that I will use the condom.
Over and over again, the rhetoric and meaning is clear: “I get what I want because your choice doesn’t matter. I have the right to override your choices. Your bodily autonomy means nothing to me.”
This is, unquestionably, a violation… but one that often leaves its victims feeling lost and confused, unsure whether they even have a right to feel violated. Meanwhile the perpetrators will refuse to acknowledge that they had done anything wrong. This is why it’s important to call stealthing – and other, similar violations – rape.
Consent is granular. A person who’s consented to sex with a condom has not consented to all forms of sex, regardless of circumstances. They had not – and likely would not – have consented to sex without it. By removing the condom, the offending partner has changed the situation without their permission or knowledge. If they knew that the condom had somehow come off, they would want penetration to stop. Consent would have been withdrawn.
John Oliver famously compared sex to boxing, which is relevant here:
Keeping with the metaphor, the entire match depends on both parties agreeing to continue. If one boxer decides they’ve had enough and wants to leave and the other continues to hit him, it becomes assault. Continuing to have sex without consent would be rape. And it’s important to acknowledge this.
Not surprisingly, some folks take issue with that.
“Rape-Adjacent” Culture or: Playing Rape Blackjack
Part of what makes discussing consent a thorny prospect is the sheer number of people who want to debate “what is rape, really?” When we bring up the topic of, say, someone being too drunk to consent, people will counter with “what if they’re both drunk? Who raped who?” Others will want to argue about whether something is really “rape-rape” or just, y’know, a “gray area” or what PUAs call “buyer’s remorse”. It all becomes part of the game of “rape blackjack”, where the goal is to get as close as one can get to something being rape without technically going over the line.
When we talk about stealthing being a form of rape, people will crawl out of the woodwork to insist that it isn’t. They will concern-troll that calling it rape will trivialize “real” rape victims. They will point to people they know who had similar incidents happen and use their apparent lack of trauma as “proof” that this isn’t rape. Still others will insist that if someone didn’t report a rape to the authorities, it doesn’t “count”. Often, they will argue technicalities of law. They will attempt to derail the discussion by relying on strict readings of the law. If it didn’t happen exactly as the law says, then it couldn’t possibly be rape. Never mind that date rape and marital rape were once considered to not be rape under the law, either.
(Ironically enough, nonconsensual condom removal is rape in several countries, including Switzerland and Sweden.)
And – of course – the spectre of false rape claims will be raised. How, they will insist, are we to protect the men from vengeful women who want to deflect responsibility from “bad sex”?
This is part and parcel of the conversation surrounding rape and consent. The conversation gets bogged down in people looking for technicalities that let us get away with calling it something other than rape. It becomes part of the idea that “real” rape is violent rather than someone ignoring a “no”. Threats (implied or otherwise), coercion, social pressure to say “yes” even after having said “no” are “part of the game”. Even just not asking gets seen as just being “part of how you get laid”.
But the fact is: words matter. When we talk about “gray areas” around consent, we enable rapists. People will cheerfully admit to being rapists as long as you don’t call it rape. Calling rape out gives people less wiggle room to play “but what if” or to diminish it with implausible scenarios. It drags the behavior and the myths into the light for all to see.
And as we do so, men have to be the ones to lead the way.
#YesAllMen
Something that’s significant – and why men need to be the ones to speak up on this – is that stealthing and other consent violations are framed as being part and parcel of male sexuality. This has less to do with misogyny – again: stealthing and assault happens to men as well – and everything to do with the equating of male sexuality with violence.
Despite what trolls will tell you online, it’s not feminists saying that all men are rapists… men are. Men like Bentson. Just as Trump’s casual bragging about sexual assault was defended as “locker room talk” and that “all men do this”, insisting that this being part of being a man makes men accomplices in the crimes of others. It’s the knowing nod, the silent “you’d do it too, if you could get away with it.” It’s the club of understanding that all men are predators.
It’s not just Bentson or the anonymous stealthing advocates Brodsky quotes. Red Pill founder Robert Fisher was known for claiming that he was “overdue for a false rape accusation” because “you can’t have sex with this many women without having one.” Notorious PUA RooshV advocates rape (sorry, “what might technically be considered rape,” in his words) as a pick-up technique because that’s what “real” men do. Or other PUAs who go perpetuating ideas that ignoring “no” is ok because “women want you to overpower them”.
We live in a culture where people don’t recognize rape or understand how to get consent. We live in a world where people think it’s ok to grab women because hey, white guys can get away with it in foreign countries. This is why it’s vital for men to be the ones to speak up. The fact that others try to make us complicit in their own crime, that they want to normalize sex as “just how men are” means that men have to be the ones to speak up.
It’s easy to diminish the voices of women when it comes to issues surrounding rape and consent. It’s far harder for them to ignore or refute men. As sexist as it may be, men are more likely to listen to men talking about rape and consent. This is why men have to be the ones to check their bros, to be the ones to shout down the guys who insist #yesallmen are like that. It’s why men have to be at the forefront for modeling enthusiastic consent.
And it’s why we have to be the ones to say the words “rape” and “sexual assault”. Calling it “stealthing” instead of rape is another way of diminishing the effects, making it a silly prank. Like various YouTube “social experiment” videos, it turns sexual assault into something to be laughed about.
Yes, there will be cries of “cuck” or “white knight” and concern-trolling about diminishing rape. It’s important to advocates of behavior like stealthing to shout down protests; tropes of toxic masculinity only work if everyone buys into them. By taking the lead and being the ones to push back against a culture that condones assault, we can help create one where everybody can be safe and secure.
- Yes, that was intentional [↩]
I…just.. I mean…. That’s a thing?! That “people” (or more likely scum) advocates?!? WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE DISGUSTING PIECES OF SHIT?!! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e143c7fd2e3227d47450a57ea0bb0dadc464d54f8cd6c4ddbadabb61206e336b.gif
I mean, even if a guy hates women, wouldn’t he want to make damn sure he wouldn’t have a one night stand tracking him down for child support payments? Or he’s just that sure society will have his back and that won’t happen..?
I just…yeah, I certainly get that misogyny is A Thing, but how, what….::mind also blown::
If this is really a thing that happens such to the extent that this new sobriquet is deserving, my guess is that most of these assholes pull out when they cum. I have a hard time believing that ridiculous conversation excerpt DNL included in the article represents the typical approach “stealthers” practice in real life.
Yeah, well, I can attest that the “pulling-out method” is not in any way a reliable method of contraception. Even combined with the so called “rhythm method” it’s more apt to be called “hello baby-method”.
Very few women have completely reliable ovulation cycles. And although men think that they have great control, they have probably leaked a couple of thousand little tadpoles before they think it’s time.
My parents decided during the 70s to use those combined methods because “birth control pills are rumored to be unreliable and have severe side effects”. Nine months later… Tadaaa! *points to self*.
Yeah my guess is that they think it’s good enough.
That makes sense. But supposedly, babies happening without them being daddies or coughing up a dime is what they, like…want? And so that’s why they purposely sabotage the condoms? I also have a hard time believing this is a real thing.
This is probably people who feel they can get away with it. Not every country (or state in the US) are adamant at finding out the biological parents, and perhaps the sorry excuse for a human being can move across a border and get away without taking a paternity test. Or maybe they count on the fact that the woman will terminate the pregnancy, believing the right-wing lies of how easy it is the get an abortion and of how those sluts that get pregnant gets them willy-nilly every two months.
And motivation for them? I really can’t say how their minds work (even though a friend of mine got in the way of one of these guys. “Oh, sorry babe, it must have slipped off, you know I don’t like condoms even though I already have two kids with two different women, oh well, you’ll get an abortion and then I’ll dump you”)
Getting a sense of importance by spreading his genes, coupled with a satisfaction of screwing someone else over maybe?
Guys can also make it difficult as possible for the woman to prove paternity, or “get fired” from their jobs, or change to a lower paid job before child support is fixed, so that the woman just says “fuckit I’m paying all this money to a lawyer and the hassle and monthly child support payments are not gonna be worth it”.
Harris asked a bit back if anyone could dig up anything from the usual manosphere rogues gallery that was pro-stealthing. The fact that most of his links come from the original paper strongly implies that there is no huge community for this sort of thing. He seems to acknowledge as much, early on, when he admits that most of the news about it is just because one article got people talking.
Although I don’t know if it’s better or worse for the fact that there’s currently little overlap between noisy internet misogynists and people who will sabotage a condom because it feels better.
Fine, I must admit I forgot that there is such a thing in many countries as abstinence only- sex “education”. But there are grown ass men advocating this, and I think that past a certain age ignorance is no excuse, if they live to be 30 or 40 and still believe that shit they get absolutely no sympathies from me.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s how my youngest brother happened.
I doubt that’s what’s going on. I suspect it’s not a common point of view around this part of the internet, but there are men who find the idea of having a bunch of children appealing, and there are others who (sometimes rightly) assume that having a(nother) child won’t change their lives in any way.
A lot of the people who actually do this will choose partners or FWBs as their victims. Reproductive coercion is a pretty common form of abuse. Some of the rest assume that no negative consequences from a pregnancy will end up affecting them. And some of these guys are engaging in misogynistic fantasizing.
It’s a stupid trend that pops up every so often- people deciding that barebacking is cool and barriers are lame. STD rates rise and communities remember why barriers were created in the first place.
“We Need To Talk About Rape.”
FTFY Doc. Good article.
You’d think this would be a basic fucking understanding by now: any sexual act that in any way impedes or circumvents consent is RAPE.
This is not rocket surgery here. The concept is incredibly simple. And still people aren’t getting the message.
Or they’re invested in not getting it.
Also, I thought you needed penetration for rape.
Juridical rape indeed requires penetration (although, that might depend on countries/jurisprudence). There are an array of other crimes for ‘tying someone up without their consent, taking their clothes off, taking your clothes off, and doing non-penetration stuff’ (god, I feel icky just typing that). But whether it’s kidnapping/exhibitionism/battery etc. you’re always doing something to others against their consent.
So it’s a crime. And that’s all that matters. Better learn to get ‘consent’ than play lawyer.
“Juridical rape indeed requires penetration (although, that might depend on countries/jurisprudence). ”
It does. You don’t require penetration in Australia (cunnilingus without consent, for example, is considered rape in Australia and doesn’t require penetration.)
As Ney just said; one of the things that I think confuses the issue is that an action may be prosecuted as something other than rape but it’s important to make clear that any non-consensual violation relating to sex, penetrative or not, is rape.
I’ll take this one farther.
We can discuss what would or would not be good to press in a court of law. (In terms of legal remedies, I can’t think of anything you could do about stealthing that wouldn’t create a bigger mess down the line.) Even if granted immunity to both legal and social consequences or this kind of shit, though, there are so many benefits to a pro-communication paradigm. Going way beyond simply not being a rapist.
That’s… new. I’m too astonished to be angry yet. The anger will probably come soon.
I keep hearing the ‘false rape accusations ruin men lives’ and ‘guys can’t even say hi to a girl without been sued’ rhetoric in the geek-sphere, but this is on a whole new level.
Did the people who want to ‘stealth’ have a father growing up? I… I’m speechless here.
What’s weird (on top of being disgusting) is that such an attitude gets you blacklisted as soon as you’ve slept once with the woman. You ‘stealth’ once, she’s not going to sleep with you again. So you what, you’re a clubbing god who doesn’t care the scorched earth policy they live behind because there’s an endless supply of women to seduce? Just… Ugh.
PS: I have to admire the sheer gall of guys who invoke God here (who’s all for losing ones virginity to their spouse, but who cares about that…).
Edit: okay, I’m angry now. I hope whoever fantasizes about this posts it loudly on their facebook so that I know to stay the fuck away from them forever.
I am convinced that those who invoke God in situations like this are treating religion like a giant software agreement. Don’t even bother reading it, just scroll to the bottom and click “I accept”.
In the case of people invoking God here, it actually is in the manual. Gen 38:9-10
Not that I think anybody could tell me the names of anyone else involved in Gen 38 without looking it up on the internet. I’m just amused at how much weird stuff gets covered in the Bible.
What are you talking about? Ask anyone, they’ll say, “Er…”
Even that interpretation is debateable and pretty patriarchal. Especially if you start with verse 9 and leave out verse 8 (and the rest of the entire story). Onan’s father told Onan to get his widowed sister-in-law, Tamar, pregnant (which was her right as a widow to have a child by a surviving man from her husband’s family), and Onan refused via “spilling his seed.” And that’s when God struck him down. For ages this has been read, by men, as a divine prohibition against masturbation or pulling out instead of a prohibition against refusing to give Tamar the child she had a right to, and doing it by still using her body for sex instead of just outright refusing. Talk about what she consented to (sex for a child) and what she didn’t (non-reproductive sex). There is much more to the story than those two verses, and if you read the whole thing, you see it’s a story about Tamar’s struggles to get the child she had a right to.
So it’s only “actually in the manual” under one interpretation, albeit the one that’s the best known.
(Also, the name Tamar shows up later in the Bible as the daughter of King David who was raped. Coincidence that these two women had the same name or literary call-back? You decide.)
“You ‘stealth’ once, she’s not going to sleep with you again. So you what, you’re a clubbing god who doesn’t care the scorched earth policy they live behind because there’s an endless supply of women to seduce?”
Ney, that’s exactly what they think.
WeHuntedTheMammoth did a fair few articles on RooshV last year because he started to act erratically (or at least more than usual). It’s very apparent that Mr. V is realising that he’s becoming the guy who’s too old to be in a club, and his attitude to women is so toxic he has no chance of ever having a long-term partner. He knows but won’t acknowledge that he’s poisoned himself against women. May all PUAs suffer his fate.
That’s… appalling. On top of being criminal, it’s just so *stupid*.
All these PUA tactics convince women to be even more wary of ‘giving guys a chance’. The more women are convinced these ‘tactics’ are mainstream, the less casual sex men will ‘get’.
They don’t care. Their world is their dick and what (because women aren’t human) they can stick it in.
You know actually there’s a tiny part of me that wants to feel sorry for these guys, because they don’t even seem to like other men very much. But they’re scumbags, so fuck ’em.
I can feel sorry for them while still being completely content that they have to lie in the bed they set on fire.
I feel bad that they took a perfectly good human life with all the Hero with A Thousand Faces potential to it and set it on fire. I’m not sorry that they have to continue living that life after doing so.
It is almost impressive to me how much these kinds of guys seem to despise so many other men while simultaneously going on about how men are superior and logical and rational and have all of these godly, innate traits.
Yeah, he’ll die old and alone and have no one to blame but himself.
Of course, he won’t see it that way. It’s those damned feminists’ fault he wasn’t rewarded with a woman (but only one that is an 8 or above).
They feel vaginas are single-use. Once they have had sex with a woman, there’s no power charge from persuading her to have sex with them again. She can’t increase their “women laid” bragging count.
Don’t you know, only the woman is supposed to lose her virginity to her spouse? And be faithful? That he is supposed to ”be a man” and boink as many hot chicks (but nothing under an 8, leave those scags for those betas, brah) as is human possible?
ETA that I am being sarcastic.
Me: society is crumbling due to matriarchy, single moms errywhere, dudes getting fucked over in divorce court, etc.
Also me: it is a natural urge and right to creampie broads you met the same evening
What shit-tier level of toxic masculinity do you need to be on that you’re gonna risk getting someone pregnant or you catching an STD, especially if you’re also into body-is-a-temple levels of /fit/ and nootropics nonsense? If you wanna indulge in shooting your load inside someone, why not bother finding a FWB who’s on a combo of birth control methods, thinks you’re worth the price of her doing all the legwork and agrees to a mutual STD test, like you would with any other fucking kink? Lord knows that if you sink deep enough into that mire of idiocy no byyourownlogic is gonna help anymore, but why half-ass alpha masculinity? It’s an insult to oneself to go for a dudette who isn’t into you.
Because their pride is only as big as it doesn’t stop getting them laid.
But Apologist, that’s all *work* and relies on them knowing someone who actually *likes* them and can stand to be around them for more than ten minutes without worrying that any minute now bats are going to fly out of their mouths. Bats of misogyny.
A lot of men have seriously messed up views of themselves and other men. I agree that if it is important to them to bareback, they could do so consensually. As the Doc says, they don’t just want the activity and sensations. They want to have power over her by it being unconsensual and against her will.
I bet the Venn diagram of straight men who advocate “stealthing” and men who wail about b*tches tricking them into conceiving a baby for all that sweet sweet child support is a perfect fucking circle.
Also “as a woman, I fully support [disgusting misogynist behavior]” = 60% chance the person in question is not a woman.
But… but, having a woman say this thing *proves* it’s not misogynistic and that *all* women subconsciously recognize man’s superiority to be true!
omg I totally forgot! my silly ladybrain simply can’t handle all these incredible True Facts
Funny how one woman saying X isn’t misogynistic proves that it isn’t, but thousands saying otherwise proves, apparently, nothing.
Some women do support disgusting and/or misogynistic behavior. Sarah Palin and her ilk are more common in some areas than others. There have been guys pretending to be women on the Internet since the telnet / usenet days. Accusing a specific person feels misogynistic to me (it’s happened to me fairly often, mostly in online games before they hear me talk on Vent/etc.).
That’s why I said “60% chance” rather than “100%”.
I’ve run across this quite a few times where I got pushback from so-called female MRA’s that I just honestly do not believe were actually women.
Usually it was because they were making ridiculous straw arguments about how men get false rape accusations all the time.
ha, that was my exact thought (that it was some MRA smuck pretending to be a woman). I was watching Hbomberguy’s video (again, its what I do when I feel scared about the hatred and grossness MRAs put into the world) and RooshV’s evil twin, Matt Forney, actually created a fake website, with a fake woman, telling in detail how it was UNMANLY for men to give cunnilingus, how it went against nature and no man should ever kneel in front of a woman or something.
Highly recommend Hbomberguy, 10/10
I fucking love Hbomberguy. NINE MILLION CANADIAN US DOLLARS
Also, this is one of the reasons that the perennial complaint of “women can get abortions, men should be able to opt-out of child support” garners absolutely no sympathy from me.
Are the people who make that complaint also the ones who think women shouldn’t be able to get abortions?
Most of them probably are.
I think they don’t even think about the fathers. It’s out-of-wedlock sex, that’s a sin, people deserve to be punished (which means inertia, so if it means their tax dollars don’t get spent trying to enforce child support payments, then so be it).
I do think they’d be inclined to condemn a man who got a woman pregnant and then bails, but they’re also the ‘men have needs they can’t repress’ crowd who say ‘boy will be boys’ when it’s a guy having sex and ‘slut’ when it’s a woman.
I think that Mike means that guys who invoke God wanting them to “spread their seed” would be opposed to their victims getting an abortion, but still would get mad if they have to pay child support.
Yeah I was pointing out the appalling hypocrisy of these guys. I honestly don’t think that they ever stop to think about just how screwed up their views are, that they just believe it’s how a man is supposed to think and never bother to question it.
They’re that way towards everyone but them. They also are of the mindset that women should be held to a different standard than they are.
Until, of course, they find themselves in an unwanted pregnancy situation and don’t like the prospect of being a father. Then they can’t change their views fast enough – at least until the abortion is performed, at which point they go right back to being anti-choice shitbags.
That’s pretty much what happens. They also piss and moan when they’re constantly in and out of court for nonpayment of child support. Missouri is also a ”deadbeats don’t drive” state and nonpayment suspensions are a very common issue that comes up when I stop someone and find out their license is suspended. And they always act like it’s no big deal and nothing should happen to them. Fortunately it doesn’t work that way.
Yup, lets just make shit up.
I am sure they are all nazi’s too.
Well aren’t you a charmer. Go spread your charm somewhere else sunshine, you’re surplus to requirements here.
There is no study showing any overlap between dudes who do this and dudes who want to ban abortion.
So saying most of them probably are, is making shit up.
I dare suspect that the only reason some men think women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions is because the fetus might yet be born a man. Misogyny, pure and simple.
Their argument is that it’s always the woman’s responsibility to get an abortion, whether she was raped, the condom was deliberately removed, her birth control was sabotaged, etc. *sigh* In some areas, there aren’t any abortion providers. A couple of states have granted convicted rapists parental rights including visitation and preventing their victims from giving the child up for adoption.
Even if you exclude rapists, most women (and men) divorcing for abuse have to co-parent as long as the child isn’t physically abused (and even then, it has to be proven). Family law is a very tricky matter, and some men do get ripped off in divorce (although they often don’t want to see how the career of the mother of their kids was hit by the pregnancies and eventual part-time/stay at home periods, and also they don’t want to acknowledge that when the *woman* earns more, the woman has to pay alimony. It’s not a gender thing).
Ugh, and I hate the line of “well, they should have a dad” being spewed here, because, yes, having both parents would ne nice in an ideal, an abusive parent, (and it sounds like sexual abuse wouldn’t count?), is *not actually good* for a child, regardless of if the child is the one receiving the abuse. Like, that is the person who is teaching them life lessons. Are we so afraid of single moms doing a decent job that this seems like the better alternative?
A woman not deferring to her male partner AND doing well!? This is most unorthodox!
Well, obviously being raised by a single woman is the worst possible scenario, like way worse than being raised by a sex offender/rapist.
Some people argue also that they should be able to PREVENT women from getting abortions if they want the child. It’s a mess.
Basically the MRA rules are that a woman should do whatever the man who’s currently fucking her wants her to do.
You missed out the second “currently”, just before “wants”.
In a perfect world, fathers would have to raise the child (since the world is not perfect and forcing couples to stay together and parents to be around kids they don’t want generates violence, it obviously can’t be a law). Throwing money at the child and calling it quits is already iffy.
Although I acknowledge some men genuinely get manipulated (or would love more visitation rights/to be the primary caretaker), and you can end in a very shitty situation. But the ratio wouldn’t be so skewed towards single moms if there wasn’t a bit of a ‘it’s not my problem’ attitude from a whole too many men.
Well in a perfect world every pregnancy would be wanted by both parents who would enthusiastically throw themselves into parenting and also nothing would ever go wrong with foetal development or the pregnant person’s health.
You can’t chose to have a healthy kid (or safe pregnancy), you can choose to double down on contraception and to do the best by your kid and to co-parent (not talking about having to marry that co-parent).
I was trying to make a point about responsibilizing people and why the law can’t substitute for that. Responsibility aside, you can’t get un-pregnant, that’s why I’m 100% for more sex ed and ‘consent education’ (reducing unwanted pregnancies and a safer environment) and 100% for legal and easily accessible contraception.
Oh no, I know that. I am right with you on your second paragraph. The law can’t force a man (or anyone) to actually parent a child, which is why it annoys me that some men want to get out of the bare minimum of sending the child’s mother a pittance every month.
Forcing a parent to raise a child they don’t want is the way you fuck up kids.
oh absolutely, and you’ll note that the law makes it easy enough for a dad to pay alimony and never see his kids if he doesn’t want to. But growing up in poverty not seeing your mom because she works multiple jobs is hardly conductive to growing up healthy and happy either (for all that many people manage it). Or have mom have to have low standards for step-dads because she absolutely needs *someone*.
It’s much harder for mom to have the kid (no access to abortion or a whole array of reasons) and dump it on dad and then vanish. Giving up a kid for adoption isn’t as easy as it sounds, and the foster system is a disaster.
I’m sometimes one of those supporting that statement if only because I really really dislike kids, they’d ruin my existence, and sex done with perfect protection can still go wrong. I would not want my future destroyed even though I took all possible precautions and someone else got to decide whether or not I had a child without my consent whatsoever.
If you want to advocate for people being able to fuck who they want as long as they’re smart about it, you should also advocate for people having control over their future.
I *am* a woman, I *have* a uterus, I’ve known pregnant people, my sister had kids, look, I know men and women are different and how baby-making and -having works. But I still can’t help feeling like it’s a profound lack of empathy that lets one person in the pair that created a child have all the power over both people’s lives. As for “well don’t have sex if you’re not ready for a kid,” haven’t we been trying to advocate for *not* taking that stance here? Abstinence only doesn’t work. I would feel hideously sorry for a guy who got, as they say, baby-trapped. And I have known women who did this to their partners. I can easily imagine how much my life would suck, and I can’t put anyone else through that.
If I decide to keep the kid and my boyfriend bails because he never agreed to have babies, I fully expect and endorse his leaving. He won’t have to pay me money. We agreed we didn’t want kids, we’re acting accordingly, and it’s my responsibility if I decide to have one. He gets no parental rights, but it’s a whole hog thing: you make it, you support it, you get to be Dad. You make it, you don’t support it, you’re not Dad anymore.
Big caveat: I can afford and have easy access to abortions and birth control. It’s different if you don’t. All of this is for people in my sort of position.
The mother doesn’t have “all the power over both people’s lives”. A man cannot be forced to parent a child. He can merrily continue with his life and just pay the support. He never has to have anything to do with the kid. The mother chooses to have the kid, she does all the rearing, pays most of the living expenses (nobody is living large off child support), explains to the kid why s/he doesn’t have a dad etc. What you’re advocating is for men to spawn as many kids as they please and never pay a red cent for them. You’re advocating for the full responsibility of babymaking and child-rearing to be put back on the woman.
The first thing that would happen if men were allowed to legally opt-out of supporting children they didn’t want would be that the courts would be crammed with divorced men wailing about how they never wanted kids, their ex did, why should they have to pay etc. etc. Why should I as a tax-payer have to support the child of some dude who thought it’d be right fun to slip the condom off in the middle of sex? Or some dude who barely parented his kids while he was married and now hates his ex so much more than he loves them that he’d rather hang onto his money and see them go without?
Because this:
“He won’t have to pay me money.”
is missing the point. That money’s not for you. It’s for the kid. Who didn’t ask to be born but who is here now and deserves to be supported financially just like a kid who was wanted by both parents.
I knew I’d get this response. Here’s the bottom line for me.
I understand that a lot of men are douchebags and are going to try to get out of any kind of responsibility etc etc. That is not what I’m thinking about right now. I don’t know how to handle that, I admit. I haven’t settled on what my ideal solution would be, because it’s a hard problem. Still, I’m looking for this not to happen:
Bob and Alice are lovers. Bob doesn’t have much money, but hey, he gets by. Their relationship is good and healthy, and they decide nah, they don’t want kids, they can’t afford that right now, but they’re happy together. They want to satisfy each other. They have sex because they want to and it’s nice and all that. They use protection as well as they can. Alice gets pregnant because maybe her pill wasn’t as effective as she thought (did you know body mass, for example, impacts its effectiveness?) and the condom broke. Alice gets pregnant.
Alice now really wants to keep this child that Bob and Alice agreed would never happen. Now Bob is on the hook for money he never wanted to pay and an experience in life he never intended to have, because he never got a choice to go live his life separate from Alice, who entirely and voluntarily agreed to have this child. Alice could have gotten an abortion. She decided, of her own will, not to. Now Bob is dragged along.
I’m sorry, but I do not want responsibility for a kid I will never love and care for. I just have no parental instinct and I know I will be a bad parent. If there are options that are safe and reasonable to end a pregnancy, and my partner chooses not to use them, that is not anything I decided and suddenly my life is being heavily impacted — and money IS important — by this thing I didn’t get any say in.
No, I have no answer so far to “what about asshole men,” but I’m a bit leery of punishing the innocent to make sure the guilty don’t get away with something. (Don’t we use the exact opposite principle with crime? Let some guilty go to keep from punishing the innocent? To use a rather stretched analogy, isn’t this why most people don’t like the death penalty? Too much risk of impacting the innocent?)
Again, *this is assuming Alice could get the abortion/etc easily.* I know it’s not so simple in most places.
For me it’s as simple as “If it’s in your body, you have last say of what happens to it. If your stuff is in another person’s body, they have last say. If you want to have last say, don’t put your stuff in another person’s body”. Accidents, even the non-baby kind, happen every day, but if I cause an accident I am responsible for the fallout.
If a couple is determined to not have a child, there are more reliable ways of securing that, IUD’s (hormonal or not), vasectomies and tubal ligation.
“Now Bob is on the hook for money he never wanted to pay and an experience in life he never intended to have, because he never got a choice to go live his life separate from Alice”
That is the risk Bob chose to take when he had sex. Pregnancy and STDs are risks of having sex. Even if your partner swears she’s childfree and will definitely abort any pregnancy which occurs.
“If there are options that are safe and reasonable to end a pregnancy, and my partner chooses not to use them,”
You say this like abortion is a day at the spa, or that women never feel differently about having an abortion once they find out that they’re pregnant.
I will remind you too that it is easy for Bob to say “yeah no I’m not gonna play Daddy” and eff off over the horizon. No court in the land can force him to be Happy Families with Alice now that she’s done this heinous thing that’s affected him without his consent (even though he enjoyed the sex). It was also easy for Bob to get a vasectomy if he never wanted children. If he wanted children “someday” but “someday” happened faster than he wanted, well that’s life dude.
“No, I have no answer so far to “what about asshole men,” but I’m a bit leery of punishing the innocent to make sure the guilty don’t get away with something”
Child support isn’t a punishment. It’s for the child. Bob Junior. He has to deal with his father not wanting him and abandoning him and there’s nothing anyone can do about that. But let’s say your analogy is appropriate. How do you decide who should pay child support and who’s just utterly blindsided by his woman deciding to continue a pregnancy when they agreed no kids and he was super super careful to always use a condom and really doesn’t deserve to be punished like this?
I don’t think it helps matters that until they actually come out with male birth control (and I’m losing faith on this one lately), it’s pretty much on ladies to get any non-condom birth control, whether it be pills or IUDs or Norplant or Nuva-ring or whatever. So if you are a hetero dude who never ever wants kids but don’t want a vasectomy, you are often asking the woman do to take the extra precautions for you. But I imagine there are many women who both don’t want children and don’t personally want to get an abortion (many of whom only realize this *when they get pregnant*), and until men can get pregnant, they’re just not going to be in that exact situation.
Bob should have worn a condom then.
Adult games charge adult prices.
Bob and Alice being happy has nothing to do with it. As soon as Bob stopped using the condom he signed an invisible EULA. He knows the pill isn’t 100% and he still unwrapped, which a condom isn’t 100% either, but at least he was taking care of his end of things.
I’m kind of troubled by this argument. Bob could use a condom and still have a risk his partner will become pregnant. If we take it one step further to the point that a person agrees to become a parent the moment they have piv sex, that has some troubling implications for women’s reproductive rights.
Which isn’t to say I endorse the MRA position on this. All I can really say is that children deserve to be adequately financially supported, and that the parents are generally the first people who can be called upon to do that – even if Bob would have preferred that Alice have an abortion, and even if Alice tried her best to obtain one and wasn’t able to (I notice that a lot of men advancing these arguments forget that not all women who given birth wanted to). If we lived in a society where all children had access to a financially adequate upbringing, I could see the argument making more sense.
It doesn’t mean anyone is agreeing to become a parent but they are acknowledging the chance of becoming one is less than zero.
I had a friend who thought it was absurd that anyone would use a condom for a blowjob even it was from a random woman in a club bathroom until he got an STI from a blowjob.
Transmission rates for oral to genital is very, very low but not zero.
In the example Alcor used there is an assumed risk that Bob takes and it’s also almost always an educated and informed risk.
Just to make it clear; everything Alcor wrote about Bob and Alice being happy, etc, is beside the point.
Of course you can still get someone pregnant or catch an STI with a condom in use. Of course a woman can get pregnant while on BC.
When Bob takes that condom off he’s raising his risk factor of them having a baby and I can’t feel bad and see this as unfair the way Alcor seems to want me to because he made an active decision that impacted his risk.
So, sorry Bob, someone has to be the statistic for failed BC and you decided to raise your stakes yourself.
I’m probably somewhere in between. I don’t see it as being as unfair as Alcor does, but I can feel sorry for both Bob and Alice, assuming this wasn’t Alice’s ideal life plan. Realistically speaking, most people are a bit messy and make some poor decisions and are far from perfect about their birth control use. I’m generally in favor of being compassionate about that. (Really, a lot of things about this scenario are unrealistic. Cases where one parent doesn’t want to be involved from Day 1 and consistently maintains that position for the next 18 years are pretty rare.) It’s just that in this case, there’s a third party whose interests trump either of the other two people’s.
Oh, sure, I’m not and wouldn’t say that someone drawing the short stick statistically isn’t someone we can’t or shouldn’t feel bad for.
I’m with you in that it’s an unrealistic scenario, but it bugs me that this is always the same scenario put forth while ignoring the complexities of the decisions the woman has to make.
I’d feel bad for Bob, and Alice,and I know ppl like that in my life, but no matter how it’s presented or how bad we feel the reality that it’s just a statistical reality we accept is still there.
Bob made choices about his reproductive life and Alice will make her choices.
If Bob didn’t want to be “trapped for the rest of his life” he had his time to make his choice…issues of fairness aren’t in play as it’s certainly not fair to Alice.
I do think we need to acknowledge that these choices and their corresponding risks are highly asymmetric. Alice can have as much sex as she pleases and she will never be financially on the hook for a child if she doesn’t want to be. Alice will never be trapped for the rest of her life as long as she’s prepared to have an abortion, while Bob has to live a life of complete abstinence if he wants to achieve the same outcome.
I guess I have a problem with the notion that “men who have sex need to be fully prepared to have/support children, while women can have sex without being prepared to have/support children”. Men have to be prepared to accept a whole level of responsibility that women never have to risk. I wish there were some way to equitably diffuse the responsibility. Because right now, every man who decides to engage sexually with a woman has to be prepared to give away a quarter of his income for the next 18 years at a minimum, while women only need to be prepared to have an abortion.
Wear a condom, sleep with women you trust, sleep when you know she’s also on the pill, have the ‘would you abort’ discussion, sleep with women who can geographically/financially afford one (it’s not easy!), and hang around to be able to help her if you find out she’s pregnant… Then you’re minimizing your risks.
Seriously? ‘only need to be prepared to have an abortion’. Lol.
Trust me, raising a (surprise) baby without a dad (even if you have child support) is hard. There aren’t hordes of women out there wanting to trick you. There are more men who want to get an orgasm and care fuck all about what may happen.
Shit happens. If you make a human, do your best by them.
Get a vasectomy. Easy.
Seriously, if the surgery for women was anywhere as safe/effective/etc., I would’ve gotten it like 5 years ago (though good luck finding a place that doesn’t ask you a million questions about whether you can really know at 25 that you don’t want to have kids – because it is assumed that if you don’t want to give birth you don’t want kids).
I have a friend who has a really bad uterus condition (think 1-2 week long debilitating periods if she’s not on birth control) meaning that even if she wanted kids (she doesn’t) she has virtually no chance of carrying them to term.
Her doctor STILL wouldn’t let her get a hysterectomy before age 30.
Uggh.
Yeah, I mean no woman has ever gotten pregnant by accident, decided with the guy to keep the baby, and had the guy bail at some point along the way. Oh wait…
That shit happened to my sister -_-
It’s bullshit how common it is 🙁
If Alice and Bob hook up one night in a moment of weakness, I’m okay with the status quo being the default. It’s the least worst option. Ditto if they pair off in a club bathroom one night, although the practicalities of Alice getting in touch with a club rando get in the way. (The biological realities being a big part of why I’m okay with the default being the default.)
If Bob does his due diligence trying to find someone with similar anti-child views only for Alice to change her mind, I have more sympathy for his position. And if he can prove that he and Alice had these talks and that she agreed, I’m more okay with letting him off the hook. (“Proof” in cases like this would probably need to be something like a contract.) But allowing two adults to hammer out an arrangement amongst themselves is one thing. (Arguably, if there’s a contract, that implies enough clear discussion to make it a net relationship positive.) Worries about women trying to be sneaky in general cases, though, tend to create many more problems than they solve.
I think you missed the part in Alcor’s comment where she said that they did use protection but the condom broke.
That sucks but someone has to be the statistic.
Also, we are now into situations so rare that it’s absurd.
Two forms of birth control fail that are both 98%+ effective when used properly?
We can feel sorry for Bob but we sure shouldn’t be changing policy based on our most extreme outliers.
Bob should have gotten a vasectomy if he wanted his chances to be statistically zero.
This is one of those places where I don’t follow feminist thought. Or more accurately, where I understand it perfectly but it makes zero sense.
What if the dad is someone who will string out a court case to make his ex’s life more difficult? What if he is an abuser who will pressure the mom to sign a “release of parental obligations” contract. In cases like those, do we really want him having legal rights to muck with the mother and child’s life for 18+ years?
It’s not going to be that clean, precisely because abusers know that parental rights give them a lot of legal leverage. But if both parents sign a release contract ahead of time, there are plenty of pro-woman advantages to having them honored. That the knee-jerk reaction is always “but what about men running around trying to spread their seed consequence-free” is telling.
Where I live it’s a lot simpler. If the parents can’t agree to the terms, the government steps in and pays the child support directly to the mother, and then claims the money from the father. This makes a lot more sense to me, since the government have more resources to get the money from the father, and the child should not suffer because the mother don’t have enough leverage on the father to force him to pay.
What parental rights does the father reserve in these cases? Some level of them would still allow him to get back at the mother (with side-effects on the child) in dickish but still legal ways. None might be convenient, but turning the MRA’s imagined extreme scenario into legal reality would invite too much blowback to last for any amount of time.
And as Mara is noting downthread, the systems that allow dad to nope out of obligations also allow mom to avoid hassles down the line if dad changes his mind. That’s the flip side of the issue.
A man that is willing to be a father can ask for 100% (rare) or 50% (common) custody, or visitation rights (usually the child stays with him every other weekend), or if he doesn’t want to be a dad he can simply just not engage at all. If the mother don’t agree to his custody claims, the court decide in the best interest of the child, which usually ends with 50-50 custody (under the assumption that both parents are willing to and fit for parenting), but no one can force the father to partake any more than he wants to. If one of the parents don’t cooperate with the terms, they are likely to lose custody (i.e. any say in the care of the child) and just retain visitation rights.
If the father would change his mind after several years and decide that he wanted custody, he would have to first turn to the family court and they would only change any custody terms if it’s in the best interest of the child, and they would also consider the child’s wishes.
My son’s biological father decided that he didn’t want to be a dad. Actually, the answer I got when I told him I thought I was pregnant was a moment of silence followed by “I don’t want anything to do with you or your fucking kid”. That was the last time I talked to him.
It would have been completely impossible for me to force him to give me money for my son, and I was dirt poor at the time. With this system, he didn’t have to have anything to do with me or my kid just like he wished, I got my child support every month from the government and the government garnished his wages.
There is a minimum amount every month in child support the kid receives, and if the non-custody parent don’t make enough money to reach the minimum the government steps in and makes sure the child get the necessary amount for their care. And also a max % of income they have to pay, no one is forced to pay so much in child support they can’t support themselves. So even if the non-custody parent makes no money or makes sure to get his wages under the table to minimize the amount they have to pay the child every month, it still doesn’t affect the parent with custody or the child.
This system came into place to minimize the trouble one parent can cause the other one.
“You’re advocating for the full responsibility of babymaking and child-rearing to be put back on the woman”
In some cases this is a good thing. Again, I’m just speaking of my case and not of what the law should be (I don’t have it figured out yet) but I know that considering my income, lifestyle and mental state and those of my ex partners any child created with most of them would be much, much better off alone with me, and forcing them to be a part of it so they can “pull their weight” would only create mess and heartache. (I’m mostly talking about the older ones, I’m choosing much better these days).
I understand that the money is for the kid. But if I can provide for the kid more than fine on my own, and this includes private education and awesome vacations, and the other option is to allow a shithead to be a part of their life for a very small sum, then I think we’re better off allowing the shithead a way out and leaving it at that. And I know, I’m not supposed to screw bad people so this doesn’t happen, but we’re not talking about the perfect situation.
I agree that the well-being of the child trumps everyone’s freedom, but I think it’s too easy to equate well-being with financial support, when it’s much more than that. And I’m not only talking about proven abusive people, which are the kind that can be legally kept away, but about very toxic horrible individuals on the “right side” of the law, their bigoted views and dysfunctional families. And about the law only backing you up only after abuse has already taken place, AKA when it’s too late.
This doesn’t mean that I believe any mother should just be able to exclude any father from the picture, as that would create the possibility of her alienating a good dad who is interested in raising the child and just making a mess on her own. But it’s just what we always say, when someone tells you who they are, believe them. And if either a mother or father say they’re not fit or interested, then we should trust it’s for the best if they stay away.
In Australia child maintenance is a percentage of your income (and not a terribly high percentage.) Obviously it’s going to make life harder than if you were able to keep it for yourself but not so hard as it would be for the child if they were to be without it. That’s the thing I think people forget. The money is for the child. It’s not a punishment, it’s to make a decent life, which can be quite difficult otherwise.
That’s ultimately where I am on this. The child is the person with the least choice in this situation, and what’s fair for the child is to have enough money in its household while growing up. It’s not fair to Bob, because human reproduction isn’t fair period. It’s not fair that Alice gets to pick between two expensive, painful medical procedures as a result of her sexual activity. Reproduction won’t be until we have perfect birth control and embryos develop in vats.
If we were in a post-scarcity utopia and every child had all the resources they needed, I might look at things differently, but I suspect perfect birth control and vats will come a long time before then.
If biology were about ‘fair’, then typing on the internet while eating potato chips would give us all abs of steel and zen-like blood pressure readings.
It’s 20 to 30% here in Argentina.
I’m not sure about the legal implications of making this the general case and I’m not about to discuss them cause I don’t have the time right now, but I know that personally I would like to be able to give the father an opportunity to opt out, as long as it was before the second trimester and permanent just like mine, and I wish there was legal protection for me so I can go HAHA NO in case the dude wants to come back in four years when he finds god, gets cancer or learns I married someone else. I think it’s only fair.
BUT: I am not morally opposed to abortion and I’m perfectly able to support a child on my own if I want to. That’s why I only speak of my case and those like mine.
Another thing that just occurred to me (apparently I have ALL the thoughts on this and they’re all over the place) is that it’s tied to so many factors that it’s required to change with the times.
I 100% agree with forcing fathers from a model from decades ago to pay. There was a time where you could not be a single mom with a good life. It was all scorn, sacrifice and low wages. But as the times get better and we approach equality there could be other fair models, and we should keep the conversation going and look for those.
BTW “scorn, sacrifice and low wages” is the best band name ever.
Thanks for bringing up that it happens to men too. That hadn’t occurred to me. It seemed like yet another thing women have to look out for; now I know it’s another thing people have to look out for. Worldview: expanded!
I’m certain that those referring to it as a prank know perfectly well it’s rape, and just call it a cutesy name in an attempt to justify it. So glad you called that out. It should be called rape, because when you consent with conditions (condom), and those conditions are violated, that consent clearly no longer exists.
I’ve seen this particular method of sexual assault referenced in a couple few articles this past month. None mentioned that it affected men, none were adamant about it being rape. This was a needed and good article. Kudos.
Ughh this happened to me. Not with some rando but with a long term fuck buddy who was friends with all my friends and in theory me. Left in a hurry when I realized, blocked him everywhere. To this day he’s still writing to ask why am I so meeeeaaaan and why won’t I just ANSWER HIM.
That’s horrible. I’m so sorry it happened to you.
I wonder, why didn’t you tell/warn people (even just ‘he behaved badly during sex, I don’t want to see him again’)? I can imagine a number of reasons, but also a number of reasons to tell. It’s the kind of things that would definitely have me review my opinion of a friend/acquaintance.
Oh I told everyone. He’s the only one who “doesn’t know”.
Ah, makes sense.
mmm, I’m going to get on you a little bit for this. Holding women responsible for the shit behavior of men isn’t kind. (I mean, do you expect her to shadow the asshole for the rest of his life, shouting HE’S A POTENTIAL RAPIST over his shoulder at all the women he meets? exaggeration, yes but you get the point) I hear this rhetoric a LOT lobbed at women that goes like, ‘he raped you, why didn’t you prosecute’ or ‘why didn’t you do something to save the next hypothetical women he might rape’ ??!?
and… because it isn’t her responsibility. Maybe she’s so emotionally done with the situation, maybe she’s so distraught, or unable to handle the aftermath that going after the man, whether it’s prosecuting him or even if it’s just to ‘warn other people’ shouldn’t be on the victim’s shoulders/is something she is literally incapable of doing.
Clearly that’s not the case with Mara, but in the future, please don’t ask someone who went through something potentially life changing and damaging to take the responsibility to exact justice/warn others when they might not be up for it.
Yeah, I went through much worse stuff and this is mostly a tiny aftershock to my trauma history, so I’m not very sensitive about it, but I did feel a bit policed for a moment. It mostly bothered me that you seemed to jump to conclusions about me not handling it “like I was supposed to” when there was nothing there pointing to that.
That was the furtherst thing from my mind, i’m really sorry i let my curiosity get ahead of my empathy. I shouldn’t have asked.
(I didn’t mean to imply that there was a *good* way to handle it.)
That’s ok, don’t worry. Just be very very careful with “why did you”/”why didn’t you” questions in situations like these in the future.
Even if your questions are innocent they happen in a context/culture where you can’t talk about things that people did to you without someone jumping in to blame you, so we’re all understandably sensitive about it.
I still feel guilty that I didn’t get the police involved when I was molested. I was only 7 years old, so I had no idea what to do. I thought my parents would believe him and punish me for “lying”, as they had in other situations.
Years later, when I found out he had raped my friend’s little sister, I did tell them and offered to testify if needed. He confessed to molesting or raping at least 40 other girls. Intellectually, I know it was his fault, not mine, but the “what if I could have had him jailed sooner” still tugs at me.
Jesus effing christ, Perlandra. I’m so sorry someone put you through that. I get your doubt, there is a difference in intellectually understanding that a 7 yo couldn’t have done much to convince adults, relatives and authorities, and on the other hand the feeling of “maybe”. But you would never ask that of any other 7 yo, right? So cut 7 year old Perlandra some slack.
Jedi hugs if you want them.
Good lord. And 40+ other girls? I see a lot of people who’ve experienced sexual abuse, and one of the questions we have to ask is if they disclosed the abuse, and I’ve definitely seen a pattern where most who were children didn’t (or waited until they were adults), and those who told their parents/family weren’t believed/were called liars. It’s depressing as hell. The thing is, guys like that probably know that a lot of adults won’t believe a child, and bank on it in order to continue doing what they’re doing. Hell, family and police don’t even believe *adults* who are abused/raped a good portion of the time.
oh God, I’m so sorry. and that’s something that I was going to bring up to Ney but I felt like I was already bombarding him (her?) with THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T DOOO THAAATT
and it’s the issue of people not believing the survivor of assault, especially when the societal script is ‘wimmin be lyin’ and ‘wimmins be hysterical and blow things out of proportion’
even if its a little girl child (oh Lordy, just look at all the judges who go SHE HAS BREASTS, WHO CARES IF SHE’S ELEVEN, CLEARLY SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT BY HAVING BREASTS)
I’m so sorry to have upset you like this. all the rainbows and unicorns for you today.
I would LOVE to give this turd the mother of all curse-filled rants. It would make every sailor and Karkat drop their jaws in shock.
I am sorry this fuckbuddy… or rather fuck this buddy… did yhis shite to ya. I hope your friends aren’t bugging you with him too
Luckily the ones I cared to keep all think he’s horrible. The rest were more like club acquaintances that I was on my way to dropping anyway.
This is something that makes me profoundly sad (and ragey. so ragey) and has come up recently with the comics industry (and other places). In a group, or an industry, there is a network of women who have to band together and warn other women in whispers about who is the rapist, who will grab your crotch when you are alone with him and who will smear your name if so much as DARE to presume to out him as a sexist pig.
and it’s like… IT SHOULDN’T BE LIKE THIS. Women shouldn’t have to huddle in tight corners lest the rape tiger get them, we shouldn’t have to be so fucking terrified for our lives and livelihood that we have to create a LITERAL UNDERGROUND FUCKING NETWORK to warn other women that so-and-so is a repeat rapist so don’t be alone with him.
THE FUCK.
aka The Missing Stair
Plus, any new or unpopular woman doesn’t get that information!
I am so glad most of your friends were on your side. He is a horrible person.
I found out later that all his girlfriends had abortions. And he’s got a child with another FWB too, so he’s apparently pretty industrious at being a shithead.
This happened to a friend of mine, with the first guy she slept with after her divorce. It’s horrifying.
I’m sorry this happened to you. *hugs*
I read the first sentence and was like “this is a thing?!”
Also, every guy out there that’s like “but but bareback is better,” you’re doing sex wrong. Try different condoms. If you’re really that ultra-sensitive maybe you should figure out a way not to be, because barrier birth control is the only way to prevent STDs. THE ONLY WAY. Do you want STDs? No? Then keep the fucking condom on. Argh. *falls off chair*
Yes, you can bareback sometimes with people you trust who are on birth control and who have been tested and if you’re clean etc etc. But saying you won’t fuck unless it’s bareback? Either something’s weird with your body or you’re an asshole.
I’m opinionated on this one, and I’m cool with that, because dammit condoms are the best thing since sliced bread and diseases are awful and many are permanent no one has any right to expect bareback sex ever.
I’m still searching for a condom that works for me. I’d search more but I don’t have a partner at the moment so I’m not very motivated right now.
You can order ones customized to your wang!
https://www.theyfit.co.uk
It’s probably a good idea to find a type you like and get used to them solo beforehand. Trying to figure it out with a new partner sounds awkward and nerve-wracking. Plus, the new sensations might require an adjustment period.
Being in the same boat as Datelessman, experience wise, I can only comment on what I hear from guys around me and online. But from what I understand, the appeal of bareback sex is about feeling the warmth and moisture of a vagina, as well as the the physical sensations that make bareback seem better.
I heard this was a thing but I didn’t know it had a name. It’s terrible but it doesn’t surprise me that it exists, it has a “cutesy” name and it’s reopened the endless defense of rape in our country and planet.
The issue of condoms is another one of those things that I, as a socially awkward inexperienced dude, looked at as if I was an alien. To me condoms were no big deal. Even though I’m still the MVP of Virgin Airlines I’ve used them before, to know what they’re like. But when I’d talk to all of the guys during high school and college, all they’d do is whine about them. “You don’t feel anything,” “they can break so why bother”, etc. The latter got traction in my circle since one of my pals (who is married and just had a daughter) had a condom break during his first time when he was 16, so that fed the legend of not liking them. It was seen as an inconvenience at best. I think one of my pals still utilizes the “pull out” method but it’s been MANY years since those sorts of particulars were common conversation. It always boggled me. I’d tried one on, it wasn’t like it turned my dingus to concrete or made it go numb. Not only does it protect against unwanted pregnancy but also STI’s, especially for the woman. They bare the brunt of the risk from sex. Isn’t it worth some “inconvenience” (their word, not mine) in exchange for sex? Don’t you like the woman you’re sleeping with, even just once, enough to care about her safety or pleasure? But, hey, what did I know. They were all the dudes who were getting dates and getting laid sporadically, and I was, well, me. The attitude of their needs being priority clearly didn’t hinder their ability to land girlfriends; they weren’t legendary studs but they all hit the average of 4-6 lovers for an average guy. It didn’t change my own attitudes about condoms, but it did seem to further alienate me from what normal men were, to me.
But switching them off without consent is even sleazier. But it’s not surprising. So many things about “being a man” seem to translate to being sleazy and tricking or coercing women (or other men) to do your bidding. To the best of my knowledge none of my pals did that; they were direct about going condomless and that was that. But I guess I’ll never know. I’m never surprised about the latest “trick” in the date rapist’s tool kit and it never stops appalling me.
There is no middle ground, no debate. Consent is consent. Accept no substitutes. Men who fret about “false accusations” I always suspect are really afraid of genuine accusations because they pressure women, utilize alcohol, etc. Statistically a man has greater odds of being raped himself (spoiler alert, most likely by another man) outside of prison than he does of being falsely accused of rape. And even those results aren’t accurate because rape accusations that are dropped due to a lack of evidence – or a victim deciding it’s too traumatizing to continue and ceasing to cooperate – are lumped into “false” statistically.
Also realize that while statistics regarding the amount of women who have been raped or molested at some point are bad enough – 1:3 or 1:4 – they have the caveat that rape and molestation is under reported. I can tell you as a man who has raised by a single mom, who had a grandma, who has been friend to many a woman, I have learned a tragic, uncomfortable, and sad anecdotal truth. That if I get to know a woman long enough that she genuinely and deeply trusts me, she will inevitably reveal that either she was raped or molested at some point in her life, or someone attempted to rape or molest her and was unsuccessful for whatever reason. To a woman, practically. And yet they go out, date, interact with men, don’t hate men as much as men tend to hate them (seriously, I swear, the angriest lady on Tumblr is barely even the average man on 4chan). Men don’t have to face those sorts of dangers in everyday life, usually because of ignorance, complacency, or direct involvement. It’s a reality I learned pretty young with a poor single mom (life did not treat her fairly at any point), and it only got more engraved as I got older and met more people. And I learned that most men didn’t get it, or they got it and didn’t care.
It doesn’t matter if she is a one night stand or your wife of 20 years. Heck, most states didn’t even entertain the idea of “spousal rape” until the 70’s and it wasn’t universally considered a crime nationwide until 1993. If someone hasn’t agreed to do something “with” you, an agreement which can be revoked at any time (suck it up), then you’re doing something “to” them, and that is a crime (or at best, a moral failing which the law doesn’t consider a crime because it benefits men in power). This should be basic humanity, not something people think are debatable in the endless war between sexes.
It’s a lot easier to treat women as if their boundaries don’t matter if you don’t view them as people!
Also, I might need this on a t-shirt: ” the angriest lady on Tumblr is barely even the average man on 4chan”
Thanks, I felt particularly inspired.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this what that fuck-weasel Julian Assange’s rape case is about in Sweden?
That’s part of it, yes.
Harris even links to the Assange case when mentioning that Sweden is one of the countries where this is in fact illegal.
And while the details of his case leave me curious how much there is to the accusations, someone who pissed off a major world government is not much use when discussing typical cases.
I remember when the warrant first became public, there was
a lot of opposition to naming what he did as rape. For me, the fact that the conversation had moved far enough that more people understand the consent issues behind it, make it pretty relevant to me.
And, after having consensual sex with another woman, he decided to go for round number two while she was asleep, without, you know, waking her up and checking if she was willing to go another time.
He also had the funniest OKCupid profile all “I’m looking for a woman from a country with political turmoil cause no one else will understand my progressive awesomeness”.
Minor, but I think related.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/df9094f8a111ab1151507df379e3615ab534432a07be2c8344d1fa9e6545b27e.gif
HAHA <3
This happened to me twice (with different people.) I didn’t realise there was
a name for it though. The not really being sure whether it was rape (it
is in my country), the worry about STIs and the fact that he didn’t
care about my consent or well-being at all were pretty devastating.
I’m sorry this has happened to you. *hugs*
Thank you : )
That is horrible! I’m so sorry he did that to you.
Thank you : )
So, I’m a bit confused. Are you saying then, that a woman who lies about being on the pill, or otherwise alters her birth control situation, and sex of some sort commences/continues, has raped her partner?
What’s your point here?
That feminazis, of course.
I mean, I remember this douche and his tiresome “arguments.” Alll his clarifying just demonstrated he’s not matured in the past couple of years
I’m just trying to think about what DNL has said and its implications. He’s clearly stated that stealthing is rape. OK. I wouldn’t have said its rape at first – certainly a violation of some sort – but I’m not opposed to altering how I or others understand rape. But this seems to bring in other possibilities as well. I think this might also mean that someone who claims to be STD-free and then has sex – that would also be rape. I say that because in all these cases, there is (an agreement/consent) to have sex under a certain specified condition and that condition was either altered or knowingly not true. So, according to how I am understanding DNL, these are all forms of rape.
Yes, in this case, one partner is consenting to sex under X assumptions. The other partner decieves them. Even if the act itself is pleasant, there is a violation, and it is rape (it is indeed a broadening of rape as defined in legal texts, but the law struggles with sex crimes and should not be considered the reference. After all, women can’t be rapists if the man is doing the penetration according to most rape laws).
So that really expands my notion or rape, and I would guess many others as well. I mainly considered rape to be about consent in a coerciveness/choicefulness way. But this seems to be more about truthfulness/falsity of partner expressed conditions under which consent is being given. So, to take this further, if I assumed you were famous/rich/single/whatever and had sex, it wouldn’t be rape but if my partner agreed or stated that they were famous/rich/single/whatever and we had sex then they will have raped me. So, to me, that’s a lot to think about and seems like a pretty big expansion of how rape is understood.
What the hell does your partner lying about their social or financial status have to do with the sexual act? Can you be infected with a deadly disease if they are not famous? Is there a risk of becoming a parent if you sleep with someone who’s “just” a teacher instead of Wall Street banker?
I think you slippery sloped your way into another district there.
It has to do with what status or information is pertinent to engaging in sex. If you will have sex with someone who has told you they (“will get you a recording contract”/ “are 28 years old” /etc) but wouldn’t otherwise, then it seems to me to be directly related to what DNL writes:
DNL:“Consent is granular. A person who’s consented to sex with a condom has not consented to all forms of sex, regardless of circumstances. They had not – and likely would not – have consented to sex without it. By removing the condom, the offending partner has changed the situation without their permission or knowledge. If they knew that the condom had somehow come off, they would want penetration to stop. Consent would have been withdrawn.”
If you are having sex with someone in exchange for something else then you’re talking prostitution so I don’t think the law is likely to consider your disappointment over that recording contract rape.
However, I do think that you’re bringing up irrelevancies so as to muddy the waters and make the whole issue seem a whole lot less serious than it is which is really gross.
I’m taking this quite seriously. This matters! I would be happy to consider any feedback relevant to understanding the issue better.
If you say you’re going to wear a condom, do it. It’s really not hard.
And I quote directly from the article above:
DNL: It’s Not About The Condom (Or: It’s Consent, Stupid)
In which case I really don’t know what your problem is. Are you having a problem understanding consent when it’s all laid out for you?
Yeah, and in this case it’s about both. So unless you’re trying really hard to justify shealthing, you have literally no investment in this. Wearing a condom is not that difficult.
Here’s your feedback:
1. This is an advice column for dating, not a support group or a legal debate forum.
2. Don’t rape. Don’t ‘stealth’.
3. If you want to know exactly what legally constitutes legal really real rape, talk to a lawyer. If you want an extended debate about what is and is not rape, there are plenty of places on the Internet for it.
4. If you’re concerned that you’ve been raped by deception, talk to a lawyer and probably also a therapist.
5. I knew this dumpster fire would get lit eventually.
6. You are the weakest link. Good bye.
Are you trying to figure out what lies you can tell someone to get them into bed or something?
Either that or he’s a troll. Either way it’s quite upsetting.
Well, if I’m misunderstanding the nature of rape, I put myself at risk of committing rape or being raped. I’m not trying to get away with anything here. I’m trying to contribute to a legitimate and constructive discussion, even though it is not being reciprocated very well. It seems to me that things like condom-use, birth-control use, STD-status, maybe some other things, depending on how we define rape, would all fall into this same category being talked about by DNL. And so I asked.
Am I to understand that no one really cares about the implications here? Sure, we can say, this specific thing, stealthing, is now included in the rape category but then it’s not really about consent – its just adding a specific thing. If it is about consent, how is it understood to make stealthing a consent-violation but not birth-control use/status, STD-status, etc. I’m asking. Where is the line? And how do we define that line? I’ve made several attempts to try and clarify the boundary and the possible implications.
“I’m trying to contribute to a legitimate and constructive discussion, even though it is not being reciprocated very well.”
That’s because this is a sensitive topic that’s actually happened to people here and you’re nitpicking about stuff which you could just as easily google or read about in the article above.
However, to answer your questions, No, birth control use (or lying about it) is not the same thing (please see the article above, and if you’re worried about it in your own life, use a condom. No, STI satus is not the same thing but in many places for some STIs (AIDs, for example) for can be charged and even go to jail if you didn’t disclose you have it/didn’t wear a condom.
Throwing this in here. While it’s important to have a clear enough definition of rape (and stealthing is rape), it’s not because something is only in the ‘very shitty behavior’ category instead of ‘rape’ that it should be dismissed. There have been enough dungbags throwing around phrases like ‘it’s not *really* rape’ and making semantic pirouettes to absolve horrible people of their behavior, with the implied ‘anything but rape goes’.
I read an article a few years ago titled something like “the x people you find when writing about rape”. I can’t find it now. One of them was Mr. “how do I understand what rape is, it’s so difficult” and this is basically what you’re doing. What do you gain by murkying the waters like this?
It’s really telling that when you hear about this situation you automatically align yourself with the perpetrator (and go all BUT WHAT IF I DO THIS WITHOUT NOTICING) instead of with the victim (and offer support). Don’t. You don’t sound logical, you sound predatory.
I’m suggesting there may be additional victims, not less. I’m “aligning” with the victims. I’m suggesting that we may not have recognized other scenarios that are ALSO rape, according to how DNL lays it out (or how I understand what DNL wrote). I’m happy to consider how I’ve misunderstood things.
No, you are not aligning with the victims. You have an agenda, one that is rightfully at odds with people who have actually experienced stealthing or other violations of consent. You want to prove that men are more often the victims than the society gives them credit for. You are right, but in this instance, you are wrong. You are not being raped when the person you are boinking is not as rich as initially claimed. Your consent is not violated. Your trust is.
It’s not that hard, really. Don’t sleep with the other person if they don’t consent or are not able to consent. Stick to aforementioned agreements like wearing a condom for *health reasons*. If somebody tries to trick you into child support by not being on birth control, you are the victim of deceit, not rape, since SHE has to carry out that child that might or might not be created. In this case, you have either a confused or malicious woman on your hands or you have a relationship problem, which is a whole other can of worms. Your trust and in the long run your potential finances are violated, but not consent in sexual matters.
I do not claim to have all the answers or that I am right in every regard. Especially the baby-trap seems to be hotly debated. You may pick on that all you want, but in my experience, being dependent on child support is a one-way ticket to poverty, and every time I have seen this baby-trap (I worked for lawyers for most of my adult life), it was due to *relationship reasons* and not a matter of sexual consent. That said, tying somebody down with a “surprise pregnancy” is in my experience initiated more often by the male side by forgetting condoms or coercing the abolishment of birth control. I would be glad to be proven wrong here – I only have my impressions in this, not the statistics.
Which leads us to the most important issue of sexual consent or consent in general: Don’t be a shitty person, respect your partner’s boundaries and don’t push them with rules-mongering. What’s so hard to understand?
Which leads me back to you, my friend: Please don’t push your agenda. That topic is charged enough as it is, and you are NOT the victim here. You are not even sympathizing with anybody but yourself.
“Well, if I’m misunderstanding the nature of rape, I put myself at risk of committing rape or being raped.”
If that is your concern you can follow these rather simple guidelines:
Accept that every person is the exclusive owner of their body, and act accordingly. That means do only “use” another person’s body if they are OK with that specific “use”. Do not just assume that they are going to be OK with it. Do not use force, deception, or manipulation to get to “use” another person’s body in a way that they would not be OK with. Do only hook up with people who follow the same guidelines and are generally trustworthy.
(I do not particularly like the word “use” in this instance. Maybe some native English speaker can suggest something more appropriate.)
“Sure, we can say, this specific thing, stealthing, is now included in
the rape category but then it’s not really about consent – its just
adding a specific thing.”
I think you are missing the Doctor’s main point, which is that the word “stealthing” is a euphemism. It sounds way to cutesy for the act it describes.
Seriously, if you are trying to pin down the exact “which is the legal definition” thing this adamantly and are not actually a lawyer, I have to think that you are probably doing some unethical things in your sex life. Don’t lie to your partner, force them to do stuff (either physically r verbally), and don’t do stuff you didn’t agree to without asking. Some things that don’t follow those rules might be legal, but they would still be unethical. Maybe for folks out there who are concerned about this, work on being ethical rather than focusing on the legal ins and outs.
I thought it’s been obvious since his first post he’s trying to nudge in a “women are raping men all the time by lying about birth control or x-value” /”anything men do is rape, we can’t win!” since he’s leaning pretty hard on it.
It’s not about status or information being pertinent. It is that people were having sex in a way they agreed to beforehand, when the man changed the condition mid-coitus to something they had not agreed to. Agreeing to one thing does not mean agreeing to everything.
Dude, you’re going all lawyer on us (word of the law instead of spirit of the law and all that)…
We’re not saying ‘if you’ve lied about any aspect of your personality/situation with your sex partner, you’re a rapist’ or ‘a girl who sleeps with a guy thinking he’s rich can cry rape if the guy turns out to be poor’.
The guy who borrows a mercedes to ‘bang those goldigging chicks, because they deserve it for being so
shallow anyway ‘ is a dick, but stealthing is on a whole other level considering the consequences it can have.
Also, if you don’t pay a literal prostitute, then it’s rape.
While I sorta get why you’re suggesting I’m getting all lawyer-y, I don’t believe I am. I’m trying to understand what the issues, or principles, or dimensions in play here that would put stealthing or perhaps other things in the rape camp . So, yes, I’m being careful, drawing out distinctions, etc. but I’m really trying to get at the “spirit of the law”.
So we’re saying altering or lying about birth control, STD, or condom status is rape but misrepresenting ‘your person status’ is outside the issue.
Let’s put it like this: Condoms, kinks etc. Are things that happen *during* sex. Consent is given for a certain sex-behavior. Consent can be retracted at any time (but is not retroactive. If you stop being into bdsm, all those then consensual bdsm sessions were obviously not rape).
Don’t respect that, it’s rape.
If you have sex with expectations of things outside sex happening (laundry, free vacation, bragging rights for having banged an actress) it’s another discussion.
So if we include condom use as part of “sex-behavior”, that would seem to suggest to me that other birth control use would be apart of that, but probably not STD-status. Ok, I’m fine with that, but I think that suggests a lot more people have been raped than are aware and expands the common notion a fair bit. And that’s important to talk about and flesh out.
I’ll try again.
DNL: Consent is granular. A person who’s consented to sex with a condom has not consented to all forms of sex, regardless of circumstances. They had not – and likely would not – have consented to sex without it. By removing the condom, the offending partner has changed the situation without their permission or knowledge. If they knew that the condom had somehow come off, they would want penetration to stop. Consent would have been withdrawn.
This seems to directly suggest that changes or falsity in birth control and STD status would be rape. I will fill in the blanks just to make it explicit:
Consent is granular. A person who’s consented to sex with [birth control] has not consented to all forms of sex, regardless of circumstances. They had not – and likely would not – have consented to sex without it. By removing the [birth control], the offending partner has changed the situation without their permission or knowledge. If they knew that the [birth control] had somehow come off, they would want penetration to stop. Consent would have been withdrawn.
Consent is granular. A person who’s consented to sex with [STD-free status] has not consented to all forms of sex, regardless of circumstances. They had not – and likely would not – have consented to sex without it. By removing the [STD-free status], the offending partner has changed the situation without their permission or knowledge. If they knew that the [STD-free status] had somehow come off, they would want penetration to stop. Consent would have been withdrawn.
I’m sure there are other situations that would fit. This seems to be important to talk about and clarify. What am I misunderstanding? And to be clear, this isn’t some attempt to make stealthing not rape. I thought it was a violation of some sort and I’m perfectly willing to consider it as rape. It’s that by understanding stealthing as rape due to a consent-violation it seems to suggest additional scenarios that are also rape.
I am not certain about other STDs, but someone who is HIV+ and doesn’t inform their partners beforehand is legally committing assault with a deadly weapon, under US law.
Personally, I agree that I would consider not informing or directly lying to the other person before having sex about STD status or birth control is a violation of consent and a form of sexual assault, but not rape.
However, arguing with a victim about their choice of terminology is also a violation, as well as being rude and mean.
I used to be active in BDSM playparties, the local kink
I also was trying not to quibble about whether its sexual assault or rape – the point being that they are all violations and illegal violations. But it seems to me that whatever level/kind of violation stealthing is, STD or birth control status would be in that same group. And if it really is about false or non-updated status/information that would be pertinent to giving consent, that would be a really broad area and would likely need to be constrained in some way.
I agree with you that stealthing, which combines the two, should be handled similarly to lying about birth control or STD status. I disagree that lying about income or record deals is comparable.
To be clear, I wasn’t saying that either. They certainly strike me as different. Rather, that depending on how things are defined and bounded, they might fall into the same area. Which again, is why I wanted to discuss and ask for clarification.
Yes, it is rape when someone says they are on birth control when they have full knowledge that they are not. Full stop.
Yes, it is rape when someone who has an STD they are aware of lies about their status to their partner. Full stop.
Gonna go ahead and head off the gish-gallop and point out that several states and countries have a “rape by deception” statute either on the books or in development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_deception
You’re going to need to show some actual value to the conversation besides being an excellent example of dudes playing rape blackjack if you’re avoid getting the hammer.
And you better do it quick because my patience is low and I’m easily bored today.
In case it got buried elsewhere, Simon is no longer with us. Carry on.
I’m actually kind of surprised the thread hasn’t had more trolls as the whole ‘stealthing’ thing seems to be an MRA party trick and the MRA bat signal went off yesterday and we’ve only had… one (?) troll so far. maybe we’re getting a reputation? is the alt-right too busy to troll us? almost makes me sad.
The Mod Ninjas are also watching…
Cookies for all the vigilant Mod Ninjas. ^____^
Lately, we only seem to get one dumpster fire per Monday article and it starts later than they used to. Maybe they all retreated to their own echo chamber. . .or Kotaku.
Next: Why We Need To Talk About Whisky Tampons.
Really, if someone’s gonna try to troll, at least maintain the illusion of actually making sense.
Back in the 90’s there was an “epidemic” of teens supposedly saturating tampons with whisky and inserting them into their body. It turned out to be nothing but adults clutching their pearls. One HuffPo article doesn’t mean stealthing is actually a thing.
If you’re just trying to demonstrate that you haven’t actually read the article, you’re doing a great job.
As it is, you’re already boring me and you’re only two comments in. That doesn’t bode well for your longevity around here.
I’m going to be generous and ask if you’ve had a chance to read the comment section yet. Because several women have said it has happened to them over the years. I want you to be clear, are you calling them liars?
Because according to them, it is a thing.
(Edited for clarity.)
Just a quick view below would show more than one case of stealthing existing. But that would require giving women the benefit of the doubt.
The article covers more topics than that, regarding consent and date rape.
Is it bad that I’d rather deal with flash floods than trolls?
Are you Minnesota? I saw something about severe flooding but I went west out I-90 and across South Dakota. I wasn’t sure where the flooding was, but the rain (and snow in Nebraska) coming across I-80 was brutal.
Be safe out there, I’ve known too many city and state workers who get hit by cars or injured dealing with that sort of stuff.
I’m in Jefferson City, Missouri, but I spent Saturday and Sunday down in West Plains helping out because they took the brunt of the severe weather. Ozark and Howell Counties lost bridges, sections of highway, everything.
Thank you. Back in December I broke both bones in my right forearm assisting drivers on I-44 when we had freezing rain hit right at morning rush hour, I slipped and fell right on that arm.
I’ll bet that wind blowing across the plains in Nebraska and south Dakota was wicked.
South Dakota was actually nice. Just my wife and I and a few herds of antelope for a few hundred miles.
We came across Nebraska during the severe snow storm so it was not pleasant, and we hit the snow in Denver and nearly got smashed into when seven other cars spun out in the tunnel…I was the only one that didn’t lose control and managed to play dodge cars while skidding on the ice.
Won some husbadger points with that one but I’m not anxious to repeat.
Hope things are better in your neck of the woods, though, from what I saw and heard on the radio things got pretty brutal.
That sounds pretty adventuresome! It’s a good thing you reacted as soon as you saw what was happening. A lot of people wait until they’re in trouble to start reacting.
It was better this far north than in was down near the Arkansas line and over toward Tennessee, but it wasn’t great. Going down to help the Willow Springs troop was a sobering experience.
This is not all men, all men are not rapist, the same way all Indians don’t scalp people.
The same way all black people don’t steal.
All Mexicans don’t only speak Spanish.
All of anything is such a large group whatever trait you are trying to assign to them is almost always wrong.
It says nowhere in the article that all men does this, it never talks about “all men”, it only talks about the small subset of men that actually does this. And it’s enough men that it affects too many women (or male partners).
Oh my God, for real? I feel like we need a new internet “law”, like Poe’s or Snacky’s that says something like, “As an internet discussion goes on, the probability that someone will write #notall____ rapidly approaches 1.”
Trust me, all women know it’s #notallmen. Most of us have men in our lives we can trust, whether they’re friends or family. However, it’s impossible to tell which men are shitty before we meet them, and there are a SIGNIFICANT number of shitty men out there, who do cute things like form internet groups about how to sexually assault women.
Spoiler alert: Coming into a discussion that’s winding down to scream #NOTALLMEN is a pretty good sign that you’re one of the ones NOT to trust, just based on your almost total lack of reading comprehension. I look forward to your rebuttal about ethics in video game journalism.
[Mod]
That’ll do, Mousey, that’ll do.
As DNL said elsewhere, you’re surplus to requirements here in the commenting section…but please feel free to keep reading the articles, you might learn something.
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Best course of action is to be stronger than your urges. This is yet another risk factor for casual sex between strangers. Guys, ya’ll need to know that at some point in your casual sex life, you have probably committed a felony. “She was tipsy”, you had to ‘talk her into it’, she doesn’t want to but doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, she’s afraid to say no…. Ever wake up with a person who you’d never even consider dating, let alone inside you? Yeah. Chances are pretty good that consent is in question. She may have “wanted it” at 2AM, but, at 10AM, when cold reality sets in, you better hope she’s more embarrassed than pissed.
Guess what guys – consent can end even when you’re in the middle of the act. A partner cna change their mind at any time and you gotta stop immediately. Trying to coax her can be considered attempted assault. Here’s another one I’ve heard recently from a woman. “Consent under false pretenses means no consent”. Like, a guy says “I’m single” or “I park my AMG Benz in the parking lot of my downtown high-rise which is right next to the hospital where I perform open heart surgery pro-bono for low income kids”. Nope, you work at drive a Saturn which you park in front of your parent’s house and you work at pizza hut. You just committed fraud in order to obtain goods or services that you might not otherwise obtain. Consent was given based on fraudulent information and, as such, does not apply. So, now you got a double F. Fraud and non-consensual sex! If you’ve ever done any of these things, you’re an unindicted criminal. A felon. A rapist. A sexual offender. Just think on that for a sec and count your lucky stars.
So, ask yourself. Is it really worth it? Every week there’s another reason to avoid casual sex. 5 minutes (if you’re lucky) of fun is not worth a lifetime of shame. Look at what we’re talking about… Stealthing, FFS! Way to ruin it for legitimate broken rubbers. If she said to wear a condom and you don’t, how is that different than her saying you can use a cucumber and you use a watermelon? The fact that this is even a thing should tell you people that sex and respect must go hand in hand. Sex with mutual respect, honesty, compassion, and emotion with a person you care deeply for and who cares deeply for you can never be rape. But, maybe that’s too hard to comprehend for this generation of weak and entitled men.
I am so f-king tired that we still have to even have this discussion, FFS, just keep it in your pants. Believe me, the girls who will be upset by your fortitude are probably not the girls you want to be messing around with anyway!
Congratulations, you’ve managed to hit “tedious” AND boring with your very first post! And seeing as you’re kind of obnoxious pretty much everywhere you go, I’m going to go ahead and save myself and the mods a headache and drop the hammer early.
Have fun stormin’ the castle!
“She may have “wanted it” at 2AM, but, at 10AM, when cold reality sets in, you better hope she’s more embarrassed than pissed.”
Ah…the “women will regret the sex and falsely accuse you or rape” narrative wrapped up in concern trolling. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3fd349db963d89c9e54b147f952684b0d7ffb1ef0d288831c2f4179dc578aeb9.jpg
And with a side of “women won’t sleep with you unless you lie to them and pressure them!” too. Because everyone knows women don’t actually like sex. And the legal stuff is wrong. And it seems to dismiss the concept of marital rape. Yay.