Last week came news of “anti-rape” lingerie, a high-tech garment developed by three engineering students in India who were fed up with the culture of rape in their country. According to reports, the lingerie was designed to help women ward off unwanted sexual advances by detecting the touch of an aggressor and delivering 82 electric shocks. The garment also would be smart enough to contact the local police station as well as the girl’s family to let them know she was in trouble.
But the idea of an “anti-rape” bra raised more questions that it answered: how would the garment know the difference between an aggressor and a loved one? How could a woman make sure she didn’t get shocked herself? How would it transmit a message to family? How could a garment so seemingly complicated ever be produced for a mass audience—and actually be affordable?
it seems too many other devices would be needed to complete the idea, transmitters need receivers, gps also police would have to purchase that equipment as well as family.
.Most of the women who are raped are not the ones sitting in palatial houses,” she says. “I don’t want it to be given out to brand. It should reach each and every woman in the villages. I want to make this a safer world without gaining profit.”It may sound implausible, but Mohan says the garment is outfitted with a GPS device that can be programmed by the wearer to send an SMS alert to parents or a spouse when she is in trouble. It also will send an alert to the nearest police department.
The garment is laudable: both innovative and socially conscious. And let’s hope it can serve to protect someone from sexual violence—even if it isn’t practically scalable across an entire country. But, as one fantastic group of Indian activists pointed out at the Women in the World Summit last week, fighting a culture of rape in India is systemic—and it can’t be solved with a single shockwave.
while i applaud the effort i would think it would be years to cultivate it at a monetary level affordable to average woman. also it it were made available eventually that news would be out there and rapist would just avoid or force women to turn it off. then there is always quality of the equipment how reliable would it and batteries be? at least it is a plan,
