California's new law is a major stride towards sexual justice

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          One of the most dehumanizing experiences in my life was a man taking off his condom during sex without asking or telling me. It was my boyfriend of two years and even though it felt like all autonomy had been stripped from me, I did not want to ruin what we had, and I didn’t have a word to describe what had happened anyway. I tried to just get over it, forget that it had happened, and I didn’t really tell anyone at the time. But over time my head got obsessive about the question, “what happened to me?” I thought, I didn’t consent to that, but I did consent to what we were doing before, so it can’t really be rape, despite all the knowledge I have about what consent means. My friend told me, “if this had happened to me, you would tell me that it was sexual assault and that I would need to leave him immediately, and that is what I am telling you,” but I just could not wrap my head around this being sexual assault when it came to me. It just didn’t seem like the right word to use, but after a long time of invalidating my own experience, I just had to accept the truth, no matter how hard it was to swallow—  this was my “me too” moment, no matter how much every fiber of my being hated that it happened with someone I trusted so much.

What had happened to me was called “stealthing,” and it is disturbingly common. About one in three women and one in five men have experienced stealthing, or non-consensual condom removal during what was previously consensual sex. There are three things I find particularly disturbing about stealthing. One is how deeply it shows a societal misunderstanding of consent; consent needs to be given separately for every action and every time during sex and it can be revoked at any time, particularly if a condition of sex was taken away, such as using protection. Another is how widely accepted stealthing is, with men on reddit actually bragging and giving out tips on how to do it, effectively promoting and giving tutorials on how to assault someone. The third is how invalidating society can be of rape that happened within the confines of consent—   that is, when the act of sex began consensually and progressed into something outside the confines and conditions of consent and thus entered the territory of sexual assault.

This is also the reason stealthing is still legal in most parts of the world, and seldom prosecuted even in areas where it is illegal. There have only been three relatively well known cases about stealthing and they were all in different countries. As such, there are few consequences for men who commit these actions, few reparations to the people who are victims of these actions, and virtually no education about how stealthing is immoral even if not illegal in most places. Despite how saddening it is that these are the conditions we live in right now, society experienced a major win recently in terms of justice for sexual assault survivors.

A couple weeks ago on October 7th 2021, the first bill in the U.S. to outlaw stealthing was passed in California. This means that it is now a civil offense in the state of California to participate in stealthing behavior, so a victim of this type of sexual assault can sue the perpetrator. Civil law when it comes to these kinds of cases can be more helpful to the victims than criminal law. This is the case for a number of reasons. One reason is that criminal courts require more proof, and this often lets victims down in court. Another is that, because of how extensive criminal court processes are, it can be retraumatizing for the victims, particularly if the perpetrator is found innocent, which unfortunately happens in most cases. A third is that the victim may not even want the perpetrator in prison, but may benefit from a money settlement that could help pay for therapy and other services that could put a person back on their feet following a traumatic incident. In civil cases, evidence is not nearly as intense as criminal cases, and the victim may have a settlement to walk away with which could help them improve the quality of their life following a traumatic incident.

I think that victims should have the choice of taking their incidents to either criminal or civil court, but I think that making stealthing a civil offense rather than a criminal offense was crucial to getting the bill passed. I think that this kind of law could set a precedent both to have other states adopt similar laws of outlawing what is currently a legal form of sexual assault and to have stealthing become a criminal offense later on.

While it is sad that stealthing still remains legal in most places, leaving so many people vulnerable to getting assaulted without any legal protection, it is a huge moment of progress to see a socially accepted form of sexual assault become outlawed somwhere within America. This can potentially increase conversations about what consent really means and improve the laws that handle sexual assault in the future, and even being aware of these increases in sexual protection can make a big difference to someone who has experienced sexual assault.


Sources:

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1040160313/california-stealthing-nonconsensual-condom-removal

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6306234/

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-meaning-of-californias-anti-stealthing-bill

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2954726



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