The Rape Whistle

When Melinda worked for a production of the Vagina Monologues, she received a black t-shirt with pink text reading "Vagina Friendly." Since she is antagonistic toward female genitalia, she thought it would be funny to gift the shirt to me. I'll wear it around the house occasionally, but I'm not brazen enough to wear it out in public. I accidentally brought it with me while camping this past summer after forgetting that I was wearing it beneath a sweatshirt. Without a change of clothes, I found myself in a jam when our camp site was literally ten feet from a group of Girl Scouts and their mothers and I worried that I'd be arrested for general lechery.

Because of this incident, I am careful as to when I wear the Vagina Friendly shirt. After showering on Friday afternoon, I slipped on the shirt on a temporary basis before deciding what I would ultimately wear when going out that night. Earlier than I was anticipating, however, Terri, Lady Garza, RJ, Wes, Andrew, and Alice arrived at my house and we began to chat and play board games. Soon after, Stacy and Stacy's mom (like the song - except that she's more of a conservative churchwoman) showed up and I found myself feeling uncomfortable in my Vagina Friendly attire. After playing host for a few minutes, I excused myself to my room and changed into my referee shirt for a change of pace. I wanted something loud to hopefully overpower any previous impressions I might have given and it worked.

Someone joked that I needed a whistle to match my ref shirt and I lamented not having one. Excitedly, Alice reached in her purse and handed me one. "Is that for rapes?" I asked.

Stacy's mom made a surprised expression, so I tried to cover up by explaining my line of reasoning. People carry rape whistles around for protection. In fact, we all were given one on our first day of college. We were also warned that you could be fined if you blew the whistle in the case of a non-emergency. I gambled that I was more likely to goof around with the whistle than be raped and decided to preemptively remove the temptation by smashing the whistle with a hammer. Once the whistle was broken, I could blow into it to my heart's content and it barely emitted a sound - certainly not one that would help save me from harm.

Look, this is not a unique problem, even Arrested Development's Buster can't help but have fun blowing his rape whistle:


In the subsequent season, the rape whistle is upgraded to a rape horn, as seen and heard here. Unfortunately, that quick clip leaves off Buster's hilarious retort, "Yeah, like anyone would want to 'R' her!"

My mention of the rape whistle incited a whole conversation about rape and the sexual safety talk delivered during orientation. They warned of a girl who was joking around by blowing her whistle and then watching helplessly as her boyfriend was beaten up by a pack of protective jocks. In order to hold their attention, they also apparently went to pains to explain how men can be raped, too, like some former student who was sodomized by two women with a beer bottle. Despite it being "mandatory," I skipped this meeting because both of my roommates did and I didn't want to be "uncool" by going to the sexual assault talk. I had only known them for 24 hours and I would later learn they were both just as dorky as anybody at school, but it was a funny first way to be peer-pressured in college. Afterwards, I was so nervous about being caught for not attending, I asked my dorm-neighbor Shannon a lot of questions about the event so if I were questioned, I could recite facts as if I had been there. This proved to be unnecessary paranoia on my part, but my over-eager interrogation of Shannon on the issues of rape prompted her to say, "Dude, you're creeping me out," and walk away. Consequently, I spent the next few weeks trying to demonstrate to her that I was not some psycho rapist before finally earning her friendship.

We all continued to share these rape-related stories for an inordinate amount of time even if we hadn't been trying to censor ourselves around of Stacy's mom, so I'm not sure how we managed to let that awkward conversation go on for so long. As Stacy would later ask me, "You couldn't wait more than a couple of minutes for my mom to get comfortable with the situation before bringing up rape?" It was a legitimate gripe, but I can say I honestly tried to avoid the awkwardness by changing my shirt in the first place. Inappropriateness just seems to follow me.