| This week our longreads team thought you could use a break from Covid-19 news, and we were lucky enough to have a terrific article by Jillian Keenan, reported out of South Africa. As she writes on Backchannel, women entrepreneurs and engineers around the world are coming up with technology to ward off sexual assault. Some of it is deadly serious, some slightly irreverent, bordering on performance art—from electric shock underwear and panic buttons to barbed female condoms and clothing that can turn into a vending-machine disguise. The underlying issue of course is the rampant prevalence of sexual assault around the world. "Some critics," Keenan writes, "argue that the very idea of arming women with anti-sexual-violence technology is misguided because it doesn't address the root problem: the acceptance of sexual violence in society and, more broadly, rape culture. They say social change is the only real solution—not data or devices." See you next week. Mark Robinson | Features Editor, WIRED |
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