You’ve probably heard about Rohypnol, Xanax and GHB (Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid) if you’ve ever taken a sexual education course. These powerful sedatives are among the most well-known date rape additives, chosen by rapists for their potency in relatively small doses and for being difficult to detect once added to a drink.
But what if the latter weren’t true — what if you could detect these drugs in seconds, just using your hands?
Now you can, thanks to an invention by a group of students from NC State. Their product, Undercover Colors, is a nail polish that changes color in the presence of the above drugs so that would-be victims can quickly and discreetly check to be sure that their drinks aren’t spiked.
At first glance, one would think that this product would be empowering for those who decide to use it, even if only marginally. (While these drugs may be the ones most commonly associated with date rape, alcohol actually accounts for the majority of drugged date rape cases.)
Not so, according to several prominent feminists.
Maya Dusenbury, Executive Director of the website Feministing.com, writes, “Thanks to four male college students from North Carolina State University, you may soon be able to buy some nail polish that detects date rape drugs to go with your anti-rape underwear. Throw in your rape whistle and pepper spray camera, and you might be able to delude yourself into believing you’re 100 percent safe from sexual violence … 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?”
Salon’s Jenny Kutner asks, “Is this really a market we should continue to applaud entrepreneurs’ (notably male ones) tapping into?”
I certainly don’t believe that all feminists are as against this product as these examples are, but these are just two of the most prominent examples of dozens of posts I found of feminists railing against a rape prevention tool.
For these writers, it’s not enough that these young men are trying to do what they can to help detect and prevent date rape — they really ought to be stopping every single incidence of every kind of sexual assault ever, and they ought to be doing it for free.
Anything less and, not only are they not helpful, they are in fact supporting rape culture and are so much a part of the problem that we should boycott their products.
And what is that “notably male ones” about? I thought part of gender equality was supposed to be getting rid of the “men versus women” mentality … Is it now a requirement that men get a sex change before they try to do something positive for humanity?
Actually, I think I get it now. Anti-rape nail polish promotes rape culture in the same way as anti-theft security systems promote theft-culture.
Both are reactionary measures that force the victims to cater their lives to the criminals that only stop a fraction of crimes for a fraction of the population.
And as everyone knows, if you’re not the entire solution, then you’re part of the problem.