Rape Me
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I was struck today by a billboard featuring a newly married couple in full wedding regalia, smiling and happy, with the caption: “this is not an invitation to rape me.” Whoa, I thought. Rewind! What?! Smiling couple + rape = a weird juxtaposition.
Below the caption were the five immortal words “.co.uk” (dot coe dot you kay) and I realised that it must be some funky guerilla marketing campaign for a new alcopop — cleverly subverting the modern fear of sexual aggression by placing it next to the sex-starved horror of modern marriage (present company excepted).
Like the fastidious citizen journalist that I am, I checked out this unwieldy url and found that it was an advert for a Scottish rape charity. There are apparently other billboards featuring one woman about to wank a man off and another woman with distended nipples and no bra, neither of which are apparently an invitation to rape. I wonder if they will come out with another advert showing what is an invitation to rape; they seem to be implying that such a thing exists.
What they don’t appear to recognize is that although rape is a disgraceful, unacceptable act, there are gradations of dress and comportment that excite or undermine the male sexual drive. For all the virtues of modern sexual equality, it is always going to be difficult to overturn millions of years of mammalian evolution.
What do you think?