I don’t do indiscriminate web surfing these days. I don’t have the time. I have subscriptions to XML news feeds for
the technical articles and blogs of interest (no, not people’s personal
diaries!), and I get email newsletters from a few other sites that have content
I am interested in. However, I am
always finding out about interesting and unusual sites because I have something
far more impressive than Google at my disposal. I have what I affectionately
refer to as “Intelligent Agent Wetware”.
That is, I have friends and family who know my quirky, odd tastes, and
forward me links they think I may find interesting. (However, I think I have finally
convinced my mother to check the
snopes urban legends site before forwarding ANY more “warnings” to me).
Just this evening, Tavia forwarded me a link to an
interesting Swedish site, Femdefense.
I must say, it certainly has an, ahem, impact. While the author of the site indicates that
it is an “imaginary” product, and that the marketing is mostly to stimulate
discussion at this time, she does indicate that she would like to produce a
real version at some point.
The first thing that came to mind was the character, Y.T.
from in Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. In the post-modern cyberpunk world of Snow
Crash, YT is a
young Kourier, who sports a form of Vagina Dentata as protection against rape.
The concept of Vagina
Dentata is largely attributed to
Freud, who asserted that castration by female vaginas was a common
cross-cultural fear for men. What it
really speaks to, of course, is how seriously fucked up Freud was, but nobody
questioned that at the time.
In the case of YT, the Vagina Dentata was not “teeth”, but a
small needle that could inject an assailant with a powerful cocktail of
narcotics and depressants. She had to
remove it for consensual sex, and as luck would have it, forgot to do just that
before having sex with another character, causing him to be rendered
immediately unconscious.
I chuckle when I imagine the SHRINKAGE that likely occurs
when men view the Femdefense page or see the advertisements in magazines.
As entertaining as it is to consider male reactions, my
first purview of the design leads me to believe that the Femdefense might be as
painful for me as it would be for any would-be attacker. I think I’m a bit too mobile and active. And
not that vertically aligned.
Of course the best defense against an attempted rapist is to
knock him out or get away before he can stick his penis anywhere, but not all women
are capable of that, especially if the guy has a weapon.
And that got me to thinking of how I’D design an
anti-rape vagina dentata… I think the
spike would have to be spring-loaded and require some kind of impact to
release. It’d have to have some other way to remove it, other than a
tampon-string. That would be too easy for an attacker to remove too. And my version would have a barb on the end
of the spike, like a fish hook, so it lodges deep into the offenders penis,
making it harder to remove, and keeping the attacker immobilized and
preoccupied so that the victim can get away.
In countries like the UK where there is only a 5.7%
conviction rate on rape cases, I can see women getting desperate enough
to feel the need for some OTHER kind of protection. It seems to me, however that the
marketing of Femdefense is intended to be a way to stimulate discussion
about rape and violence, rather than a sales strategy for an actual
product. You have to ask yourself what this says about the level of
violence and the lack of perceived justice in western society when women
believe they need a product like Femdefense. We are not talking about some 3rd-world
backwater that still treats women like chattel. We are talking about Sweden here
folks. (Though I suspect if you talked to women just about anywhere in the
world, "first world" or otherwise, you'd find similar fears and concerns.)
If stories hit the news about rapists who were skewered by a Femdefense-type product,
I wonder if it would have any effect on the incidence of rape? Would it become a
deterrent because rapists wouldn't be able to tell who had one and who didn't? Or would it be like with HIV and
so many other STDS - people don't know who has it and who doesn't and they STILL don't use condoms...!?
And what good is it for the child being abused by a family member? Aren't most sexual assaults
perpetrated by someone known to the victim?
But, let’s face it, a product like that would never fly in
the US. Some stupid girl would forget
to take it out, she’d get all hot and horny with her boyfriend, and he’d wind
up in hospital, having a spiked nasty removed from his dick. The next thing you
know, there’d be law suits all round, and the manufacturers would have to add
so much product labeling and safety features that would make it too big to
stuff up an elephant’s twat. And god
forbid it should “go off” accidentally while inserted! That’s like a do-it-yourself IUD,
trailer-park style. The “birth control”
part would be that nobody could get their dick past the dentata lodged/anchored
in the vagina.
A less drastic, more humane method might be like the way
that they have exploding dye packets in money from robberies. Imagine a rapist pulling out a dick that is
gangrenous glowing green, or flaming red. It certainly might
help with the conviction rate, if the evidence of non-consensual sex is
irrefutable, and I giggle at the thought of some guy frantically scrubbing his
dick RAW, trying unsuccessfully to get the dye off…
But I still prefer the barbed fish-hook style.
Hmmm… maybe I should apply for a design patent and sell them
through the HBI store…. Heartless
Vagina Dentata. As if we weren’t
terrifying enough to the weak men of the world…
Heartlessly,
-Natalie
