Experts say ‘stealthing’ could possibly be seen as rape

Two regional sexologists have expressed opposing views on whether “stealthing” transforms consensual sex into a non-consensual act with one citing it as the rape of one’s sexual partner.
In an OBSERVER AM interview, yesterday, Trinidad-based Sexologist Onika Henry said that the new term describes a disturbing practice where men remove condoms during sex without their partners’ knowledge as “rape by deception”.
“If you are removing a condom without that person’s consent when initially you were given clear boundaries that, ‘I am not going to have sex with you, without a condom’ … if I am tricked into having unprotected sex and the right has been taken away from me, we are looking at lack of consent,” Henry said.
Meanwhile, Jamaican Researcher and Clinical Psychologist Dr Karen Carpenter countered Henry’s stance, saying that: “Rape as we know is not an act of sex and lust and desire but rather an act of violence. We simply use sex to commit that violence.
“I am concerned that some of this may well be recklessness. I don’t see it as rape at all because already there is consent. When there isn’t consent to share bodily fluids, that for me is another matter,” Dr Carpenter said.
“Rape is a form of domination and the removal of the other person’s rights, often the person perpetrating rape is trying to bring down the other person, to bring them low, to humiliate, to control and to exercise power over them,” Carpenter said. “I‘m not sure that I see it the same way; I will be very cautious to put all cases of stealthing in the same category.”
(More in today’s Daily Observer)