So here’s a lovely What The Fuck moment for you: Taser is releasing a compact version of its product to the general public that is designed for women. Of course. If there’s one thing women need, it’s taser guns. Yup, that’s it on the left. As you see, there will be a range of pretty colors to choose from, including not one but two shades of pink.
In a few weeks, Taser will introduce an item that is far more compact and a lot less expensive than the standard Tasers used by police, though its shock is no less potent. The company’s executives say they are trying to capture a market of people looking for a weapon that is more reliable than pepper spray, but less reliable, so to speak, than a gun, and less expensive than the standard Taser.
The new C2, as the weapon is called, looks more like a large disposable razor than a gun, comes in a variety of colors and is $350, all of which Taser executives believe will persuade women to add the weapon to their checklist for the evening: lipstick, wallet, keys, Taser.
“It is a woman’s product,” said Kathy Hanrahan, president of Taser, who says she has experienced numerous shocks as part of her market research.
Let me just start by exposing my bias: I am 100% against public ownership of any kind of guns, and that includes taser guns. I believe that they result in far more instances of attack and accidents than they do in instances of effective self-defense. I also know that as soon as you pull out a weapon, your attacker can get that weapon away from you.
My displeasure with this new Taser runs a lot deeper than that, though. I’m a big proponent of women learning self-defense and coming to see their bodies as something that can fight rather than something that is simply vulnerable to attack. And I argue that marketing weapons to women does precisely the opposite. It reminds women, yet again, as if they needed another reminder, that the world is not as safe for them as it is for men. It doesn’t breed confidence, it breeds fear. And fear sells more weapons. Though I would love to hear from anyone with a contradictory story, I can never imagine buying a weapon due to confidence and strength, but only because I was absolutely terrified.
It also covers up the fact that most assaults against women are committed by men they already know. No one markets a Taser to use against your boyfriend; they conjure up images of a stranger in a dark alley. A lack of weapons is not the problem for women. Women are raped in their own homes all the time. They know where their own knives are. They could pick up the lamp and smash it over their rapist’s head. But it usually doesn’t go down that way because the actual problem is men feeling like they have an entitlement over women’s bodies and women buying into that lie. The problem is men predicting that women will not fight back and the society that teaches women that they shouldn’t fight back. Handing out Tasers to women on the street corner wouldn’t change that. Only real dialogue will.
But hey, that’s not Taser’s fault, right? They’re just selling a product– capitalism, free market, blah blah blah. It’s not up to them to fix society, they’re just using the resource available to them to try to help women, I’m sure.
Except, how do you explain the condescending attitude, then? This is a particularly disgusting example of technology being severely dumbed down for women. They’re selling a supposedly life-saving device, a fucking weapon, but they’re selling it in colors that you can match to your RAZR phone and your iPod. Yes, us fickle women want to be safe, but we don’t want our accessories to clash! I mean, what if my taser falls out of my cute little handbag and, OMG, it’s ugly? But, thank god, this one is so cute and I just have to have it. I mean, that’s how us women always make decisions about major purchases– all of that technological stuff is just too complicated, we just want to know if the color will match our eyes! Gee, you know what would be even better? An <i>iTaser</i>. That way I could listen to music at the gym and defend myself <i>all at the same time</i>!
Gag.
I think it’s safe to say that you won’t be finding a Taser in my purse anytime soon.
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You’re right. It is condescending, but I still plan on buying one. And you’re right that we shouldn’t live in fear.
It reminds women, yet again, as if they needed another reminder, that the world is not as safe for them as it is for men.
But you are absolutely wrong about this one. So many women don’t believe it can happen to them and the reality is that all of us are vulnerable. Denying that vulnerability is at the heart of victim shaming (it only happened to her because she was ____.)
But more to the reality is…I do live in fear. I have been groped, propositioned and followed on more than one occasion. Once a DV client’s husband tried to grab me in a parking lot, if I hadn’t been carrying pepper spray god only knows what would have happened.
So yes, I’ll be checking out these tasers and I’ll be happy to buy one if they actually fit comfortably in my hand and aren’t difficult to use in emergency situations.
Thank you for your thoughts, Kristen; they’re appreciated.
I think that you misunderstand me, though. I would be one of the last people in this world to victim-shame/blame. No woman deserves to be attacked. And I write about male violence against women on this blog very regularly.
And I really don’t think that it’s victim-blaming to say that women live in disproportionate fear over being attacked by a stranger.
Yes, women are attacked by strangers. Women are raped by strangers. Women are killed by strangers. It happens way too often. But the fact is that the media focuses on these events and makes them seem much more prevalent than they are, and completely ignores male violence against women that is committed by men that victims know, even though it makes up the vast majority of actual violence. Women are told to be terrified of the boogeyman, when really they should be terrified of that co-worker who gets handsy when he drinks, and that boyfriend who breaks things when he gets mad.
What I’m arguing here isn’t that stranger violence doesn’t exist, isn’t that women shouldn’t know how to protect themselves (in fact, I advocated self-defense), and isn’t that stranger violence should be ignored. What I’m arguing here is that encouraging women to buy tasers (1) makes them fearful (2) directly markets to and profits from that fear and (3) redirects fear and resources from where they are more needed.
What’s wrong with pepper spray?
What are the legal implications for a woman, who is walking home, late at night, who attacks a man, with one of these weapons as he is about to pass her. All this man is doing is that he happens to be walking in the same direction as the woman, but just allot faster.
I don’t know, Ken. What are your reasons for asking such an absurd question?
I don’t find Ken’s question absurd. I really would want to know the answer to that before buying one. It’s a judgment call whether or not a man is about to attack you, and I really doubt I would want to wait til the actual attack started before whipping out the taser. So, what WOULD happen to me if I heard threatening-sounding footsteps, used the taser, and got sued? I think that whether or not the man intended to attack me, I would be blamed for using it without having any bruises or semen to show for it.
Well, I find Ken’s phrasing of the question– which to me suggests a desire to frame women as being the primary assailants in our society rather than males, and a desire to frame women as “irrationally” afraid– absurd.
As for the question itself, the same exact principle would apply to pepper spray, wouldn’t it? What are the laws on that?
In any case, that is one of many reasons why I’m opposed to the “right to bear arms.”
I took Ken’s question at face value, I think you’re reading too much into it. Weapons like that are not of much use if you’re against an assailant who is stronger than you, so they would be effective only as a pre-emptive measure. Police officers are trained to use tasers, and even then we are aware of the potential abuse for using such weapons, not to mention the potential for fatalities with people of a weak heart, or worse yet, have a pacemaker. I agree that such weapons are not necessary, but to claim that Ken is framing the question to categorize women as the primary assailants is I think extrapolating too much from a 5 line comment. Either way, I agree that there is no need for them, certainly not in two shades of pink either.
Maybe I was, Rich. I get a lot of trolls on this blog, though, and his note fit the criteria of at least 75% of my trolls (first time noter using a male name, less-than-great grammar, expresses no previous knowledge about the subject matter). The fact that he referred to a woman as “attacking” a man (I do not think that self-defense, even if it is only from a perceived threat, can accurately be described as an “attack”) who is completely 100% innocent, something that I think most of us would agree to be a minority of cases, compounded my suspicion.
Ken, if you are here and I have misunderstood you, I apologize.
Well, whether or not Ken meant his question the way you thought, I would really be curious about the legalities of tasers AND pepper spray.
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