This hypothetical “would you rather” question pops up on Reddit and Lemmy once in a while, and every time the popular answer is the latter, implying risk of sexual assault. As if in a world of women there won’t be enough ready to do the same. Yes, women statistically, on average, less prone to desire to commit a sexual assault, but it doesn’t matter if one in ten or one in a hundred is ready to do this if no one else wants to stop them.

Why would they? While sexual assault by men against women is one of the few unforgivable sins in our culture, with huge prison sentences and no life in prison from cellmates, with saving a woman from this being one of the most powerful trops in literature to show characters’s nobility and a proper reason to award a civil medal, rape of men by women is treated as a joke or a comedy trope. It can’t even be called “rape” according to many dictionaries and legal codes, e.g. the British one.

Would whatever left of police (and there are few women employed in police) actually protect you in this case? Or is it more likely to be yet another “Raped? Baby, men can’t be raped” case?