Originally published at: Australia and California ban "stealthing", removing condoms without consent | Boing Boing
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How the fuck is this not already covered by sexual assault laws?
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Some things aren’t illegal for the simple reason that the people who write laws aren’t depraved enough to predict all the ways people will be assholes to each other in the absence of a specific law.
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Alternately, some of them are exactly that depraved and just don’t want to get arrested for it themselves.
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This is so fucked up. Who does this?
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What the heck! This is a thing, and male humans do this? Shit, I need a drink…
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No doubt it is fucked up to do this. At the same time, I wonder how someone doesn’t notice when their sexual partner does it. It does feel very different.
Reason #1,098 I am SO glad not to be in the dating scene anymore.
Gross.
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For a certain value of “human.”
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I’m drinking right now and not being stealthy about it!
that said, this type of behavior is beyond my imagination and well should be treated as sexual assault.
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Generally laws don’t list every fucked up thing someone could possibly do. It absolutely should be covered by existing sexual assault laws. But if it happens and judges or juries don’t see the laws that way then you need to make an explicit law against it.
It’s like having a law against murder and then a law against stabbing someone to death. It’s a bad sign if it is necessary, but here we are.
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The ACT (think Washington DC) has been become the first jurisdiction in Australia to criminalise stealthing. We are the smallest territory in Australia. As per the headline in the original link
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Okay, since you asked. If the one doing the penetrating is of a smaller size than one is normally used to, it is somewhat less noticeable. If one is even moderately inebriated, even more so. Highly aroused mid-coitus, again.
I know you weren’t trying to victim blame, so answer in good faith.
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Because we live in a fundamentally misogynistic society?
Or they just don’t see it as something that should be illegal? Let’s not forget that we still have problems just getting ANY rape prosecuted, much less having broad agreement that rape is anything other than a stranger jumping out of the bushes to rape a woman walking home from church.
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To elaborate on the answer by @ClutchLinkey
My partner asked the same when he first heard about this and the answer is that overstimulation is a thing for at least some people. For the first few minutes, a condom is very noticeable. But at a certain point, particularly with a lot of goo to aid in slip, the surfalce sensation takes a back seat to heat and pressure. Add inebriation or distractions from sensation elsewhere and it is easy to not notice the difference.
Afterall, no one should have to be on guard against the possibility their partner will take off the condom both parties agreed to use.
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Hoping ninjas can reclaim the word.
It appears to me that the Australia law would apply to a woman who pokes holes in a condom in order to surreptitiously get pregnant. The California law doesn’t actually seem to necessarily apply to the case of Assange who apparently did the same thing, i.e. didn’t actually remove the condom but poked holes in it or something? The California law is specifically outlawing the actual contact of genitals without permission but doesn’t seem to have anything to say about contact with bodily fluids, by which STDs are transmitted and cause pregnancy, which seems like an oversite to me. If a dude has a “insemination fetish” and pokes holes in a condom in order to get a woman pregnant when she thinks she is protected, that seems to be just as much rape to me. On the other hand, I worry that the Australia path will lead to actually more women getting prosecuted for this issue than men, who are the real problem that the laws are trying to address.
Absolutely, it should be illegal everywhere.
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I can get behind this law.
