What Is Stealthing?

As if by magic we have overcome the antiquated practices of dating and courtship. Having sex with someone you know is hopelessly retrograde, a sign that people are living in a bygone age… when men and women respected each other and themselves.

In this brave new cultural universe the chances for sexual abuse have multiplied. Calls to regulate sexual behavior by criminalizing more and more of it have also multiplied. We are discovering that controlling human sexuality by passing a series of laws is a losing effort. The more laws there are the more people try to see what they can get away with.

Today’s new practice is called “stealthing.” It’s a brand new form of abuse, practiced by men who are suffering from condomphobia. Here’s how it goes. When two consenting adults have consented to make the beast with two backs—protected by a condom, of course—the consenting male chooses, of his free volition, to remove his condom without telling his consenting female partner. Said consenting female partner has not consented to go bare-back—as the practice is called in other venues—and has effectively been violated. Had she known what her partner had been doing she would not have consented. Thus, she retroactively withdraws her consent and her male paramour—or is it, hookup—has become a rapist.

The extensive literature of the subject—I have seen two articles (here and here)—does not tell us what is motivating said perfidious males. Are they seeking that extra measure of gratification that comes from condom-free sexual congress? Or are they trying to impregnate their hookups, against their will? In truth, there is no good reason for the practice and no valid justification. It's more like seeing what they can get away with.

One sympathizes with those who want to criminalize the practice, and one would be more sympathetic if one were convinced that new laws would bring a little order to sexual behavior. Of course, one can already see a canny defense attorney explaining that the condom broke or fell off or… use your imagination.

In the realm of higher truth, one suspects that men who are “stealthing” have not developed a real relationship with their sexual partners and thus imagine that their behavior falls within the bounds of the permissible—when having sex with someone one does not know. Would it not be better if these people actually developed bonds of trust before getting it on? Just a thought.

Those who decided that it was a great idea to rid the world of courtship have a great deal to answer for. Those who imagined that the absence of courtship and dating protocols would liberate women did not know what they were doing. Or else, they did not have women’s best interests at heart.

At the same time, impregnating a woman against her will seems like a violation of trust. Knowingly passing on an STD would count as a criminal act. If we ever get over the notion that condoms are a foolproof barrier against STDs we would be taking a step in the right direction.

Again, we have a story of male treachery exploiting female sexual weakness.

But, just in time for this post, the New York Post has a story about perfidious females exploiting male sexual weakness. It is another form of stealthing, and it is apparently common practice in summer fun locales, like the Hamptoms.

Everyone knows that the Hamptoms are a place where everyone parties like there is no tomorrow. It’s sea and surf and fun and sand. Hopefully, not all at the same time.

Obviously, men who find themselves seduced by comely lasses in the Hamptoms are more than happy to forgo the indignity of wearing condoms. They tell themselves that they have just hit a home run—barebacked sex with someone who is not going to require any commitment. In the old days it used to be called free love.

Apparently, free love is not so free anymore. It turns out that some of these free spirited liberated women, living their liberated sexuality, have a less noble motive in mind. They are happy to forego birth control because they want to get pregnant. They want to get pregnant because they want their one-shot paramours to put them on the payroll. They choose men whose bank accounts are bursting. In time they will try to extort child support payments.

Shouldn’t we call this stealthing, too? Considering that pregnancy is the new “curse,” why do these retrograde women persist in associating sex with procreation?

What do these women want? Money. The New York Post has the story:

The goal? At the very least: 18 to 21 years of child support and, in some instances, a green card for the mother, since their child would be born in the US. At best: Scott said, “Women want that Cinderella story [of happily ever after], but I’m noncommittal at this point in my life.”

Happily ever after? Whatever does that mean in this context?

Sometimes women are not even deterred by a condom. Who would have imagined a scene like the following:

[John] a real-estate developer and Upper West Side resident — who said he can have a different sex partner in the Hamptons every weekend — doesn’t want a repeat of last summer, when a woman he met at a party tried to pull a fast one after sex.

She offered to dispose of the used condom, but when she was in the bathroom for a while, John got suspicious. He found the woman seated on the toilet and inserting his semen inside of her.

“She denied it, but she tried to get herself pregnant,” said John, who grabbed a towel and made her clean herself and then shower. “After that, I have to be a lot more careful.”

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The new normal for such studly men with fat wallets is: a vasectomy. But, if said men do not tell their hookups that they have voluntarily rendered themselves sterile, are they stealthily stealthing? Hmm. After all, if a woman knows that a man is shooting blanks that might cause her to reject his amorous advances.

In any case, a physician whose practice is blooming with men asking for the procedure, explains the trade-off:

“There’s a spike in single guys” who get the procedure in spring and early summer, said Dr. David Shusterman, a urologist in Midtown.

“They don’t want to be in the situation of being accused of fathering an unwanted baby,” said Dr. Joseph Alukal, a urologist at NYU. “That’s their fear — being told you’re paying for this kid until it’s [an adult].”

“This extortion happens all the time. Women come after them. [They get pregnant and] want a ransom payment,” said Shusterman. “Some guys do an analysis of the cost — for three days of discomfort [after a vasectomy], it’s worth millions of dollars to them.

“I never see a poor guy [asking] for a vasectomy,” he added. “Rich guys are a population that’s abused a lot.”

One notes that some of these lotharios have not had children. And they know that the odds of reversing a vasectomy are around 50%. So, naturally they make some deposits in the local sperm bank before they have the procedure done. This entails a different kind of risk. A blackout that shuts down the refrigeration units will deprive them forever of progeny.

What kind of girls engage in this kind of stealthing? Apparently, not the all-American variety. For Alex, who is married with children, but in an open marriage, even a condom was not a sufficient barrier to his hookup’s lust to have his offspring:

Alex, 37, already has two kids with his wife, but the health care administrator got a vasectomy late last year specifically so he could fool around — no strings attached — in the Hamptons. The Downtown Brooklyn man and his spouse of 10 years are in an open relationship, but he almost screwed things up last summer when he got stealthed by a comely Russian model he’d met at dinner in Southampton.

During sex, the woman pulled off his condom.

“I asked, ‘WTF?’ ” recalled Alex. But he didn’t stop the sex. Two weeks later, he got a call from the woman claiming she was pregnant.

“Could her motive have been to shake me down for child support? I don’t know. But it didn’t work, thank God,” said Alex, who never heard from the model again. “It was a wake-up call. It’s not like an STD you can treat. It’s a kid.”

Now, if we pass laws prohibiting men from tricking women into thinking that they are wearing condoms should we also pass laws prohibiting women from removing a man’s condom without the man’s consent?