This is an image of a product called FemDefense. It is a tampon-sized cylinder of white plastic intended to protect women against rape. FemDefense is intended to work like so:
It’s the brainchild of a Swedish woman, and was thought up as a response to numerous rape cases in Sweden that resulted in the perpetrator receiving an inadequate punishment for his crime and the victims left “without appropriate support from the judicial system.” That loaded sentence combined with one of the product’s marketing strategies in a television commercial (“Do you like getting drunk? Do you like sexy clothes? Do you hate being scared?”) implies to me that the judicial system in Sweden still employs some form of the arcane notion that if a woman wears a short skirt, she is asking to be raped, thus not really being raped at all.
The problem with this product (which is fake, dreamed up to provoke discourse) is that it kind of validates that logic. If you are a woman who likes to drink and likes to wear revealing clothing, then you should acknowledge what your are doing and that you may be inviting someone to rape you in return. But this is just a fake product—art in a sense, a PSA, right?
Google “anti-rape product” and another product pops up at the top of the page that seems remarkably like FemDefense in that it is intended to injure the penis of the rapist, (unlike pepper spray and other devices/ techniques that injure or obstruct other parts of the rapist’s body). Rapex is a very real female anti-rape condom lined with barbs that would be hard for the perp to remove (much like fishhooks) and leave tell tale marks behind for investigators of the crime. This product was launched in 2005 in South Africa. It looks like this:
The Rapex website recommends that women wear the device, “Should you have to travel long distances alone, on a train, working late, going out on a date with someone you don’t know too well, going to clubs, or in any situation that you might not feel comfortable or even just not sure,” again validating the logic that if you like to get drunk and wear sexy clothes, then you should expect, to some degree, that someone will try to rape you. This product says that it is intended to empower women, but it seems to perpetuate the notion that empowered women who exhibit “unladylike” (i.e. getting drunk and wearing revealing clothing) behaviors will be punished for them.
