Anti-Rape Underwear

There’s a company making underwear that’s hard to take off without knowing how it works. The idea is that if someone tries to assault you, they’ll waste time struggling with the mechanism instead of proceeding. It sounds like dark, clever design—someone’s answer to a problem that exists.

I get the logic. Rape happens. It’s everywhere. Someone saw that and designed a product around it, and apparently people want to buy it. Both sensible and completely depressing at the same time.

The thing is, I don’t think it actually stops anything. Someone determined enough will figure it out. But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe it’s just friction, enough to make someone pause or give you time to fight back or run. Or maybe it’s just the feeling that you did something, that you have some control, even if it’s illusory.

What gets me is that the women I know don’t find this absurd. They find it practical. I mentioned it to a friend once, not as a joke, but as something that actually exists, and she was genuinely interested. Not as some ironic chastity belt thing, but as something she’d actually wear. And I believe her. The threat is real enough that a product like this makes sense.

You can design your way around a lot of problems. You can’t design your way around the fact that some people are predatory and everyone else has to engineer their lives around it.