CNN Shocked by ‘Stealthing’ by Men, Not so Much by ‘Stealthing’ by Women

May 1, 2017 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

It’s funny what gets the attention of the mainstream news media and what doesn’t. Here’s one obvious example (CNN, 4/28/17). It’s about a phenomenon that, if it exists at all, is so rare as to be almost unheard of everywhere except in some unspecified “dark corners of the internet.” And yet, it gets a rather lengthy article in CNN.

The “it” I refer to is something called “stealthing,” in which a man sabotages a condom in order to impregnate his partner who has made it clear she only consents to sex if the two are using a condom as contraception. Sound common? It’s not. Indeed, the article admits that no one has any idea of the frequency of the practice, if it is one.

It's impossible to say how common stealthing might be, [Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network vice president of victim services, Brian] Pinero said.

And sure enough, the article cites not a single instance in which “stealthing” has occurred. The writer, Michael Nedelman, quotes two supposed experts on the subject, but neither described a case in which “stealthing” had taken place.

Given that the matter is vanishingly rare if it happens at all, Nedelman and the feminists he interviewed are at pains to make “stealthing” seem more important than it is. They do so by resort to an age-old tactic – they call it “rape.”

Now, it’s easy enough to distinguish the two, but feminists like Alexandra Brodsky of the National Women’s Law Center might want to be careful what they wish for. What they wish for currently is that “stealthing” be made actionable at civil law, i.e. they want women who can prove that a male partner sabotaged the condom they were using to be able to recover monetary damages for the financial and other consequences of his doing so.

But of course, we live in a society that at least pretends to value gender equality in the law. Admittedly, we don’t do a very good job of that, particularly when it comes to family law and that related to sex and various forms of abuse. But it’s the shortest of steps from holding a man liable for sabotaging a condom to holding a woman liable for lying about contraception use.

After all, the two are the same, even if the consequences differ. Yes, the woman is the one to become pregnant, but she has numerous legal ways at her disposal with which to avoid the consequences of conception. I refer of course to the morning after pill, abortion, safe haven laws and adoption without the father’s consent. Meanwhile a duped dad has none of those and of course he has to pay child support for 18 + years for a child he never wanted.

But nowhere on earth is there a law that tells women not to lie about using the pill, an IUD, an injectable contraceptive, etc. She’s free to do that and many are the women who say they’d do so without the least regret. For example, in one Scottish survey of 5,000 women, an amazing 42% said they “would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, no matter the wishes of their partner.”

So, if we’re to make men liable for the all-but-nonexistent act of sabotaging a condom, shouldn’t we make women liable for lying about her use of the pill or other contraceptive method, particularly since the latter practice may well be as common as dirt? Needless to say, the feminists interviewed for the CNN article didn’t mention anything about that.

Just as needless to say, Nedelman didn’t mention it himself. Nowhere does he bring up the clearly applicable subject of whether duped dads should have the same recourse as duped moms. Funny how that works. How many articles has CNN published about the need for men to have such legal recourse? None that I’ve found. How many have likened women lying about using the pill to rape? How many have emphasized the man’s lack of consent to sex without contraception use by his female partner? Again, those articles apparently don’t exist.

CNN’s concern for men’s rights and well-being in the area of contraceptive non-use is stealthy indeed, even stealthier than the almost non-existent “stealthing” about which it’s so exercised.

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#stealthing, #genderbias, #CNN