Monday, November 11, 2013

Anti-Rape Panties and Bulletproof Jackets: Are We in Combat Zones?

A successfully funded Indie Go Go project called AR Wear is an anti-rape plan designed to keep women safe from rapists through indestructible underwear. The creators of this project explain it like this:
We believe that the tools of self-defense currently available are not effective in many common settings of sexual assault. Training in martial arts or products such as pepper spray, tear gas, stun guns, etc. can only help if the potential victim is extremely alert and bold when an attack occurs. Worse still, products of self-defense can be taken from the victim and used against her.
Here's the video explaining their solution:



Understandably, this project has garnered a lot of negative response. Coming fast on the heels of Slate's Emily Yoffe's command to college women to stop drinking if they don't want to get raped, many people are questioning the effectiveness of the AR Wear tactic, and many more are questioning the impact of once again putting the responsibility on the victim to prevent the crime.
This entire conversation reminds me very much of the one that I had earlier in the year (and wrote about here).

I got into an argument with an acquaintance about whether this image was an acceptable message:


The image was a response to this advice that women should pee their pants to turn off a would-be rapist (ridiculous advice, I agree). Over the course of this discussion, this acquaintance repeatedly compared women's bodies to cars. In doing so, he made an argument that equated rape with a property crime. 

It's one that I've heard a lot. Wearing anti-rape underwear, in this argument, is no different than putting a club on your steering wheel or locking the doors to your house. You prevent the crime to the property by taking commonsense measures to protect it.

There has also been a recent innovation of a cup that changes colors when date rape drugs are detected.

In this argument, this is like arming your car alarm or setting motion detectors for your porch lights. You want to detect a potential threat to your property while you have time to act upon it.

By making this analogy between bodies and property, the proponents of these anti-rape measures are able to make feminist detractors out to be ridiculous and careless. It's not your fault if your house gets broken into, but why would you just leave the door unlocked? It's not your fault if your car gets stolen, but really shouldn't you just take the 30 seconds to put a club on the steering wheel?

Two Clubs


The body-as-property analogy is at the center of ideas that a woman's virginity can be "stolen." It's tied up in the idea that a woman's body can be "pure" or "sullied" depending on what she has done with it sexually.  

This analogy allows a diversion away from the feminist argument against anti-rape measures. In order to get the conversation focused back on where it needs to be focused--preventing rape by addressing rape culture--we need to get to the heart of this property vs. body comparison.

My body is not a car. My body is not a house. My body is not property that can be damaged or stolen.

My body is the physical space in which my self exists and is presented to the world.

To reduce my physical embodiment of self to a possession or a piece of property is to devalue my humanity. To make putting on indestructible underwear the equivalent of putting a club on my steering wheel is to ignore the fact that my mind and body are interconnected. My body is not a piece of property in which my self resides like a house; my body cannot be separated from my identity in that way.

When we talk about rape with the metaphors of property crimes, we ignore the fact that rape is not a crime against a thing. It is a crime against a person.

Rape is much more akin to physical assault, murder, kidnapping, and other crimes against people, but it continues to be metaphorically linked to crimes against things.

Interestingly, we also have preventative measures for crimes against human beings. There are, of course, the things we consider basic safety measures: helmets for bikers, seat belts for motor vehicle passengers, parachutes for airplanes. In these cases, we put on safety equipment specific to the act in which we are engaging. Most of us do not wear a helmet 24 hours a day even though our brains are always vulnerable to blunt force. We weigh out risks and benefits and use the safety equipment that fits that analysis.

There is more sophisticated equipment designed for preventing crimes against human bodies, though.

Suit of Armor

People (traditionally men) on the front lines of battle often have preventative technology designed to protect their bodies from physical harm. We've luckily moved away from suits of armor, but we now see that technology present in tactical gear for high-risk jobs like police work and fire fighting. 

A Sailor checks his fire fighting gear in a mirror.

The SWAT team has found you....

This is the kind of equipment we have designed to protect bodies that are in danger because of high-conflict activities like fighting a fire, negotiating with armed criminals, or going to war.

The next time that someone says putting on anti-rape panties is the equivalent of locking the door to your house, they need to be reminded that the metaphor falls flat. Putting on anti-rape panties is the equivalent of putting on a bulletproof jacket. And what you are telling a woman when you tell her it is common sense to take that step is that her every day actions are the equivalent of going to war. That stepping out of her house is necessarily a battle. That she should be as fearful of her surroundings as humanly possible. (And a reality that grim is exactly the context behind measures like the anti-rape condom that clamps down on a rapist's penis. The designer of the device is from South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of rape in the world.)

If you have to wear a bulletproof jacket to go to the grocery store, there is something wrong with the culture around you. And if you have to wear locked panties to go on a first date, then the problem isn't common sense safety measures; it's the culture that supports rape in the first place.

If you feel safer wearing locked underwear or putting your drinks in a cup that changes colors when tainted, I don't want to ignore that. Safety is an important thing, and I think you should have the right to the safety measures technologically available. But we should not act as if these measures are practical. And we should definitely not act as if these measures are offering any tangible solutions.

At best, it's giving people a bulletproof jacket until the war ends. At worst, it's putting people inside a suit of armor and asking them to race next to people unencumbered by such concerns.


Image: Alain-Christian, Josef Meixner, U.S. Navy, The Adventures of Kristin and Adam

2 comments:

  1. Really fantastic, thank you so much.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is a really a good experience to read this article and think if we apply this idea in real life then percentage of crime may be decrease.
    http://www.police-institute.com/

    ReplyDelete