Karma for Rapists
Plus a reframe that I'd be punched for if I put it on a T-shirt
I know I’m not alone in feeling very angry about rapists recently. The Epstein Files, revealing the way powerful men use rape as currency. The Gisele Pelicot case illuminating that it's not just the powerful men. Then finding out there are thousands upon thousands of Dominique Pelicots, risking our safety and health to turn us into unwitting pornstars in our sleep. Sharing tips on how to drug and rape the women who love them in ‘online rape academies’. Finally writing about my own brush with a spiked drink and attempted rape.
So this week, it was no surprise that an algorithm on Instagram fed me a 'women’s self-defence sleeve’.
VenusGuard is vagina dentata in the form of a hollow silicon tampon, and sharing one of their promotional videos brought me almost unmanageable levels of engagement from people who were cheering and saying “I want one,” expressing anger such a thing even has to exist, saying they’d prefer one that delivered penectomy, and — a sizeable number — saying this thing is more capitalist exploitation of women / normalises rape culture / puts the burden on women / would be dangerous to women.
‘Normalises rape culture’ was an interesting one. Hell, have you not noticed? Rape culture is normalised. That’s where we’re living. That’s why women are trying to raise money for a rape-defence sleeve. Only 3% of rapes are prosecuted, and in England and Wales, only half of those are successful, so 98.5% of rapists get away without consequences. The US and other countries have similar figures. This device could change that.
On the first ‘backstroke’ of a penile thrust, Venusguard attaches to the offending organ like a finger trap armed with razor-sharp, curved barbs, causing incapacitating pain. It can only be safely removed by a clinician. That’s a powerful consequence. It’s also proof that rape occurred: a shredded penis marks the act as non-consensual. There’ll be no he-said-she-said unless what she said was, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I forgot I left it in” (in which case, yes, she will need to buy him flowers.) No more will a rapist be able to say, “She wanted it.”
The objections were a sizeable minority of responses and fell roughly into these categories, many of which are dealt with in VenusGuard’s FAQ.
Escalation / retaliation fear — Incapacitating pain is incapacitating. This study shows escalation (and worsened outcomes) come not from women who hurt their rapists but from screaming, which we’re routinely told to do.
Band-Aid, not a solution, ‘we need to educate men not to rape’ — Uh-huh. How’s that going? Until we get a solution, a lot of women would like a Band-Aid.
Workarounds / circumvention — Possible, but only if these become so commonplace that men start expecting them. They’re not visible. Most rapes are opportunistic rather than premeditated, and many, many men will be caught out.
Deceptive use by angry women — Any device can be misused, but even if this did happen, it would be a tiny fraction of a per cent when set against actual rapes.
Doesn’t cover all kinds of rape — Yes, it’s vagina-specific. We don’t ask a toaster to wash the dishes. It’s really good at making toast, though.
Gang rape — See the FAQ, but in short, men mostly rape women because they can, consequence-free, and once consequences are on the cards, they will scarper.
Doesn’t cover all rape scenarios, ‘most rapes are by people you know’ — I have no idea why people imagine this is only for stranger rape. It works perfectly well with people you know: your date, your colleague, your rapey uncle. Your husband who’s drugging you and raping you in your sleep.
We don’t know when we’re going to be raped —Valid. But we can cover our most high-risk times.
It doesn’t stop rape. It activates on penetration. — Sure. But it stops it on the first thrust. Yes, assault has already happened, but the victim can get away without further damage, and trauma is lessened by that and the sense of justice.
Cutting into the penis could increase infection risk — Immediate withdrawal on being cut suggests to me that infection risk would be considerably less than continued rape to ejaculation.
And then all the replies that thought this would join you to the rapist, having not understood it attaches firmly to his dick, which he will withdraw from you like it’s been sliced up by razors (because it has) … I suspect we will never get to the end of all the marvellous variations of misunderstanding available to the human brain.
Finding out that an earlier version of this device had never been commercially produced sent me running to the archives. The Rape-Axe was invented by a white South African phlebotomist (not a doctor, as most reports say) called Sonnet Ehlers. who saw a lot of rape survivors in her clinic. As it says on the VenusGuard site:
One of our original co-inventors, Sonnet Ehlers, continues her own important work promoting and educating about Rape-aXe in South Africa and other regions where more direct terminology is readily accepted. VenusGuard is our pivot to open ears and bypass censorship in Western cultures. She is understanding of what is happening with VenusGuard, but she just wanted to keep the old name in her country.
I was interested to know why it has taken 20 years to get us from patent to crowdfunding for production. I went diving deep into the archives, the data, and various studies, working on a piece for a national paper. I interviewed VenusGuard’s Campaign Manager, Hope Leone, an inspiring, passionate survivor. All week I’ve been researching and writing about rape. Swimming in a cesspool of rapists. No surprise, then, that I’ve had to sit down and tap on the statement “I hate rapists.”
Let’s clarify who I mean when I say “I hate rapists.” I mean your mate down the pub. I mean Steve in accounts. I mean Clive, the friendly taxi driver. I mean your housemate. I mean Wayne the chef, who shimmied up the drainpipe of the hotel where I was staying with my parents in Guernsey and climbed into my bedroom, and Cyril Littlewood MBE of the World Wildlife Fund, both of whom got no further (thank God) than copping a feel. I mean ordinary men who don’t look like monsters. Men who just take sex wherever they can, because they can, because they know it’s your word and against theirs and the system’s rigged against you. Sure, some rapists are vicious, dangerous and armed, but most rapists pass among us as ordinary men armed with nothing more than the extra strength nature gave males, and a sense of entitlement.
“I hate rapists” (both the Steves and the monsters) is a totally valid position. And anger is more empowering than sadness or despair; anger can make great renewable fuel.
But I don’t tolerate the jag of negative emotion for long these days: like an ant-invasion, if I spot it, I want it gone. Because I want a better world, and we are most in our power when we’re fully aligned with our light and brilliance. Strong emotions cloud mental clarity, which I value too much to give up for a bunch of bad dicks.
As always, once the anger was released, an insight arrived. We can all of us access deep knowledge when we are at peace (through meditation, for example): the ability to step outside the tumult of the moment we are in and sense a bigger mechanism at play. That mechanism at the centre of my passions, human evolution, working through the spirit. A new version of our species, adaptively changed for the better.
It came in such a potent formulation that it shocked me. For a while, it was the title of this piece. But it sounded like clickbait, intended to enrage, and I don’t think we need more fury right now. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t land with the general readership of this essay (rape survivors especially). Or the people who will say, “This device is disgusting”, or “It’s horrible this has to exist”, or “We should just educate men.” (We have tried. Do you think our everyday rapists only learn experientially? Is VenusGuard the night class?) Rape is too emotive. And comments on that Note had the flavour of Twitter or Instagram: most watched for five seconds, then straight to knee-jerk reaction without reading replies. So. For those of you who I know are ready for the deep stuff, it’s below the paywall.
Where the comments are too (Substack makes this happen when you stick in a paywall). Which I mostly dislike, but this week it works, because on Sunday morning, I’m heading for Devon for a Buddhist meditation retreat (a gift). It seems a foolish move to spend a week being Zen and return to a shit-ton of comments about sexual violence. Better a more manageable dose, which I can read on my return.
Rape has been happening, perhaps at these levels, for millennia. Rises in official statistics can be put down to increased reporting (5 in 6 rapes currently go unreported). Vagina dentata is folkloric, appearing across multiple cultures for thousands of years: the vagina with teeth: the raped woman’s wish for revenge, the man’s worst fear.
What’s been happening recently has simply been this: we have started talking, and sharing our stories. We have started to shrug off the shame that silenced us and put it where it belongs: on men who rape.
We have started to discover the shocking breadth of the problem: from the President of the US, to the Spiritual ‘Guru’ who worked with Oprah, to the intellectuals in academia, to the neighbour next door who serviced our car and then raped us, at our husband’s invitation, in our sleep.
So I think it’s time to bring folkloric armed vaginas to the table, for those who would like them. Time to do with consequences what we are doing with shame: start shifting them from the survivor of rape to the rapist.
Hopefully, soon, the answer to “What was she wearing?” will be “Teeth.”
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