Opinion: After iCloud hack and ‘anti-date-rape’ nail polish, feminists too quick to pull ‘victim-blaming’ trigger

Call it the date-rape nail polish syndrome: Someone comes up with an apparently practical way for women to protect themselves against sexual assault, and, faster than it takes for a manicure to dry under a salon lamp, feminists will unite to denounce the protective measure as blaming the victim.

So it was when four North Carolina State University undergraduates recently announced that they had invented a nail polish that changes color when a nail is dipped into a drink containing a range of drugs, such as Rohypnol, Xanax and GHB, which are sometimes administered to unwitting victims to lower their resistance to unwanted sex.

If the nail polish works (and some critics say it won’t), it doesn’t sound like a bad way to nip in the bud at least some rapes involving drugged victims. But you would think from the resulting outcry that the young inventors were endorsing sexual assault instead of trying to help women prevent it.

“Though the invention may be well-intentioned, the promotion of its use specifically to women to prevent rape transfers the responsibility to stop the perpetration of sexual assault from those that commit this offense or those who may observe the perpetrator,” Kristen Houser of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Houser’s was actually one of more measured objections to “Undercover Colors,” as the inventors call their product. In a sarcastic article for the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri wrote: “This is all about taking responsibility for the behavior of others while looking as sexy as possible, after all.” Petri joked heavy-handedly that someone ought to invent “Password-Protected Chastity Spanx” and a tank top that “is actually a tank, complete with machine gun turret.”

The date-rape nail polish syndrome also extends to anyone who dares to suggest that one way for young women to avoid getting themselves into situations where sexual assault might occur is to avoid drinking to excess. This too sounds like common sense.

But you can’t say that without being pilloried. Take Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, former president of George Washington University. Part of a panel on campus sexual misconduct on “The Diane Rehm Show,” Trachtenberg commented, “Without making the victims ... responsible for what happens, one of the groups that have to be trained not to drink in excess are women…. They need to be in a position to punch the guys in the nose if they misbehave. And so part of the problem is you have men who take advantage of women who drink too much.”

Despite Trachtenberg’s explicit statement that he was not victim-blaming, Jezebel promptly threw up a headline: “Ex-GWU President Knows Why Rapes Happen: Drunk Chicks.”

The most bizarre extension of the date-rape nail polish syndrome, though, is the outpouring of feminist Twitter-fury over comedian Ricky Gervais’s tweet about the hacking of iCloud-stored nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and other Hollywood females: “Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on the computer.” One Twitter user wrote, “In case you missed his hastily deleted tweet, here is Ricky Gervais blaming the violation of a woman’s body on her.” “Girls” star Lena Dunham tweeted, “The ‘don’t take naked pics if you don’t want them online’ argument is the ‘she was wearing a short skirt’ of the web.”

Look, hacking is a crime, maybe a felony. But remember that iCloud isn’t even your own computer. It’s someone else’s server, a kind of public storage room that can be -- and was -- broken into. It’s not really the best place to stash photos of yourself that you don’t want lots of other people to see.

And rape is a felony too: a gross, frightening and violent violation of a woman’s body. It’s a trauma from which some women never recover. But isn’t it better not to be raped than to be raped? There are bad people out there. They commit rape -- and murders, muggings, robberies, burglaries and Internet hackings. Saying “Don’t rape” is all well and good, but it’s no more going to prevent rape than saying “Don’t murder” to a gang shooter.

So what’s wrong with giving women some practical advice and some tools that could prevent rape from happening to them?

Here’s a nail polish that could detect date-rape drugs. This isn’t victim-blaming or shifting responsibility away from rape perps. It’s helping to lower the incidence of a serious crime.

Charlotte Allen writes frequently about feminism, politics and religion. Follow her on Twitter @MeanCharlotte.

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