Condom removal a hostile act
Readers’ responses to Ellie column prompted research into ‘stealthing’
Fifteen years ago this month, three months following the death of the world-renowned advice columnist, Ann Landers, the Toronto Star launched “Ellie,” a “made-in Canada” advice column for the 21st century.
In the years since, columnist Ellie has provided wise advice through her now-syndicated column to tens of thousands of people who have turned to her with their complex and often heartbreaking relationship problems. A longtime writer and editor, who had worked previously as a social worker, Ellie has built a worldwide audience that trusts her to tell it like it is.
As two of Ellie’s columns in recent days make clear, those 21st-century problems this columnist takes on have become ever more complex, and telling it like it is ever more vital — even when that involves reconsidering her own advice when important new information is presented.
As regular readers of her advice column will know, Ellie wrote this week about “stealthing” — the purposeful removal of a condom during sexual intercourse without a partner’s consent.
“It’s wrong, deceitful and is increasingly being considered illegal,” Ellie wrote in her Wednesday column. “This is new information to many — and was to me, too, very recently.”
Ellie learned about stealthing after taking seriously the concerns of some readers who questioned the advice she had given in her Sept. 13 column to a man who sought her guidance about how to get his wife back after an incident of condom removal.
Ellie had pulled no punches in that column in telling the man he crossed a “no-go line” and had little hope of getting his wife back. “You purposefully tried to get her pregnant by not using protection, ignoring her fears of having a child with a health issue that two other daughters have had since birth,” she wrote.
“You now need to make it evident to her how sorry you are, and state that you understand how wrong it was,” she added.
That response led to emails and social-media comments from readers who believed Ellie had not been tough enough on this man and should not have offered him any hope whatsoever at reconciling with his wife. These readers told us that what this man had done was, in fact, sexual assault and suggested that the Sept. 13 column should be taken down from the Star’s website.
“Removing a condom during sex without the knowledge of your partner is rape,” one woman told us.
“Anything sexual against her wishes is assault and is illegal,” said another.
I must admit this was a new issue for me and for most of the newsroom editors I consulted. As public editor, I am not the in-house censor and nor is it my role to weigh in on the appropriateness of columnist’s opinions — or, in this case, a columnist’s advice. All columnists at the Star have wide latitude to express their own views.
Still, I wanted to understand whether removing a condom during sex is indeed considered sexual assault in law. Not surprisingly, given this advice columnist’s longtime commitment to learning and openness to new information, Ellie immediately sought to learn more about these new issues as well.
As we discovered through further research, this dishonest practice of removing a condom during sex now has a name — “stealthing.” And, there is now considerable legal thinking, that it is indeed sexual assault. In California, a bill that added “stealthing” to the definition of rape in state law was introduced last May.
“Stealthing isn’t currently included in Canadian law, as I found,” Ellie wrote this week. But the emphasis on a partner’s required consent — as in agreeing to have sex only with condom protection — does invite interpretation of a crime by the courts.
“Stealthing isn’t just a buzzword. It carries the meaning of sexual control and manipulation, under growing consideration as an illegal assault,” Ellie wrote.
Ellie told readers she had rethought her original advice to the man who had asked her how he might get his wife back even after he had deceived her by removing a condom.
“The growing trend in law and the increased use of this abhorrently arbitrary act has changed my perspective,” she wrote. “He’s exposed himself to a legal question of whether, in the jurisdiction where he lives (which he didn’t disclose), he broke the law as well as the connection between them.”
In reconsidering her advice, and being transparent in telling readers why she did so, Ellie continues to live up to the high level of trust readers have long placed in her advice. More importantly, this veteran advice columnist has now communicated critical information about a subject that has received little media attention in Canada. publiced@thestar.ca