I May Destroy You put stealthing in the spotlight. Credit: IMDB
![](https://unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/jessa-1-100x100.jpg)
Arabella is at a police station to discuss the investigation into her recent rape; while out with friends, her drink was spiked, and she was raped by an unknown man in a pub’s toilets. But another sexual encounter has been on her mind, too — one that feels more ambiguous. She doesn’t really have language to describe what happened to her, nor a context that would explain why she felt uneasy about it. She asks the police offer: if a man removed his condom without informing her, then ejaculated inside of her, requiring her to take a late-night trip to a pharmacy to buy emergency contraceptives, how should she feel about it? Violated or chill? Was it a misunderstanding or was it an act of aggression?
The police officer gives her a hard, cold answer: “That’s rape.”
This is a scene in the Emmy-winning I May Destroy You, which last year served to briefly focus the conversation about sexual violence on the underreported crime of “stealthing”. In the UK, where it is set, removing a condom without the consent of your partner is illegal. The same is true in Germany, and one jurisdiction in Australia. Recently, California became the first US state to ban stealthing — or removing, damaging, or otherwise interfering with the integrity of birth control during sexual intercourse. And a few weeks ago, Chile became the latest nation to follow suit.
But the fact that stealthing is a crime doesn’t necessarily help Arabella. She does not press charges, as she no longer has any physical evidence. She is not compensated for her purchase of emergency contraceptive. And the law doesn’t act as an arbiter between herself and the man who harmed her. It does help her in one way — by telling her definitively that her intuition is right: this act was wrong and hurtful and should not have happened. But is that enough?
When we look to address wrongs — and to expand our understanding of what causes harm — we so often look to the creation of rules, laws and institutional responses, and stop there. The act of criminalising stealthing is meant to announce to perpetrators and victims alike — who, like Arabella, and possibly her own rapist, might not know — that it is classified as rape, and comes with potential consequences. When Chilean deputies put forth the bill, lawyer and politician Gael Yeomans followed up the announcement with, “Yes, gentlemen, that is a sexual assault even if you do not like to hear it.”
All this allows politicians to say: “we are taking this seriously.” But the promise of justice is a difficult one to keep, in practice. The United Kingdom has only had one successful conviction of stealthing. In that particular case, a man removed the condom in the midst of an engagement with a sex worker, continued to have sex with her despite her protests, assaulted her, and left without paying. His overt aggression and violence — he reportedly threatened to murder the judge presiding over the trial — made it easy to find him guilty.
But the overwhelming majority will not find justice within these systems — partly because it’s a crime that can happen without the victim noticing. In Alexandra Brodsky’s survey of people who were victims of stealthing, many of them didn’t realise the condom had been removed or tampered with until after the completion of the sexual act, sometimes not even until the partner had left. This makes it almost impossible to prove it happened.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeSeems like people are having casual sex with people they barely know and are then surprised at the total lack of good sexual etiquette, decency and manners.
Maybe people need to spend more time getting to know the people they are going to sleep with and not just swiping left or right or whatever it is, and then hoping for best.
There have always been bad guys and bad women, and we have all, over the years, developed radars to weed out the bad ones as best we can. Maybe todays young and sexually active need to do a little less swiping and work on their radars a bit more.
I am no prude and I’m sure there are many benefits to this modern sexual freedom, but that doesn’t mean discernment should be forgotten.
That said, there are some horrible people around who will put on a good show and then turn out to not be what they seem. I feel complete empathy for anyone who falls for those conmen/women. The only solution for that, and it isn’t always guaranteed, is to wait and hold off progressing the relationship until you’re 99% sure you are with a good person.
Or maybe I am the wrong side of 50 and am just out of touch with today’s sexual habits 😉
Got it spot on, and I salute your bravery in writing . If I had said that as a “well over fifties” woman, I would have been called all the names under the sun.
Seems we have failed to teach young women how to stay safe and drink safe, or perhaps, more likely, they just don’t care. Never have there been so many ways available to all to avoid unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, yet we read of casual sex with unknown men/women in pub lavatories?!
Reduces the whole thing to nothing better than animal behaviour,no love,no joy,nothing special. Sad.
If you watch the average movie/TV show the leads seem to have the BEST SEX EVAAAAH, after a meaningful glance across a nightclub floor, in the toilets. Fast, frantic avd anonymous is the only good sex apparently and if you don’t have that you’re not empowered enough.
Actually, in real life, for a guaranteed simultaneous whopper of an orgasm, a fast frantic anonymous 30 second romp often beats the foreplay/sexual intercourse/premature ejaculation avoiding/faking orgasm ritual.
There is no such things as a “guaranteed simultaneous whopper of an orgasm” Not even wiring a bunch of wires into your brain to force one, as even that gets reduction in effect as the button is pressed too often.
Oh yes, there are such things … and for obvious reasons, they are usually female instigated.
90% pf Police time is spent dealing with 10% of the population. People are losing their animal instincts to avoid the 10% of the population who are nasty and this applies to young men.
Many naive lippy young men are attacked because they say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. Young lippy men may think they are tough but compared to a man in his late 20s with years of hard labouring and few street fights under their belt, they are not.One punch is enough to kill or maim the lippy young man.
It is called self defence. Train men and women to spot and avoid nasty people and then be able to defeat them if attacked.
How do you ensure that you are training only the good people?
Human judgement. I think we have lost much of animal instinct for survival which includes shrewd judgement of other people. Perhaps we should not put ourselves in vulnerable situations until we have better judgements of people.
Perhaps parents need to train children and then let them increases the risks in line with their development of instincts which is common sense and this used to be done.
Thank you Jean. I did wonder, but then I find most Unherd readers are intelligent grown-ups who don’t subscribe to the notion that it is appropriate to blame someone else for everything that goes wrong. Personal responsibility doesn’t seem to be a thing in 2021.
It seems these days it is okay to demand how everyone else should behave in the same way that you can demand to be called by whatever pronoun you choose, rather than taking personal responsibity for what happens and accepting that people might not always be nice and may not always call you something you like.
Truth is truth but we need to speak it in love if we can. Casual sex doesn’t appreciate the enormous gift that sex is. Women lose part of themselves when they indulge in it and men are training themselves to be unfaithful, perhaps to a future wife.
Hard to disagree.
In this scenario the man is unilaterally increasing the risk of STI transmission and/or unwanted pregnancy. It’s wrong and it’s disgusting. They’re a wrong’un.
However if a woman deliberately does not take the pill, but tells her partner she has so he thinks it’s safe to have sex without a condom, is this also a form of stealthing? I think it is but he could just wear a condom anyway to be sure and take more responsibility for his choices, just as she could take more responsibility for whom she’s having sex with and checking he’s wearing a condom. I know a lot of women who have trapped a man this way into a child (and a tie to a woman) he might not want. It does work both ways and the real question of violation should be balanced with some common sense about personal responsibility. If you want to sleep with people you don’t know that well, fill your boots, but take the consequences if they turn out to be a wrong ‘un, like some are. Unfortunately there are people out there who truly are such manipulative narcissists I can’t really be too harsh. Maybe the lesson should just be: put the condom on him yourself and jump on before he can do anything. Wear a condom anyway in case she’s lying about being on the pill. Or just be a lot fussier about whom you’re sleeping with.
I find that after playing Russian Roulette the best thing to do, if one of the people playing lose – is to sue Remington, or who ever made the gun, maybe who sold it, or the ammo maker. Because there we were, playing this game of Russian Roulette, and out of the Blue… Blam… and we never saw it coming……..Its like.. I don’t know these guys, we were just all Fu* *ed up and playing around, and suddenly this happens…. Its crazy.
I’d never heard of stealthing but it sounds like a remarkably unpleasant thing to do. I do struggle though with what lawmakers are thinking when they decide to make this a criminal or civil offence. The obvious questions should surely be ‘What evidence would secure a conviction / finding against the man?’ and conversely ‘What defence would rebut this?’
I can’t see what the answer is to either. How does the woman prove she told the man not to take the thing off? How does he prove she didn’t? Or that he didn’t know the thing had come off?
It feels like fundamentally bad law if it can’t be enforced, or if its enforcement is likely to be structurally one sided. A woman can be too drunk to consent, but a man who’s too drunk to notice still commits an offence. What the article describes seems likely to result in more of the same.
It’s interesting that when a woman does it, it’s entrapment however, when a man does it, its r@pe. Th whole act from either side of the coin smacks of disrespect and the question begs why are so many people so desperate to have s*x with people they clearly have no respect for? And where is the self respect?
Well, women who deceive men into making them pregnant commonly do so because they want a child. The man unwittingly obliging them is either a partner who doesn’t, or is a casual acquaintance who mistakenly assumes that she doesn’t want one any more than he does. There is also a pecuniary advantage available if she knows enough about the man to trace and pursue him for money. It’s constructively the female-on-male equivalent of r@pe, albeit using deception rather than force to obtain sex. The solution is a male pill.
Men do stealthing simply because it feels nicer, I would guess. Women can do it too, further to the above, of course.
Respect or self respect – well, yes. Selfishness trumps both I guess.
Stealthing is considered r@pe only as the woman didn’t consent to the “unprotected” aspect of s*x. If a woman lies about use of contraceptives then there is no difference. Not all women trick their partners simply for the desire of a child but a desire to trap the men in question in a relationship with them, duty bound to the child. It fails more often than not today but doesn’t seem to stop women from trying it. Society struggles to accept that women are capable of r@pe and yet whether or not the act is to be considered r@pe is largely down to consent and consent is not a right that only women can exercise.
I am glad that I stayed pure for 11 years and married a virgin.
The law should define the lines that people should not cross for the safety of others. Difficulty in enforcing is a separate matter and is not a good reason for not defining a line.
An unenforceable law isn’t a law but words on paper.
I disagree – it’s a compellingly strong reason for not defining a line.
That is tantamount to saying there is nothing wrong in doing what you want when we cannot catch you, which applies to most behaviours conducted in private. I prefer – here are the rules – if you break them we will try and catch you and if that is difficult maybe your conscience will nevertheless enable you to see merit in the rule.
Stealthily is despicable and I hope they can find ways of punishing the guilty.
Is the word the same for those women who lie about using contraception?
No, it’s feminism
And yes, it’s despicable.
Makes me worried about when my daughter goes to college, really.
And the ways too many boys are brought up these days, with no positive role models, and the positive aspects of manhood disparaged, it’s only going the increase the proportion of young men who end up with the wrong set of values.
Think that might be entrapment? Sadly,not new.
Slightly bizarre article that totally sees female as victim. My knowledge is there being a big risk for guys with maintenance etc and that it is some women that are much more likely to damage a condom or lie about protection to entrap the potential father. Strange there is no mention of this. Also could be a relatively rare occurrence being made into a big ‘assault’ issue by certain parties.
The young seem to have very high moral views on other people’s carbon emissions; less so on their own more intimate kinds.
Generally correct on the first assumption, allthough some studies (e.g. one published by Global Future on Oct 31st) are finding only a very small difference in views on climate between the age groups, at least here in UK. The biggest difference on climate was found to be not related to age or social class, but between male & female, with women on average much more concerned.
On the second point, work by Jean Twenge and others is finding that the current generation of young people is having less sex than ever before, with changing morals part of the reason. Look up ‘sex recession’ if interested.
Attempts to prosecute this new crime will inevitably lead to more not less injustice. Imagine trying to prove this in court….Sexual assault is already a tricky area of the law, but most of these legal innovations are hostile to the presumption of innocence and alter the evidentiary burden to the detriment of the accused. The evolution of sexual assault laws in Canada provides a real cautionary tale (but I promise not to digress). Interestingly, many of the people that campaigned for the decriminalisation of non-disclosure of HIV status in Canada are also quite rabid on this subject of stealthing.
It does feel like the thin end of a long and stupid wedge (if a wedge can be stupid) which ends in the criminalisation, to absolutely zero practical effect, of other similar things: giving someone a dose of the clap, for example, on the grounds that it’s constructive ABH. It probably makes legislators somewhere feel really good about themselves, but it’s completely impossible to prove.
That is the ultimate objective, dilute the concept of presumption of innocence.
Which will of course impact lower economic class boys and minority group boys a lot more, but that’s the way Marxism rolls
How dystopian of a world would we have to live in where the state has enough information about your sex life to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that stealthing occurred? Do you really want to be living in a society where the government routinely has access to the acts of sex that are happening in your bedroom? That they have transcripts of what people are saying and doing inside their own abodes.
Because in order to prosecute something as a crime, that is the legal bar that has to be overcome. The state is in no position to even attempt to regulate this sort of behavior, to pretend like it’s a good idea that we encourage them to do so is short sighted at best.
This is a bit like the absurdity of wanting desserts that are free of calories and full of nutrients and flavor.
Four Months Three Weeks and Two Days is a Romanian film about the extremly restrictive times of Nicolae Ceausescu. The film is grim, but the reality was far more grimmer.
It is possible it could happen again if the lefties get their way. They seem to be ignorant of the leftie era under the Soviet Union and it’s satellites.
Here’s an idea: if you don’t have the “resources” to cope with the consequences of unprotected sex, be it stealthing or simply a condom tearing, don’t have sex. And while we are about it, maybe stop having sex with people you barely know who will walk away from you afterwards without so much as a backwards glance.
It’s deeply unfashionable to “victim shame” which I think in this case is a great pity as it completely denies the role most of these women played in the situation they found themselves in. Rather than wasting police time which would be better spent on genuine sexual assaults – like the grooming of vulnerable girls by gangs of older men – women who suffer stealthing should take a long hard look at how they got in that situation and avoid doing it in future.
I’m not a prude. I was in my 20s in London during the late 80s/early 90s. I got to be a liberated woman at a time when HIV was a death sentence and single parenthood still carried considerable stigma. My cohort of women frankly seem stronger and more self possessed than the current generation as we took responsibility for our own safety instead of expecting the law to act as our nanny.
I’ve never heard of stealthing – seems like it would be awfully hard to prove in court. I can imagine some of the defense arguments such as “I bought the magums by mistake”
The article seems more about the trials and tribulations of casual sex. Can there really be any trust in casual sex? All of us likely have participated and luckily not faced consequences. In cases where a person discovers ill intent – condom slipped off, maybe it should be easier to get protection (the article claims excessive effort needed).
Good article, especially on the point that better before & after care + sexual health awareness would help women more than criminalisation. (At least regarding the US). Probably making it illegal would still be a net positive though, even accepting that it’s difficult to prove & the potential for injustice. In a few cases chaps will be recorded admitting to it, and eventually a serial stealthier will come to light, with multiple complainants leading to a high profile conviction that might discourage the practice.
Some of the older comments here are a maybe a little unrealistic. The female is almost always the victim when it comes to stealthing. While not impossible especially if the fella is drunk, it’s very difficult for the lass to remove the condom without notice. Whereas, there’s a certain position in which accidental withdrawal is very common, (in vigorous casual sex where the couple aren’t used to each other) and where it would only take a split second for the chap to remove the condom. Going partly by the Alexandra Brodsky study linked to in the article, it’s easy for the lass not to notice unless she has very good tactile perceptiveness. More generally, while there are exceptions, when it comes to acts of sexual aggression, it generally is the male who’s at fault. I’d have expected this could be denied only by those very few lefty academics who genuinely believe there are no non physical differences between male & female.
100% of victims of entrapment are men which we have established, is not much different from stealthing. Yes a man can take responsibility of the contraception rather than trust his partner (old fashioned concept I know), however so can the woman, even with condoms! This might surprise you but women should also be capable of putting a condom with her hands or if she is feeling particularly saucy with her mouth! Plus there are more positions to s*x than missionary! By sitting on top of her partner she can ensure the condom is not removed! How empowering is that!
Perhaps us older commenters are not so much unrealistic as experienced!
Thanks for the re reply. I should have written ‘previous comments’ , rather than ‘older’. I’m not a young commenter myself. Not sure intentional pregnancy entrapment happens anywhere near as much as stealthing. I’ve heard of lasses lying about their contracpetion, but I think it’s much less common – couldnt even find any studies about prevalance on google scholar..
Whereas if you read the Alexandra Brodsky study linked to in the article, there are several websites out there where men advise each other how to get away with stealting. I’ve encountered the attitude several times in my quite brief excursions into the manosphere. I dont think there’s any compareable site where females advise each other on how to get away with entrapment (not even on the infamous reddit RDS).
We live in a world where you can buy fake “positive” pregnancy tests! Entrapment isn’t taken as seriously because women are not the victims! I hate to break it to you but some women are nuts! They will lie about contraception, they will lie about pregnancy! Just because they don’t advertise it on the internet, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen or that its a rare occurrence. They don’t need to share their wisdom with others on the internet, women have their own real life circle for that kind of talk. We live in a society that is largely in denial as to whether Caroline Flack was a domestic abuser (Spoiler alert! She was!) why would women ask AITA for lying about contraception/pregnancy?
I have known women who discussed these things. I knew a woman who aborted her pregnancy once the trap failed and I knew a woman who lied about being pregnant then faked the miscarriage when the trap failed (the baby ultrasound pictures were lifted from someone else page).
** I say all this as a woman. Don’t let the spelling of my name fool you, when I was born, if you wanted a boy you gave them a boys spelling unisex name rather than a trip to the Tavistock!
Ok, I guess it may be more common than I thought. The apparent lack of studies on the subject could be due to extreme feminist / SJW influence in academia. Good to learn something new!
I suspect many victims of entrapment are oblivious, suffice to say there are probably as many sketchy women out there as sketchy men. As Erin Pizzey was condemned regularly for saying “abuse isn’t gendered”.
As old-fashioned as it sounds, I think a woman’s best protection is to not get sexually involved with anyone until she knows them well through a long-standing relationship (and even that is not fool-proof). And of course, to not do foolish things like getting drunk in bars. The sexual “revolution” that ushered in widespread casual sex has caused untold misery to women, children who are not wanted or loved, and the horror of abortion. I can hear the howls of feminists, but based on my own experience I think the most “feminist” thing a woman can do is to hold herself in high value and never give herself to anyone who does not value her (and himself) the same. How to convey this to young women–in an age when every aspect of the culture around them proclaims that casual sex is the desirable norm–is the problem.
Well said.
Or better still no sex until marriage.