The Anti-Rape Condom

[Thom Little]

The vagina dentata - a vagina with literal or figurative teeth - is a potent trope in South Asian mythology, urban legend, Freudian rumination and speculative fiction (the novel "Snow Crash," by Neal Stephenson, for example). But it took a step toward reality this August with the unveiling of the Rapex, a female "condom" lined with rows of plastic spikes on its inner surface.

The Rapex is the brainchild of Sonette Ehlers, a retired blood technician in South Africa who was moved by the country's outlandish rape rate, which is among the highest in the world. The device is designed to be inserted any time a woman feels she is in danger of sexual assault. Its spikes are fashioned to end an assault immediately by affixing the Rapex to the assaulter's penis, but also to cause only superficial damage. The Rapex would create physical evidence of the attack as well and, as Ehlers laid out a course of events for reporters at a news conference, send the offender to a hospital, where he would be promptly arrested.

Ehlers estimates that each Rapex would cost 50 to 60 cents - a pricey proposition in Africa for a nonreusable item. On a Web site, www.rapestop.net, she answers other frequently asked questions: How is it inserted and removed? In each case, with an applicator. Do you hate men? No. Won't it get some users killed? Many rapists kill anyway; you stand a better chance against a temporarily disabled man. (On this last point, some may find Ehlers a little blithe about the prospect of an enraged rapist.) In a phone interview, she said that she has found the Rapex prototype to be more comfortable than a tampon. But Chantel Cooper, director of the Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust, remains unimpressed. The Rapex, she said in an e-mail message, sends the retrograde message "that women should be responsible for their own safety."


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas1-4.html

[wakeme2008]

1. pic

:scared: :scared:

[Zynx]

9. That certainly would stop them cold.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. I find myself speechless

except to say the lady looked kinda creepy.

[Fridays Child]

3. Now, we're talkin'!

Try to put it in a woman against her will and you can go home without it.

[NYC Liberal]

5. Wait'll the rapists try to sue the women.

:eyes: But unfortunately not sarcasm.

[Zynx]

10. Barbara Bush looks really freaky in that picture.

Even moreso than usual.

[NYC Liberal]

17. It's from right after the Astros lost the Series.

[madeline_con]

4. The price puts it out of reach of the poor...

I personally think this broad is wack!

[LostInAnomie]

6. I don't know if it is a good idea to induce bleeding in that area.

I know the point is to physically disable the attacker and escape, but it just doesn't sound like a good idea to cause a man to bleed inside a vagina.

Just looking at it from a disease prevention point of view.

*disclaimer* I haven't read the article so if it mentions something about this please ignore.

[Warpy]

11. I don't think there will be bleeding

and besides, the erect penis leaks seminal fluid from the second it erects.

What this is meant to stop is the rape of girl children by men who think sex with a virgin cures AIDS.

I say any way they can stop this practice is a good way.

After all, when the first guys get busted in the hospital, sobbing hysterically with that thing clamped to their willies, the rest may get the message that they just never know....

[Endangered Specie]

7. interesting, to say the least....

my proposal as a rape prevention kit:

[China_cat]

12. Unfortunately, we found here in SC

when we did have the death penalty for rape, that we got very few convictions. Juries were reluctant to take a man's life for rape unless he also murdered her...or was black and the victim white.

When we took the death penalty away and established degrees of sexual misconduct, we finally started getting convictions and predators off the streets.

I don't want to go back to the days when they walked away free because the people deciding thought the penalty was too harsh, not because they weren't convinced he was guilty.

[Endangered Specie]

14. Isnt the penalty phase seperate from the guilt/innocent phase?

I dont know how it was there, but Im sure in most DP cases the Jury can find guilty, but recommend (require) life in prison instead of death :shrug:

[China_cat]

16. No, when we had it here it was mandatory.

That was before the moratorium on the death penalty throughout the country. (And, until recently there was no 'penalty' phase of jury deliberation for anything)

When the DP was reinstated, our rape groups started doing research into the reasons why there were so few convictions in this state and that's what we found. It took several years and lots of hard work but it needed to change in order for the laws to be effective.

[Sapphocrat]

8. Oy.

We now live in a completely parallel universe, where an ounce of prevention isn't worth nearly as much as a ton of cure.

Side note: I bet ten bucks that if these things catch on, we're going to see a spike in toxic shock syndrome among users.

[hobbit709]

13. What worries me

is what will happen to the murder rate? A clown that rapes isn't doing it for sex, he's doing it for power and domination. He is liable to get angry enough to kill at that point.

[greenbriar]

15. I have a 14 year old daughter...can I buy this thing

in the US???


cause believe me, having that thing clamp on some asshole who trys to hurt my daughter, is preferable to what would happen to the scum if my husband or I got a hold of him

[dsc]

18. I am unsure what to think

Clearly this could enrage a rapist causing him to kill but it also could be painful enough to incapacitate allowing escape. Tough call. I am no expert here so I would tend to defer to them.

[Fridays Child]

20. A little training for the user would be good.

It looks like the pain would begin upon the first counterthrust, so to speak. At that moment, when the rapist is in momentary shock, the victim should be trained and ready to further disable her assailant so that she can escape.

[Yupster]

19. Boy it used to be that a bitter ex-girlfriend

could just throw your clothes out the window or call your new girlfriend with nasty stories.

Now spurned exes can do some real damage.