--- title: Anti-Rape Nail Polish Doesn't Change the Rape Risk Factor for Women description: There's a lost opportunity every time we make girls and women individually responsible for avoiding rape canonical: https://time.com/3183170/rape-nail-polish-anti-rape-products/ author: Soraya Chemaly article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-27T13:51:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:45:31.170Z article:section: Ideas og:title: I Shouldn't Have to Dip My Nails In a Drink to Reduce My Risk of Rape og:description: There's a lost opportunity every time we make girls and women individually responsible for avoiding rape og:url: https://time.com/3183170/rape-nail-polish-anti-rape-products/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8b989628a370c4fc/6986a0ff1eebf7819e372679/102757479.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3411 og:image:height: 1919 og:image:alt: 102757479 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: I Shouldn't Have to Dip My Nails In a Drink to Reduce My Risk of Rape twitter:description: There's a lost opportunity every time we make girls and women individually responsible for avoiding rape twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8b989628a370c4fc/6986a0ff1eebf7819e372679/102757479.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # I Shouldn't Have to Dip My Nails In a Drink to Reduce My Risk of Rape > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=3b3df140-fdcb-4add-9cef-628a8d881bd5&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League [Watch (HLS stream): My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o8izpqKu.m3u8) (6:50)  _Published 2014-05-14. In April, 23 Columbia and Barnard students filed a federal Title IX complaint alleging that the University mishandled sexual assault cases_ by [Soraya Chemaly](https://time.com/author/soraya-chemaly/) ## Soraya Chemaly Aug 27, 2014 1:51 PM UTC  Hand holding martini glass Hand holding martini glass Tetra Images—Getty Images/Tetra images RF by [Soraya Chemaly](https://time.com/author/soraya-chemaly/) ## Soraya Chemaly Aug 27, 2014 1:51 PM UTC Every few months, a new product to help women avoid rape hits the market. This week’s is [an innovative new nail polish](http://www.ibtimes.co.in/nail-polish-detects-date-rape-drugs-drinks-more-anti-rape-products-607570) that can identify the presence of drugs when dipped in a drink. Considering that [conservative estimates](http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-1/43-51.htm) put the percentage of American women who’ve suffered sexual assault between 20%-25%, there’s huge market potential for this product. Of course, there is the fact that roofies, a nickname derived from the sedative Rohypnol, are less commonly used by serial predators than alcohol itself. A 2007 National Institute of Justice [study](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf) found that only 2.4% of sexually assaulted [female undergraduates](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf) were either certain or thought that they’d been drugged. On the other hand, [studies](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf) conducted on college campuses show that alcohol is involved in [anywhere between 50%-90%](http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/media/journal/118-abbey.pdf) of sexual assaults. It is the [weapon of choice](http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/240951/original/), as expert David Lisak [puts it](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124272157). I don’t want to dip my nails into a drink. Or stop wearing my hair in a [ponytail](http://www.wikihow.com/Prevent-a-Potential-Rape). Or start [wearing hairy tights](http://lipmag.com/opinion/would-you-wear-these-tights-as-an-anti-rape-device/). Before I die, I’d like to not have to [ask a man to walk me home](http://host.madison.com/daily-cardinal/news/campus/from-victim-to-advocate-one-sexual-assault-survivor-shares-her/article%5Fbd6f8ac2-9cff-11e2-afd3-001a4bcf887a.html) at night. Cool new nail polish is just the latest in way for us to adapt to rape. From the moment we are born, girls are told to change: change our [clothes](http://hellogiggles.com/this-company-aims-to-create-anti-rape-clothing), our hair, our[ belt buckles](http://www.thelocal.se/20120211/2546#.UZrAm5x7R8E), our [underwear](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2013/nov/11/problem-anti-rape-underwear-chastity-belt), [our walks, our commutes](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-369262/Women-blame-raped.html), our friends, even our [vaginas](http://www.coolthings.com/rape-axe-condoms-that-bite-is-crazy-invention-of-the-day/). At the same time, the topic of avoiding rape for men is usually just a bad joke. What do men do if they want to avoid rape? “[Stay out of jail](http://drcourterzz.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/no-more-ponytails-a-message-on-victim-blaming/).” The sick irony of this joke is that it’s true. In reality, the only place where male adults in the U.S. come close to facing the same level of [risk for rape as women is in jail](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/21/us-more-men-raped-than-women). Even then, women inmates face twice the risk. But that bad joke perpetuates a rape myth. Most men who have experienced rape, [reported](http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs%5Freport2010-a.pdf) at 1 out of 71, are assaulted as boys. But what does it say that women’s day-to-day reality of “staying safe” is thought to be comparable to the plight of men in jail? Despite everything we are trained to do, we can’t change the one thing that matters the most: the fact of our femaleness. The most highly ranked [risk factor](http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1648&context=jiws) for being raped is being a female. Girls and young women below the age of 30 make up more than [80% of rape victims](https://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims), regardless of what they wear, what they drink or where they walk. While women can and do rape boys, girls and women are raped by men in an overwhelming number of cases. (Men are also the primary offenders in the rape of boys.) And yet, in the popular commodification of sexual assault, there are no deodorants rapists can wear that stain their armpits with indelible ink when they’re about to rape someone. Or [binding underwear](http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/anti-rape-wear-save-women-article-1.1515379) that makes it impossible for them to whip out a weaponized John Thomas. Or [electrified jock straps](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/3/indian-students-create-electrified-bra-deter-rapis/). [According to the CDC](http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/index.html), in the United States nearly one in five women reports having been raped or experiencing an attempted rape at some point. One in four suffer violence at the hands of an intimate partner. One in six women report being stalked. This level of violence is terrorism. Women and non-gender conforming people live with fear in ways that men, particularly those who present as straight men, find hard to fathom. Women have [heightened awareness](http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v4n3/Manuscripts/scott.pdf) of stranger dangers related to sexual assault, even though the chances they are assaulted by an acquaintance or partner are higher. Women change their lives, at great cost, because of threats to their physical safety that are largely tied to the fear of rape. Every time we focus on making girls and women individually responsible for avoiding rape, we lose the opportunity to address the systemic root problem that our mainstream culture grows rapists like weeds. Despite my snark, I do understand the need to balance safety with change. I don’t doubt the good intentions of the inventors of these products, but their true value resides less in their questionable efficacy than in the fact that young men like the creators of this one are engaged in confronting rape culture. However, each and every instance of “how to avoid rape” that media takes up is one less instance of explaining rape and reducing its pervasive threat. _Soraya Chemaly is a media critic and feminist writer whose work focuses on the role of gender and sexualized violence in culture, politics, religion and free speech. You can find her at @schemaly._ ## Transcript My name is Emma [ UNKNOWN ]. I am a junior at Columbia college. I am a visual arts major. On the first day of my sophomore year, I was raped by a fellow classmate. I didn't report at first because. It's a big emotional trauma, and I didn't feel like dealing with it at first, until I met at that time, two other women who told me the same person who had assaulted me, had assaulted them. The school found a way to dismiss each of our three cases separately. [ MUSIC ] My rapist, it still goes to my school, and still is on campus. [ MUSIC ]. This is not a single campus issue. This is not an individual issue. This is a cultural problem. We have a huge issue with rape culture on all college campuses. There was a study that was done that shows that men on college campuses who are perpetrators. Are more often than not repeat offenders. The average number of people a perpetrator will sexually assault is six, according to this study. So this isn't a random phenomenon. This isn't this happens in an alley, this happens when everyone's incredibly drunk at a party. There is a certain profile for what sexual assault looks like on a college campus. And that is why we need administrators to be open, and transparent, about that. Right now, their approach seems to be to ignore the problem, to try to deny students access to resources, to deny that that's happening at all when it fact they really should be getting in front of the issue. Our hearing took place seven months after I reported the incident. The investigator in my case didn't take down many important things such as the position I was in when he raped me. My hearing panelists weren't even trained, one woman kept asking me how it was physically possible for anal rape to happen. Why Columbia didn't find him responsible? I don't actually get to write a statement of what happened. It's all the investigator's statement that they read. There's an office called the Office of Gender Based and Sexual Misconduct. You go in there and at that time a woman was working there so I told her what had happened. She was the one who took erroneous notes, and missed really important that I said. Since her statement didn't make any sense, my case didn't make any sense. I think another reason that the school didn't find him guilty was that they, they really didn't want to treat it as a serial rape case because we, all three of us reported, and then they would say you are not allowed to mention each others' cases, we are going to treat them separately. I think that. If the hearing panel have had known that this was a serial offender, they might have believed us more maybe? They also said that there was not enough evidence to determine that it was more likely than not. That the respondent engaged in behavior that met the de, definition of sexual assault. So the charge was dismissed. [ MUSIC ] There are many reasons why a student would choose to not go to the police, and go to, you know, a campus adjudication process. Many people don't want the outcome to be the person that attacked them to go to jail. If you're a person of color. Or if you're ****, the process of going to the police can also be one that is not necessarily competent or great to deal with. Some people seek out resources from their school in order to make sure they're not living in the same dorm as a person who assaulted them, which is very different from making sure that someone goes to jail. And I also think that improving processes on campus across the board. Including you know, therapy for survivors, adequate rape crisis centers, and adequate academic interim measures, are things that are important for everyone to have the police absolutely cannot give you when you're a student. Everyday I'm afraid of leaving my room. Even seeing people who remotely look like my rapist is a scary thing for me. Last semester, I was working in the dark room in the photography department. Which is a small dark room. He asked permission from his teacher to come and work in the darkroom during my class. I started crying and hyperventilating and. As long as he's on campus with me he can continue to harass me. They're setting up for graduation for all of the seniors and all of the bleachers are coming up on campus. And, I was just thinking about the fact that. Because of what the administration did, I'm going to have to be sitting on those bleachers with my rapist and a serial rapist at that. Knowing that he's going to get the same education as me and I'll be feeling horrible on my graduation day. A lot of students think that when they go to a campus, if they see that there are zero sexual assaults reported that that's a really positive thing, that, that must mean that campus is incredibly safe, it's going to be a great place. But actually when you consider the fact that the overall rates of sexual assaults on campus are as high as one in four, if you see a campus reporting zero sexual assaults that should actually be a red flag. [ MUSIC ] I feel like it's taken over my entire, entire college experience. This happened on the first day of my sophomore year. And here I am. I just finished my last day of school for my junior year. And I'm still talking about it and still thinking about it. And I know that I'm going to look back on my entire Columbia experience and see that's how the administration has failed me. and. 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