Young Women's Experiences with Coercive and Noncoercive Condom Use Resistance: Examination of an Understudied Sexual Risk Behavior

Objectives: To investigate young women's engagement in and receipt of condom use resistance (CUR; attempts to avoid condom use with a partner who wants to use one), including nonconsensual condom removal (“stealthing”), with male partners. Methods: Participants were 503 women aged 21–30 years with increased sexual risk characteristics recruited from 2013 to 2017. Participants completed measures assessing sexual victimization history and CUR experiences. Results: Findings indicated that 87% of women experienced noncoercive CUR from a partner and 49% experienced coercive CUR. Of these women, 58% and 19% reported having engaged in noncoercive and coercive CUR, respectively. Twelve percent of women had a partner engage in stealthing; none of the women engaged in stealthing. The severity of sexual victimization history was positively associated with both use and receipt of coercive and noncoercive CUR. Diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections were positively associated with receipt of, but not engagement in, CUR. Conclusions: Findings demonstrate that sexual victimization and both the use and receipt of CUR are positively related for young women, suggesting that prevention efforts focusing on women's sexual health would benefit from joint consideration of sexual violence and risk behaviors and that such efforts should target victims of sexual violence.