A team of undergraduate students at North
Carolina State University has
developed a novel solution to helping women avoid “date rape”
drugs like Rohypnol (aka “roofies”) and Gamma-Hydroxybutric
acid (GHB): nail polish that changes colors when it comes into
contact with these substances. “Our goal is to invent technologies
that empower women to protect themselves from this heinous and
quietly pervasive crime,”
the creators of “Undercover Colors” polish wrote in their
winning submission to the school’s Entrepreneurship Initiative
competition—hardly the words of people promoting sexual
assault, would you say?
Yet bunches of high-profile, liberal feminists* saw things
otherwise.
Maya Dusenbury at the blog Feministing starts with a good
point—that drugs like Rohypnol, Xanax, and GHB
are not used to facilitate rape as commonly
as we might imagine, and it’s important not to give people false
impressions of when and how assaults take place. But to Dusenbury,
that makes preventative efforts aimed at less-common circumstances
somehow suspect:
Are you at all worried that by overstating the prevalence of
date rape drugs, your product might give its users, who are no less
likely to become victims of other kinds of sexual assault, a false
sense of security? And given that your product only addresses a
relatively tiny subsection of the sexual violence in this country,
do you have any plans to donate your profits to help protect the
remainder of the 18 percent?
Yes, her complaint actually seems to be that the nail polish
creators are only helping prevent some rapes and not all
rapes. Meanwhile, Salon assistant editor
Jenny Kutner is skeptical of the polish and yet still
distraught that it will be sold and not magically
subsidized and distributed freely:
… there’s room for skepticism about a rape prevention method
that aims to deter assaults through more fear and stigma — albeit
stigma attached to committing sexual assault, not to surviving it —
instead of through education. And, beyond that, tools like
Undercover Colors raise questions about the cost of profiting from
rape prevention: Is this really a market we should continue to
applaud entrepreneurs’ (notably male ones) tapping into? Or might
these resources be better allocated trying to teach people not to
rape?
At The Guardian Jessica
Valenti asserts that “anything that puts the onus on women to
‘discreetly’ keep from being raped misses the point. We should be
trying to stop rape, not just individually avoid it.” Here’s
Jezebel writer Lindy West:
Here’s Elizabeth
Plank, a senior editor at millennial news site
Mic:
And Rebecca Nagle, co-director of the group FORCE:
Upsetting Rape Culture,
told Think Progress:
One of the ways that rape is used as a tool to control people is
by limiting their behavior. As a woman, I’m told not to go out
alone at night, to watch my drink, to do all of these things. That
way, rape isn’t just controlling me while I’m actually being
assaulted—it controls me 24/7 because it limits my behavior.
Solutions like these actually just recreate that. I don’t want to
fucking test my drink when I’m at the bar. That’s not the world I
want to live in.
At the crux of most of these complaints is the axiom that we
should teach men not to rape instead of teaching women not to
be raped. And that’s an important message! Too much cultural
focus for too long has been on how a women’s own conduct
contributed or may contribute to her assault, in a way that winds
up absolving assailants of culpability.
But teaching men not to rape and helping women avoid rape aren’t
mutually exclusive options. It’s been said so many times already so
as to be a cliche, but no one accuses security cameras of
encouraging “theft culture”. And neither do most people blame theft
victims for getting robbed just because they didn’t have
security cameras. This sort of surveillance is simply an extra
precaution that some homeowners and businesses take, particularly
if circumstances (living in a wealthy neighborhood that’s often
targeted, living in a high-crime neighborhood, etc.) suggest a
higher likelihood of their property being robbed.
Similarly, I find it hard to believe the mere existence of
discreet date-rape detection tools would lead to the belief that
anyone not employing them deserves being drugged. No one’s gonna
start expecting all women to start slathering this stuff on all the
time. But someone who frequents crowded clubs, or a college student
going to a keg party, or someone on a first date may find that
taking this added precaution seems worthwhile. Are we supposed to
prefer they get drugged and assaulted while we’re waiting for a
perfect, rape-free culture? As writer and activist Maggie
McNeill commented on Twitter, I’m skeptical about “solutions”
to crimes & social problems “that require establishing a Utopia
first.”
* Really want to stress that these criticisms are coming from
mainstream liberal feminists because I’ve
seen plenty of other feminist-minded women, from libertarians and
conservatives to rad-fems and writers at popular women’s
publications, mentioning the nail polish approvingly.
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