A group of engineering students at SRM University in Chennai—one of the country’s top engineering schools—have invented a set of high-tech electrified underwear to prevent rape.

In the wake of India’s “rape epidemic ” which has rocked the country and sent tourism plummeting by as much as 25 percent (35 percent among women), the students decided to take matters into their own hands with a set of underwear that can electrocute attackers while protecting the wearer.

As a progressive American guy, it’s tempting to dismiss the anti-rape undies as misguided and inadvertently reinforcing the “rape culture” that tacitly places responsibility on women and their clothes in addressing violence. It’s tempting to suggest they just go have a  SlutWalk  and tell men it’s their responsibility not to be rapists, end of story.

But I’m not an Indian woman living in the middle of a rape epidemic, so I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Two of the women in the student group who invented the electric underwear are women who think that the danger calls for a more immediate defense than protest and slow cultural change. The group said :

After stepping into the real, cruel world we realised that our smile could not last for long as the threat to our purity and integrity always lingered on. Lawmakers take ages to come up with just laws and even after that, women are unsafe. Hence, we have initiated the idea of self-defence which protects the women from domestic, social and workplace harassment.

The underwear, called Society Harnessing Equipment (SHE), deploys a 3,800kV charge to anyone touching the outside of the underwear while protecting the wearer with a polymer lining. It’s also equipped with GPS and can notify cops in real-time in the event of an attack, supplying them with the victim’s location through the GPS.

“The shocks can be emitted up to 82 times,” the group says. “This could give women freedom from situations faced in public places.”

source: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com / Home> News / by Alex Moore / April 2013