The prototype to Rapex was announced in 2005, and production will make it available in South Africa in the coming months for approximately 15 cents each. It was invented by South African medical technologist Sonette Ehlers, in response to South Africas rape epidemicarguably the highest rate of sexual assault in the world with an estimated one million rapes per year (with an estimated 40% of those against children). Couple that statistic with the highest AIDS rate in the world, and it is small wonder that drastic measures such as Rapex are proposed.

Rapex looks like a female condom, but with one stunning difference: upon penetration, 25 hooklike barbs attach themselves to the skin of the penis, and the device is then transferred from female to male and can only be removed by a doctor. The idea is that the rapists pain would disarm him long enough for the victim to get away, and would require him to turn himself inevidence unmistakeablein order to avoid permanent damage.

The devices announcement has met with some criticism, not least of which is that it doesnt actually prevent a rape, but rather interrupts it. Others charge that it would only be effective for vaginal rapes (and only if it were not detected beforehand), and not at all for gang rapeand may inspire further violence upon the victim. As an AIDS prevention, it appears risky because an infected mans blood from his wounds may infect his victim. Further, it could be used to frame a man who was lead to believe that sex was consensual. And then there is the philosophical argument that such a measure puts the onus of protection from rape upon the woman herself rather than on law enforcement and on the culture that shrugs when rape occurs.

The part of me that despises rapists and wants to see them get what they deserve applauds this innovation as a sort of fear-based gender-levelling: let men know what its like to change behavior for safetys sake, to wonder who might be armed, so to speak. However, it seems to me that Rapexs risks outweigh its benefits. I recognize that from my cushy, American, middle-class, rural soapbox I have truly no concept of what our sisters and their children in such cultural conditions endure, and for me to discourage a tool such as Rapex is perhaps to behave ignorantlyI dont know. As the mom of five daughters, this is a charged issue for me and adds fervency to my prayers and wishes for their health and safety. As a woman, I mourn for the world in which my sisters feel that wearing razors inside their bodies is a good thing.