July 07, 2011
SlutWalks and the Future of Feminism
Jessica Valenti in The Washington Post:
More than 40 years after feminists tossed their bras and high heels into a trash can at the 1968 Miss America pageant — kicking off the bra-burning myth that will never die — some young women are taking to the streets to protest sexual assault, wearing not much more than what their foremothers once dubbed “objects of female oppression” in marches called SlutWalks.
It’s a controversial name, which is in part why the organizers picked it. It’s also why many of the SlutWalk protesters are wearing so little (though some are sweatpants-clad, too). Thousands of women — and men — are demonstrating to fight the idea that what women wear, what they drink or how they behave can make them a target for rape. SlutWalks started with a local march organized by five women in Toronto and have gone viral, with events planned in more than 75 cities in countries from the United States and Canada to Sweden and South Africa. In just a few months, SlutWalks have become the most successful feminist action of the past 20 years.
In a feminist movement that is often fighting simply to hold ground, SlutWalks stand out as a reminder of feminism’s more grass-roots past and point to what the future could look like.
The marches are mostly organized by younger women who don’t apologize for their in-your-face tactics, making the events much more effective in garnering media attention and participant interest than the actions of well-established (and better funded) feminist organizations. And while not every feminist may agree with the messaging of SlutWalks, the protests have translated online enthusiasm into in-person action in a way that hasn’t been done before in feminism on this scale.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 05:30 PM | Permalink
Comments
We've reached a point where giving (granted, ham-handed) advice, such as, "We live in a sexist world, be aware of how you present yourself in certain areas, around certain people," has become a protest inspiring insult.
Obviously, in a free society people should be able to go and come as they please without fear of physical abuse no matter how they dress. Like the woman dressing in the style of a "slut" for her "slut walk" protest, I should be able to walk unmolested through a black neighborhood wearing whatever I want... even if that's in a KKK gown.
Am I right? Or are we drawing distinctions between women being victimized on how they dress versus other people?
Perhaps we're drawing a line on the KKK gown because that's insulting to a certain group's conceptions, whereas the woman dressed in the style of a slut supposedly hurts no one.
I haven't quite figured out where the lines are in this debate, but I'm pretty sure if we're going to say that women should be able to dress however they want, whenever and wherever they see fit, then we probably should think about the implications of making the maxim true for all people and all other styles of dress.
I personally have trouble reconciling this. I think women should be able to dress however they want, or not at all. Burka or bare skin. Go for it, ladies. At the same time I'd be among the first lining up to punch the guy in the KKK hood in the nose.
Sadly I suspect the issue is much more complicated than the deeply offended "sluts" at the "slut walk" make it out to be.
Posted by: mrgoodbar | Jul 7, 2011 11:39:08 PM
Here's the difference: If you punched the guy in the KKK gown, you could be charged with assault and the charges would probably stick, even if there was a local ordnance banning the wearing of KKK gowns. If you raped someone who was dressed like a prostitute you would be much less likely to be prosecuted in most places. There are many parts of the world where raping an improperly dressed woman is considered a kind of appropriate vigilante justice.
So it doesn't have much to do with being offended. It has a lot to do with the rule of law, and with the way I dress determining whether or not I am an "outlaw"--beyond the protection of the law.
Posted by: Zara | Jul 8, 2011 12:29:31 AM
Mr. Goodbar, indeed it is complicated and a public "Slut Walk" is not likely to change things in a hurry. But I guess women keep trying to send the right message, often provocatively because burka or bare skin, it doesn't seem to matter. The assaults keep happening.
When a man in a white sheet and a pointy hat walks down the road in a black neighborhood or skin-heads march in Jewish neighborhoods and gesture with stiff-armed salutes, their message is unmistakable. You would be right to punch them if you don't agree with their political statements. But what is a woman saying when she dresses like a slut or is covered from head to foot in an outfit resembling a medieval nun's clothing? Do you know? Whatever it is, it seems to be scant defense against undesirable attention and aggression. Ask any woman. It is complicated because either way, she is not safe given the wrong man and the right opportunity.
Here is an article by Beverly McPhail of Houston which summarizes the dilemma. All this has been said before but deserves to be repeated.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 8, 2011 10:45:54 AM
"You would be right to punch them if you don't agree with their political statements." What? You didn't just say that, Ruchira! I actually give money to groups like the ACLU who protect the rights of people like the KKK to march unmolested. You can't seriously be justifying assaults. I think you got carried away here...
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jul 8, 2011 11:44:57 AM
Abbas, that was hyperbole - I meant the message in these situations is unambiguous and some of us would surely "feel" like punching them. I agree that jerks have a right to be jerks. (I donated to the ACLU for years. I stopped a couple of years ago. Now my money goes to the Southern Poverty Law Center which is pro-active in pursuing and exposing the jerks when "they" break the law) As Zara pointed out, punching a KKK member for just making his allegiance known, would surely result in assault charges and the puncher will be punished. Rape prosecution on the other hand, is a whole another story especially when a woman is perceived to be a slut or believed to have led a less than spotless life. Sometimes, even a saintly past is not a guarantee for justice.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 8, 2011 12:27:31 PM
I don't understand how one unfortunate policeman's advice about prudent behaviour in a dangerous society could be straightforwardly interpreted as an argument that people who dress in certain ways deserve to be raped.
I also don't understand how something called a slutwalk will reduce rape by changing public attitudes in liberal western societies which already have severe moral and legal sanctions against it. Who are they trying to persuade and of what?
Posted by: Philosopher's Beard | Jul 8, 2011 7:01:15 PM
@Philosopher's Beard:
The advice was phrased as:
"women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."
The point here is that the word "slut" carries connotations of bad behaviour, implying that women who dress in a particular way *deserve* to be raped. It is this notion of desert that the protesters are objecting to.
Posted by: Teedj | Jul 9, 2011 7:42:51 AM
It's also the notion of how the label reassigns responsibility for the crime, as if to say: If you dress like a slut, then it's your own fault if you are raped. If you dress like a slut, the rapist is not responsible for his actions, you brought it on yourself.
Posted by: Zara | Jul 9, 2011 11:05:20 AM
I was trying to explain this a while ago, to a particularly resistant friend who grew up in a non-Western traditional culture. I asked her whether, if a woman courted rape by being dressed to suggest she had no proper fear of men, then a man who fell asleep on a long flight invited the theft of his wallet by the passenger next to him. Should the passenger with an opportunity for theft assign responsibility for the theft to her seatmate whose vigilance had failed? Or, is it herself who commits a crime that has just been made easier? Should a man who sees a woman unescorted and vulnerable rape her, or is he responsible for not taking the opportunity, no matter how easy the pickings? In both instances, you have to ask yourself whether the crime is determined by the ease of committing it, and whether this ease makes a rapist or a thief less culpable.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 9, 2011 12:07:53 PM
That's a good example, Elatia. Unfortunately this gets complicated in some non-Western traditional cultures (let them remain nameless for the moment) that understand the sex drive as so overwhelmingly irresistible, so biologically determined, that it's necessary to hide the object of desire from view.
Which, to my mind, debases men as much as it does women. However, it's also something that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everything in your culture is telling you that this urge cannot be controlled, then you aren't going to put much effort into learning to control it.
But Western, non-traditional cultures have no excuse at all.
Posted by: Zara | Jul 9, 2011 12:26:45 PM
The "slut thing" is obviously contextual. The kindly Canadian policeman would probably not think that women in bathing suits and bikinis on the beach or at swimming pools are dressed like sluts. So it's not how much skin is shown but something else and also who the spectator is.
I wish the organizers of "Slut Walks" would have exercised some sense of irony and urged at least some women to march in ankle length full sleeves outfits just to drive home the point that "sluttiness" is in the eye of the aggressor.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jul 9, 2011 8:40:46 PM
Ruchira and Zara and interested others, my art history professor in college used to dress up to protest the Vietnam War. She was approaching retirement age and her basic look was "Berkeley Academic" -- somewhat but only somewhat counter-cultural. When protesting, however, she wore a pink boucle suit, a hat, white cotton gloves, pearls, an alligator bag and pumps. She always said it was VERY instructive and important for everybody to see that ladies who dressed like that hated the War and execrated the President as much as anyone else.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 9, 2011 9:56:49 PM
Worth a look, on the "hejab crisis" and the politics behind the reporting of rape in Iran:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/07/the-hejab-hype-and-the-force-of-fear.html
Posted by: Zara | Jul 10, 2011 10:31:13 AM
Re: Elatia Harris on wallet stealing.
I think one can separate out different aspects of the moral responsibility involved in a crime. If you don't have good door and window locks and an alarm system and your house is burgled, then you have been foolish in a blamable way. Your insurance company will probably refuse to pay out. However you are not morally responsible for the burglary - the police and criminal justice system will attempt to arrest and punish the burglar, not you.
I use this crass analogy of burglary to rape because it emphasises what I presume would be salient to a policeman giving advice about personal security: prudence not justice.
Posted by: Philosopher's Beard | Jul 12, 2011 4:21:53 AM
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