derivative work

South African inventor Sonette Ehlers has developed the “rapex”, a barbed female condom aimed at discouraging rapists. A coordinator for Rape Crisis cautions that the device could backfire, and rapists in penile pain might respond with increased violence.

Of course, Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash (1992) was all over this idea: his teenage protagonist wore a similar device cleverly named the ‘vagina dentata’. But rather than just putting a rapist in pain, the v.d. actually disarmed him, by injecting a super-fast-acting tranquilizer directly into his penis.

[Yahoo! News 9/1 via slate 9/12]

update 15 minutes later: Wikipedia rocks; there’s simply no other way to say it. See the entry on anti-rape female condom.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2005 at 3:48 pm and is tagged sexism commentary, female condom, Neal Stephenson, prior art, rape, sexism, sf, Snow Crash, South Africa, vagina dentata, violence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 1,203 views.