SlutWalks and the future of feminism
By Jessica Valenti, Published: June 3
More than 40 years after feminists tossed their bras and high heels into a trash can at the 1968 Miss America pageant —
Which, of course, was retarded.
kicking off the bra-burning myth that will never die —
I’m pretty sure you just admitted that this “myth” bears a perfect historical accuracy.
some young women are taking to the streets to protest sexual assault,
Which, of course, is also retarded. I might as well protest murder.
wearing not much more than what their foremothers
Christ, feminism’s dogmas piss me off.
once dubbed “objects of female oppression”
Because they were idiots.
in marches called SlutWalks.
Sigh. Is it weird that my biggest objection to this that they failed to put a space between “slut” and “walks?”
It’s a controversial name, which is in part why the organizers picked it.
I thought it was because they’re attention whores.
It’s also why many of the SlutWalk protesters are wearing so little (though some are sweatpants-clad, too).
Classy.
Thousands of women — and men —
We all know that it detracts from the credibility of the men as, well, men, but is their infinitesimal presence at the rallies supposed to add to the credibility of the protests or detract?
are demonstrating to fight the idea that what women wear, what they drink or how they behave can make them a target for rape.
Will they also protest the idea that parking an expensive car in a bad neighborhood makes one a target for grand theft auto.
SlutWalks started with a local march organized by five women in Toronto
And, as with everything that has come out of Canada since Elisha Cuthbert, it’s retarded.
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.
Really? Because I’ve had more productive sneezes in the last couple days.
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.
Loud, unattractive and classless. Not sure how this represents a departure from the past though.
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.
I’m not sure how marketable being obnoxious really is.
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.
We get it. Feminism has been a miserable failure since the dawn of the internet.
The protests began after a police officer told students at Toronto’s York University in January that if women want to avoid rape, they shouldn’t dress like “sluts.” (If you thought the days of “she was asking for it” were long gone, guess again.)
There’s a world of difference between excusing the activity of a criminal by shifting blame to the victim and the notion that certain noncriminal actions or choices provoke criminal responses.
Heather Jarvis, a student in Toronto and a co-founder of SlutWalk,
Is it a fucking LLC?
explained that the officer’s comments struck her and her co-organizers as so preposterous and damaging that they demanded action. “We were fed up and pissed off, and we wanted to do something other than just be angry,” she said.
So you forced your anger other people until they just got annoyed. Seems like a completely reasonable response.
Bucking the oft-repeated notion that young women are apathetic to feminism, they organized. What Jarvis hoped would be a march of at least 100 turned out to be a rally of more than 3,000
I saw more women in less clothing last Halloween.
— some marchers with “slut” scrawled across their bodies, others with signs reading “My dress is not a yes” or “Slut pride.”
All of which misses the completely reasonable point that victims of sexual assault are more likely to be scantily clad. That doesn’t make being scantily clad wrong. Nor does it make sexual assault right, okay, or permissible.
The idea that women’s clothing has some bearing on whether they will be raped is a dangerous myth feminists have tried to debunk for decades.
And they haven’t. Because it’s true.
Despite all the activism and research, however, the cultural misconception prevails.
Probably because the research is either anecdotal or intrinsically biased. All of which is not to mention that it is a compete truisms that sexual assault occurs when one party is disproportionately aroused and that women often dress in a manner specifically designed to arouse men.
After an 11-year-old girl in Texas was gang-raped,
See. Anecdotal.
the New York Times ran a widely criticized story this spring that included a description of how the girl dressed “older than her age” and wore makeup — as if either was relevant to the culpability of the 18 men accused of raping her.
I rarely defend the New York Times, so let me be clear that I’m not doing the research on this. An 11 year old girl was raped by adults. No fact pattern—including whether or not the girl nominally consented—is relevant to the culpability of perpetrator. Nor is it the job of the New York Times to use the article to try the accused in the court of public opinion. If the point of this story is to argue that “the idea that women’s clothing has some bearing on whether they get raped is a dangerous myth,” then where is the danger? The action had already occurred before the “myth” was even stated. All unless Valenti believes that the rape occurred because the rapist thought that raping an 11 year old was somehow more socially acceptable because she wore makeup and dressed like an adult (which would be even dumber than the rest of Valenti’s convoluted ramblings).
In Scotland, one secondary school is calling for uniforms to be baggier and longer in an attempt to dissuade pedophiles.
Also not even close to dangerous. Not even mildly inconvenient.
When I speak on college campuses, students will often say they don’t believe that a woman’s attire makes it justifiable for someone to rape her, but — and there almost always is a “but” — shouldn’t women know better than to dress in a suggestive way?
Namely that there are actions that reasonable people take to avoid criminal interactions on a day-to-day basis that all involve displaying a modicum of common sense. (For example, it’s unwise to should that the Dodgers suck in Chavez Ravine. That doesn’t mean that Bryan Stow got what was coming to him—or that any assault of the sort should be excused.)
What I try to explain to those students is part of what the SlutWalk protests are aiming to relay on a grander scale.
There is no grand scale. These are college girls with a distinct lack of perspective.
That yes, some women dress in short, tight, “suggestive” clothing — maybe because it’s hot outside,
...Are you fucking kidding? We’re not that dumb.
maybe because it’s the style du jour
God that’s petty.
or maybe just because they think they look sexy.
Even more petty.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Aside from being insufferably petty.
Women deserve to be safe from violent assault, no matter what they wear. And the sad fact is, a miniskirt is no more likely to provoke a rapist than a potato sack is to deter one.
That’s a sad fact? Why exactly is that sad? Also, what exactly is factual about it?
As one Toronto SlutWalk sign put it: “Don’t tell us how to dress. Tell men not to rape.”
The law tells men not to rape. Just like it tells men (and women!) not to murder, steal, threaten, perjure, and jaywalk. One police officer in Toronto argued that it would be more prudent to dress with greater discretion, and as a result a gaggle of childish ne’er-do-wells decided to make a show of doing exactly the opposite.
And Jessica Valenti not only gives these attention whores the attention that they crave, but also the credibility they so decidedly have not earned.
It’s this — the proactive, fed-upness
That concept doesn’t exist.
of SlutWalks — that makes me so hopeful for the future.
Christ. Keep it in your pants, lady.
Feminism is frequently on the defensive.
That’s because it’s frequently idiotic.
When women's activists fought the defunding of Planned Parenthood, for example, they didn’t rally around the idea that abortion is legal and should be funded.
Uh…does she really not see the problem with linking legality to federal funding (and by extension government sponsorship)? No wonder liberals fight government cuts so virulently. They think conservatives are trying to outlaw PBS.
Instead, advocates assured the public that Planned Parenthood clinics provide breast exams and cancer screenings. Those are crucial services, of course, but the message was far from the “free abortion on demand” rallying cry of the abortion rights movement’s early days.
“Abortion on demand” doesn’t exactly test well these days. Probably because the abortion rights movement’s early days was filled with eugenicists and all-around bad people.
Established organizations have good reason to do their work in a way that’s palatable to the mainstream. They need support on Capitol Hill and funding from foundations and donors. But a muted message will only get us so far.
“We called ourselves something controversial,” Jarvis says. “Did we do it to get attention? Damn right we did!”
I told you they were attention whores.
Nineteen year-old Miranda Mammen, who participated in SlutWalk at Stanford University, says the idea of “sluttiness” resonates with younger women in part because they are more likely than their older counterparts to be called sluts.
Brilliant. Let’s hope this gem didn’t actually come from a Stanford student. I don’t want to have to lose respect for that institution too.
“It’s also loud, angry, sexy in a way that going to a community activist meeting often isn’t,” she says.
Congratulations. You’re obnoxious. So are toddlers.
Emily May, the 30-year-old executive director of Hollaback, an organization that battles street harassment,
In other words, a vaguely purposed nanny-state factory for do-goodery.
plans to participate in SlutWalk in New York City in August.
Wait a minute! That’s not grass roots.
“Nonprofit mainstays like conferences, funding and strategic planning are essential to maintaining change — but they don’t ignite change,” she says.
Oh well that makes sense. After all, the world needs professional followers.
“It’s easy to forget that change starts with anger, and that history has always been made by badasses.”
History is made by historians. Historians are not badasses. Unless they’re Indiana Jones, but he was an archaeologist.
Unlike protests put on by mainstream national women’s organizations, which are carefully planned and fundraised for — even the signs are bulk-printed ahead of time — SlutWalks have cropped up organically, in city after city, fueled by the raw emotional and political energy of young women.
The Tea Party kind of set the bar high for grass roots movements. This one just sounds like pathetic kids begging for attention.
And that’s the real reason SlutWalks have struck me as the future of feminism. Not because an entire generation of women will organize under the word “slut”
Their parents must so proud. God I hope I never have a daughter.
or because these marches will completely eradicate the damaging tendency of law enforcement and the media to blame sexual assault victims (though I think they’ll certainly put a dent in it).
First, you haven’t proven that it exists (it doesn’t), and secondly, you haven’t proven that it’s dangerous (it isn’t, because it doesn’t exist).
But the success of SlutWalks does herald a new day in feminist organizing.
Feminists discover the internet: circa 2011.
One when women's anger begins online but takes to the street, when a local step makes global waves
Whoa. Let’s not oversell this.
and when one feminist action can spark debate, controversy and activism that will have lasting effects on the movement.
In other words, because it’s getting attention, it’s worth it for feminists to take a completely untenable position. This really isn’t a new concept for feminists. Remember when women were burning their bras? (Callback, bitches.)
Established feminist groups have had tremendous success organizing feminist action in recent years.
Really? The entire point of this article has been that grass roots anger, stupid though it may be, has succeeded in getting feminism off of the defensive. Of course, feminism was on the defensive precisely because feminist groups have not had tremendous success organizing feminist action.
The 2004 March for Women’s Lives — put on by the National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Feminist Majority Foundation and others — brought out more than 1 million people protesting President George W. Bush’s anti-woman, anti-choice policies.
I have exactly no recollection of either the rally or any policy of the Bush Administration that could be construed as anti-women.
It was an incredible event, but the momentum of the protest largely stopped when the march did.
In other words, it wasn’t momentum.
It’s too early to tell whether SlutWalks will draw people on that scale,
Fortunately, most people instinctively recognize a foolish cause when they see it. Except Cubs fans.
but they are different in a key respect. Instead of young women being organized by established groups, SlutWalks have young women organizing themselves — something I believe makes these women more likely to stay involved once the protest is over.
This is soooo booooring. This article could have ended like 4 paragraphs ago.
SlutWalks aren’t a perfect form of activism.
Really? Because I thought this was exactly the Civil Disobedience to which Thoreau referred.
Some feminist critics think that by attempting to reclaim the word “slut,” the organizers are turning a blind eye to the many women who don’t want to salvage what they see as an irredeemable term.
If all goes well, women can have their own personal version of the N-word. Boy, that has social value.
As Harsha Walia wrote at the Canadian site Rabble:
Truthfully, that alone is enough to get me to ignore it off-hand.
“I personally don’t feel the whole ‘reclaim slut’ thing. I find that the term disproportionately impacts women of color and poor women to reinforce their status as inherently dirty and second-class.”
God, even when they agree with me, they use shitty arguments.
Anti-pornography activist Gail Dines argued, along with victims rights advocate Wendy Murphy,
Feminism has sub-genres? Who knew?
that the SlutWalk organizers are playing into patriarchal hands.
“Patriarchal” is like the center square of any self-respecting Feminist Bingo board.
They say the protesters “celebrating” the word “slut” and dressing in risque clothing are embracing a pornified consumer sexuality.
Let’s all just agree that it’s stupid. You can think it’s because of pornified consumer sexuality or patriarchial repression or whatever you want. I’ll deal with your particular brand of idiocy when it becomes relevant.
Frankly, I don’t think any of these women will be posing for the “Girls Gone Wild” cameras anytime soon.
Generally, pornography involves attractive women. From what I’ve seen, SlutWalk are generally the type of thing that men think about in bed to last longer.
Yes, some protesters have worn lingerie, but others have worn jeans and T-shirts.
Kind of missing the point, ladies. You need a shtick.
Organizers encourage marchers to wear whatever they want because the point is that no matter what women wear, they have a right not to be raped.
Can we also protest the right of rich people to not be stole from? How about the right of pedestrians to not get run over by cars?
The law’s already on the books. It is actively enforced. If you’re going to be obnoxious, at least have an idea in mind about what you want to accomplish. Instead, this is all thought police type of nonsense that aims to tell the New York Times what it can and can not report about with regards to rape.
And if someone were to attack them, they have a right not to be blamed for it.
They have a right to not be blamed for what they are not responsible for. But as always with crime victims, there are certain actions that are prudent, and they should be encouraged to prevent future crimes. Similarly, there are certain actions that are imprudent, and they should be discouraged to prevent future crimes. Mind you: not legally enforced. Encouraged.
In the past, clothing designed to generate controversy has served to emphasize the message that women have a right to feel safe and participate fully in society. Suffragists wore pants called “bloomers,” named for the women’s rights activist Amelia Bloomer. They were meant to be more practical than the confining dresses of the times.
Note: pants are more comfortable and practical than skirts/dresses (At least that’s what I’m told.)
But, echoing the criticism of SlutWalk participants today,
Further note: Lingerie is not comfortable or practical. (At least that’s what I’m told.)
the media did not take kindly to women wearing pants. The November 1851 issue of International Monthly called the outfits “ridiculous and indecent,” deriding the suffragists as “vulgar women whose inordinate love of notoriety is apt to display itself in ways that induce their exclusion from respectable society.”
Yeah…most of that proved to be right. Doesn’t change the fact that these vulgar women also happened to be right about voting. Just like the SlutWalk women are right about not blaming victims. The problem is, the law is already on their side, which is why they’re not arguing against any current law or for any proposed law.
The SlutWalkers, in outfits that could be grumpily labeled “ridiculous and indecent,”
I prefer to dub them stupid, exhibitionistic and self-aggrandizing.
are not inducing exclusion from respectable society. They’re generating excitement,
Maybe, but they’re generating a lot more eye-rolls.
translating their anger into action and trying to change our supposedly respectable society into one that truly respects men, women and yes, even “sluts.”
Society is cohesive because it adheres to certain norms. Those who live outside those norms are informally punished by the lack of consideration and even disrespect by those adherent to the norms. Forcing respect to those who actively eschew those norms actively undermines social cohesion and promotes conflict. In other words, the goal of the SlutWalks (as relayed by the impossibly clichéd Jessica Valenti) is to generate a utopianist society of infinite permissiveness, limited cohesion, and massively divergent experiences and values. Whereas most movements seek to establish mainstream credibility to a certain type of deviancy, Valenti supports mainstream credibility for deviancy in general. The predictable result, of course, is destruction.
Christ, I hate the social issues.
No comments:
Post a Comment