Why Are Rape Proof Pants Actually an ‘Excellent Idea’?
For a few weeks now, I’ve seen a video of some “rape-proof pants” surfacing across social media. These pants, like a lycra version of Bridget Jones’ infamous granny pants, are designed with vulnerable and frightened girls in mind and can’t be torn, pulled, cut or yanked off. They’re secured solely by a small locking button with a unique manipulation needed to open them. Essentially, they’re the Tupper Wear of pants: durable, safety-sealed and a nightmare to open when you’re drunk – and an undeniably tremendous bit of kit.
But instead of the top comment being “WOW! THANKS INVENTORS! MY VAGINA IS SAFE FROM PRYING HANDS”, which would be a suitably grateful and appropriate bit of feedback, there’s invariably some smarmy sage sitting pretty with 630 likes uttering the immortal phrase ‘we shouldn’t need this’.
Well.
I guess if we shouldn’t need it, it’s obsolete? I guess if we sat the entire population of the world down in a lecture-style format and told them to engage in a lifestyle where we don’t violate, abuse and mistreat others, everything would be peachy, right?
We do that. It’s called the law. And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s not had 100% success rate.
Do these people understand society is littered with things we shouldn’t need? Why do they think we lock our houses or our cars? Why do they think handbags have zips and buttons and tricksy hidden pockets? The aforementioned law, and its representative, the policeman, shouldn’t be there, because we should all just sit around not breaking the law. Self-defence classes shouldn’t exist because we shouldn’t need to defend ourselves, everyone should just be nice. Burglar alarms shouldn’t exist because people should knock before entering. Women’s shelters shouldn’t exist because people shouldn’t be abusing the women in their lives! No aggressive animals should ever be put down because they should all innately be friendly!
Women walk around with sprays and contraptions in their bags to defend themselves. Around a third of people sleep with a weapon under the bed. If a stranger invites themselves into your house, you feel uneasy. The world can be a scary and dark place. If you safeguard against certain occurrences and that small, awful percentage of the population, you’re not jaded – you’re prepared. The concept of imperfection sucks, but we as humans come up with solutions that literally save lives, and isn’t that worth celebrating?
Of course, rape-proof pants are a horrible societal symbol. Of course, in a perfect world, one of the first things to be omitted would be rape. These pants are the second lock on your door. They’re a choice, and no one is harmed by that choice being out there. Perhaps if you think it’s worth broadcasting, by all means continue spouting your utopian propaganda, and dream of a world where there aren’t any bad people doing any bad things. Maybe next on your agenda should be locks, medicine and sexual assault counsellors. We shouldn’t need any of these in a perfect world.
“Well if you didn’t want this to happen, why weren’t you wearing rape-proof pants?”
It’s a nice option to reassure those persons who feel themselves to be in a position of high rape risk. But I can think of many scenarios in which these would provide little to no effectiveness, so it is not fair to call them rape-proof. Security-pants, perhaps. Like a security wallet when you travel to a city notorious for pick pockets.
I also shan’t be jumping for joy that rape prevention methods still seem to be centered around controlling women’s behaviour, in particular what clothing they choose (or do not choose) to wear. Thanks for the thought security pant makers, but these are by no means the solution.