AR Wear, or Anti-Rape Wear, is a crowdfunded line of undergarments designed to “frustrate an assault effectively.” Amanda Hess snarks, “The ‘AR’ stands for ‘ARe you kidding?’—no, sorry”. Jia Tolentino feels that “to some women, this product could feel tremendously welcome,” but she has reservations:
Many parts of the video for AR Wear really grind my gears … and it’s very upsetting to think of $50,000 going to a product that plays on fear, a wildly inaccurate and persistent definition of “real” rape (“This isn’t for domestic rape, or rape by people you know,” stated one of the creators. “This is for those situations when you’re on a blind date, or in unfamiliar places”), and of course the why-won’t-it-die idea that rape prevention falls on anyone except the rapist. And there are so many offensive fear-mongering ways in which I can imagine this product being deployed: an overprotective mom buying a whole set of these for her daughter who’s about to travel Amongst Foreigners, a girls’ cross-country team forced to wear these when they’re running through the “urban” part of town.
Audra Schroeder sees a dead end:
[T]hese ideas for anti-rape clothing never go anywhere, and that’s because preventing rape has nothing to do with what a woman is wearing, or not wearing, and everything to do with the rapist and a culture of victim-blaming. Are panties with thigh locks really making us safer, or is every woman’s fear simply being exploited for profit?
On that note, a reader adds to a recent thread, “The Pitfalls Of Rape Prevention”:
So it seems that Emily Yoffe has set off a firestorm of debate. There are also several points of view in a recent NYTimes “Room For Debate“. I really don’t understand the problem here.
Of course we have to educate women about the dangers of binge drinking. When I was young, I just accepted it as something fun to do with my friends. How is this advice equivalent to telling victims they “asked for it” by wearing a miniskirt? How you are dressed does not affect your brain’s ability to function. (But really, as a woman, I know that what I wear sends a message, and we need to know that too, damn it!)
It’s not about “blaming the victim”; it’s about arming women with knowledge they need to protect themselves. I only wish someone had given me this advice in middle school. It might have saved me a lot of trouble. And of course we should educate men about respecting women’s wishes, etc. But women can’t express their wishes or even be aware of what they want when they are wasted. Geez, it’s not that hard to figure this out.
A longer discussion thread on rape, “The Rape Double-Standard”, is here.
The Dish 