Can vomit deter rape? Dude, stranger things have happened. Self-defense says do what you need to do! | Source: ShutterStock

Rape is super scary and it is, unfortunately, a very real threat. As a result, a lot of college campuses–where rape is sometimes an even bigger threat than elsewhere–offer self-defense courses for women to avoid rape and other attacks.

One such college was the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS), but they’re getting a bunch of negative attention for one portion of the course’s teachings.

UCCS offered a particular self-defense class for women called RAD (Rape Aggression Defense). As a supplement to the course, the campus offered tips on how to deal if someone is already attacking you–and specified that these are last resorts. Here are a few:

What To Do If You Are Attacked
These tips are designed to help you protect yourself on campus, in town, at your home, or while you travel. These are preventative tips and are designed to instruct you in crime prevention tactics.
- Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself.
- Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead! It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.
- Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.
- Don’t take time to look back; just get away.
- If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense.
- Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.
- Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.
- Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!
- Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.
- Remember, every emergency situation is different. Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.

The bold lines–about using vomit, pee and period blood to get rapists away from you–came under a slew of ridicule, with people suggesting that these were literally the only tips to avoid rape that the university was offering. That’s simply not true: the list was simply taken out of context. This was all in addition to a self-defense class–and the tips came from law enforcement personnel, because, guess what? They work.

The idea is to give attackers any and every reason to get the heck away from you. Sometimes grossing them out helps. Sometimes passive resistance is a lot safer than trying to actually fight back someone who may be stronger and faster than you are, especially if they have a weapon. The point is to avoid attack and rape, but once an attack or rape is already happening, the point is to stay alive.

Obviously, in an ideal world, people would just, you know, not rape other people, so we wouldn’t have to worry about making ourselves puke in a scary situation. But I really don’t see any problem with the university pointing out what to do just in case it does wind up happening. Because our world isn’t ideal, rape is a real thing, and I actually think it’s great that they’re pointing out a few somewhat unconventional ways to get away from it.

Do you think the UCCS guidelines are out of line? How would you deal if you were threatened with rape or attack? What are your best self-defense tips? Tell us in the comments!

This other college has REALLY big rape issues.

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