In Praise of the Nanny… er… Lab

In the last 24 hours, I have been embroiled in multiple conversations about terribly innovative products under development, products with the end goal of protecting someone from something.

“That’s very clever,” you’d think the conversation would go, “Let’s call the Nobel committee.”

No. There are objections to products being designed and formulated by very, very smart people to protect other people from dangers we all read about and tsk-tsk in the newspaper everyday. Those products are EVIL.

Comedian and commentator, David Mitchell, ranted freely in the Guardian recently about the outrage of having a seatbelt installed into your car that detects when you’ve dropped off to sleep. Using a series of sensors, this relatively inexpensive addition to your already existing car safety system could prevent up to 20% of the auto accidents that happen on our roadways. Those absolute bastards.

“Even if they work properly, which I suppose they probably will after 10 years of irritation,” Mitchell gripes, “They’re an ominous development.” His contention is that driving is a skill, that it should be done by people who know what they’re doing and paying attention to it while they’re at it. Giving them a device that buzzes or bleeps them awake when they begin to nod off behind the wheel provides a false sense of security; it gives “an exhausted person the illusion of consequence-free power.”

This is clearly the voice of someone who has never driven the long, empty prairies of Wyoming, nor lost someone to a fatal accident caused by inattentive driving. This is the voice of comfortable privilege.

Meanwhile, a group of very clever chemistry students have developed a nail polish that, when dipped into a drink containing a handful of the wild assortment of so-called date rape drugs, changes color, thereby alerting a would-be victim before she is debilitated beyond the ability to protect herself. According to one interview with the young researchers, it was “personal experience” that inspired this product. “Through this and similar technologies, we hope to make potential predators afraid to spike a woman’s drink for fear of being caught,” they explained.

Hey girls! It just got slightly less dangerous to have fun again! Hooray! Oh wait…

Turns out, this is a very bad idea. A number of outspoken feminists have cried “victim blaming” in response to this apparently heinous effort to decrease the horrific act of raping women who are too debilitated to resist. Feministing blogger, Maya, asks “Are you at all concerned that women who weren’t wearing your polish when they were drugged and raped will be blamed for not doing everything in their power to ‘ensure [their] safety’?” She also wonders why we are working on chemical detection products when we should be teaching men not to rape.

She makes half of a point, there. Yes, men should very much not be raised in a culture that teaches them to feel entitled to women’s bodies, that encourages aggression and contempt when they are not given free access. I agree. Loads of work to be done there. And yes, law enforcement and defense attorneys need to stop Stop STOP banging the drum of when and where women should be allowed out and about and what uniform is acceptable. We need more women in both fields with a personal understanding of what it is like to be objectified, preyed upon and always just a little bit frightened. Start studying for those LSATs, ladies!

But in the meantime, while the roads of nightlife are riddled with the debris of rape’s gut wrenching, life altering, soul killing collisions, I think wearing a proverbial seat belt is a really good idea. Having an additional protective sensor in that seatbelt is an even better idea! Let’s call it layering. That way it sounds like Scandinavian fashion or good planning for a hike.

Go for it, engineers and chemists! Keep doing good in the world. Most of us appreciate your noble efforts.

Sex in Our Time: Entitled Men and Frightened Women

A lot has been written about male entitlement, particularly sexual entitlement, in the last few weeks. I can’t add much to that dialogue besides a hearty “about time!” But I don’t think there are many women who can go more than a day or two without thinking about this difficult problem.

I remember having a disagreement with a very, very smart woman I respect about the value highly visible sexually liberated women present to the feminist movement. I actually surprised myself by coming down on the side of finding party girls who advertise their casual sexual activity unsettling. At the time, I couldn’t quite pin down my reasoning and just ended up looking like a prude to someone who was relieved to, at last, see women owning their sexuality.

Ah! But there’s the rub!

Girls like Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus, sexy as they may be, are not paragons of feminist activism. Why? Because they don’t actually own their sexuality, they simply market it well. I recall a party hosted by Ms. Hilton which decried “no girls over 100 lbs.” on its now legendary invitation. To the best of my knowledge, assertive and sexually aware feminists do not set a weight limit. But certain men do.

By playing in to the highly sexualized fantasies of a media saturated and pornified male youth culture, women who make themselves into sexual icons, no matter how liberated and independent they may be, are merely advertising themselves in a commodified sex market in which some women are more valued by men than other women. By extending prejudicial judgment against other women, judgment based on those male fantasies and their strict beauty standards, they are actually harming other women as well as themselves.

I was a feminist when I was younger. As a teen mom, I rallied for reproductive rights at the state capitol and was a very vocal advocate for Planned Parenthood. And this was in a state predominated by a religion that still holds doctrinal reservations against birth control and in vitro fertilization. I supported the NOW and tried to become a representative to the national Democratic convention. I shouted down a state legislator who idiotically contended, “I think we’ve talked enough about birth control already.” But my feminism was nothing before I became the mother of a girl. It is even more strident now that I’m the mother of a woman.

I can’t tolerate the thought of the bright, insightful, tender young scientist we raised being subjected to the objectifying judgment of men like Elliot Rodger or, frankly, Seth Rogan and his pals. She is so much more than attractive. She owes no one anything. She doesn’t have to date anyone she doesn’t want to, even “nice guys.” She doesn’t ever, ever have to have sex unless that is exactly what she wants to do at that very moment with that very man or woman, no matter what she’s wearing (even if that is a wedding band) or how much he spent on dinner or whatever she may have said or done twenty minutes before. That’s what the law says, and that’s what our culture should be promoting.

But because she is beautiful by all current standards, and because she pings the manic pixie dream girl bell in certain young men, my daughter has already been put in multiple painful and uncomfortable situations. She has already had an emotionally unstable boyfriend who laid claim to her and made plans for her future after their first date. She has been in situations so dangerous I had to very forcefully convince her to carry mace and – this is painful to admit—be afraid. I had to teach her to be afraid that she might be alone after dark in places where she is vulnerable to men who feel entitled to her beauty and what that beauty has come to mean to them thanks to media depictions of overly sexualized women willing to go to any lengths for male attention.

How many rapists say to their victims, “You know you want it.” Here’s the truly terrifying thing: those rapists actually believe that.

This is what we’re talking about with feminism these days. Survival. This is what #yesallwomen is trying to cast a much-needed light on. I understand that there are men who have been treated badly by a woman at some point. There are also men who understand, men who would never objectify a woman or a girl, men who appreciate that all women have a fair place in this world alongside them. But the men who don’t, the ones who are howling that we are paying attention to this troubling culture of objectification that is so very unsafe for our women and girls, rather than paying attention to them, they are the very reason why we are speaking out.

Please, guys, be quiet for a minute and listen. Listen for your daughters, for your sisters, for your friends. Shhh. Just listen.