How do you stop date rapists?

Date rape is a serious matter. So serious that US companies sell chemical nail polish that detects drugs in your cocktail, ‘hairy’ stockings to ward off attackers, and alarms that go off when jewelry or lingerie is violated.

My daughter went off to college recently and the school conducted a separate orientation for parents while the Class of 2018 was busy with their new student orientation. The two-day session was comprehensive, touching on several areas: academics, student life, campus resources, sports, clubs, financial aid, service, and internship but focus was heaviest on sexual assault on campus.

 This didn’t come as a surprise given recent media attention on escalating incidents of rape in US college campuses. Open your Internet browser and news banners on such incidents flash on your screen.

“One in four college women in the US report surviving rape or attempted rape,” the speaker announced. One parent seated in the same row commented, “Are they doing this to scare us because it sure is working. Are they saying this to give us sleepless nights?” She was right: it is scary and it is bound to rob parents of sleep but isn’t information our best weapon?

 The speaker went on to state that, “Based on a study by Zinzow and Thompson in 2011, 60 percent of rape on college campuses occur with a perpetrator who is an acquaintance of the survivor; 38 percent are romantic partners; 8 percent are strangers and 72 to 81 percent are cases in which a male rapes a female college student (when) the female is intoxicated.”

 Horrifying facts, but this is one tough conversation we need to be having with students, vanguards of our future, for whom we break our backs working to afford their college education.  Imagine our rural folk bending over backwards financially to send their children to the “big city” for better education and chances of a promising future. Imagine our OFWs who endure separation from their families for lengthy periods to earn their children’s college fund. And then what?  They wake up to news of their child falling victim to sexual assault. It probably happens more than we think, otherwise why the recurring theme on TV and radio soaps — the barometer of popular culture?

 Gone are the colonial days of beating or bedding a woman into submission, or rape to establish male dominance. We need to teach to teach our children to build a culture of sexual responsibility, particularly the men — our sons and nephews — who are at risk for committing sexual assault.

There has been international discourse on this subject for some time now but mostly in the First World — not much here at home. I’m not sure if statistics are negligible, not generating enough buzz, or that our culture of secrecy to avoid shame is responsible for this “silence.” We need to raise these questions: Is date rape happening in the Philippines and what are we doing about it?

 Elsewhere in the world, in the US specifically, date-rape awareness has spurred enterprising responses — one of the latest is a nail polish called Undercover Colors that changes color in the presence of common date rape drugs like Rohypnol, Xanax, and GHB (Gamma-Hydroxybutric acid). To check if one of these drugs had been slipped into her drink, a woman has to stir it with her finger.

 According to Washington Post writer Gail Sullivan, four male undergraduate students — materials science and engineering majors at North Carolina State University Ankesh Madan, Stephen Grey, Tasso Von Windheim and Tyler Confrey-Maloney — created the nail polish to prevent date rape. Madan commented, “We wanted to focus on preventive solutions, especially those that could be integrated into products that women already use. All of us have been close to someone who has been through the terrible experience (of date rape), and we began to focus on finding a way to help prevent the crime.”  He added, “We hope to make potential perpetrators afraid to spike a woman’s drink because there’s now a risk that they can get caught. In effect, we want to shift the fear from the victims to the perpetrators.”

This nail polish is just one of a slew of products invented to help prevent date rape in recent years. Some, which have been out in the market are: 1) an anti-rape alarm, which is a type of kitchen with a button one can push to emit a sound alarm; 2)  anti-rape jewelry (necklace or bracelet) that contacts your and your emergency contacts’ cell phones and alerts them of the situation and your location; 3) an anti-rape belt buckle that is almost impossible to unclasp;  4)  anti-rape lingerie that emits electric shocks to the would-be rapist and sends an alert to authorities to the attack through the GPS imbedded in it; 5)  an anti-rape condom that a woman needs to pre-insert before going out. It clamps onto a man upon entry and can only be removed by a doctor. Perhaps the most amusing of these measures — given the subject — are the “hairy stockings” invented in China. They are regular nylons for women woven with abundant human leg hair to (hopefully) repulse attackers.

There are drawbacks to these anti-rape products. It was pointed out in a blog called Feministing that date rape drugs “are not used to facilitate sexual assault all that often.”  While estimates vary, it is safe to say that plain old alcohol is the substance most commonly used in drug-facilitated rape.

Tara Culp-Ressler of the group Think Progress said, “Well-intentioned products like anti-rape nail polish can actually end up fueling victim-blaming. College students who don’t use the special polish could open themselves up to criticism for failing to do everything in their power to prevent rape.”

Carlene Partow, president of Hopkins Feminists, said, “These (anti-rape) products are not getting at the root of the problem.  I think people are focusing on the wrong aspect of rape, and that’s not their fault. The problem is not with women; the problem is with the men committing these crimes.  But as a society, we should focus on getting rid of the rape culture to begin with. The bottom line is it’s not someone’s responsibility to prevent herself from getting raped.”

Have we become so inured to the prevalence of sexual assault in our societies that we seem to have accepted it as a matter of course? Instead of approaching the issue as a social ill that must be fought and eradicated in the long run, it seems like we have shifted our focus to inventing (and marketing) alternatives to protect ourselves from the inevitability of it happening to, rather than preventing its possibility.

After all, anything that puts the onus on women to “discreetly” keep themselves from being raped misses the point by a mile.  This is one of the reasons we inadvertently reinforce a pervasive rape culture in our society. We should stop rape, not just avoid it.

Should the children we are currently sending to college concentrate on creating products to reap profits for the prevention of rape? Is this an entrepreneurial endeavor that we should encourage and applaud? Or might the genius, time, and energy of our best and brightest be better expended in educating people not to rape? There is much fun to be had in partying. There is liberation to be found in losing one’s inhibitions after a few drinks. But until our brilliant students in the best colleges in the world learn that having sex with women too inebriated and incapacitated to consent is rape, then we remain savages.

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.