It’s been a long time since I felt the urge to attend a street protest.
During my youth, I waved so many “real men don’t rape” signs in so many Reclaim the Night marches, I was at risk of suffering placard elbow. These days, I enjoy the fact that it’s possible to engage in social activism from the comfort of one’s swivel chair.
Internet petitions, cyber sloganeering, those web sites that send rice overseas when you check out their ads… Such slacktivist approaches are extremely attractive to the modern revolutionary whose time is short and whose desk-bound dorsal region is lethargic.
On June 13, however, I plan to leave the comfort and anonymity of the e-picket to march in Sydney’s SlutWalk – one of the local chapters of an international demonstration against the shaming and blaming of sex crime victims.
The reason I’m prepared to go to the effort of uprising in tottery heels and fishnetty stockings at 2pm on a Monday afternoon, is because I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it without shouting and waving a big sign anymore.
I’m sick to death of listening to the “she was asking for it” crap still spouted by rapers, gropers and leerers – as well as by those supposed to be apprehending and punishing them.
And I can’t believe this is still an issue.
The notion that women are inviting attack or aggressive ogling because of the way they’re dressed should seem incomputably antiquated – on par with doctors smoking cigarettes during heart surgery or prescribing patients heroin cough syrup.
Yet this offensive and dangerous idea persists.
Sex crime victims are still seen as “asking” for rape if flirting, alcohol and boob tubes are involved. Perpetrators still refuse to take responsibility for their evil deeds. And, when it comes to sex, many women still find themselves stuck between the oppressive stereotypes of “frigid bitch” or “slut” (depending on which man or social convention they’ve upset at any given moment).
The first SlutWalk demonstration was held in Toronto last month after a police officer told university students that women could avoid rape if they didn’t dress like “sluts”.
Similar remarks occur with depressing frequency in Australian public debate. In 2006, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, then the nation’s most senior Muslim cleric, suggested that immodestly dressed women were on par with uncovered cat meat.
There was also Sheik Faiz Mohamad’s claim to a Sydney gathering that clothing such as translucent blouses and slit skirts were satanic and an open invitation for harassment.
Such views are not restricted to the hardline Islamic community.
Late last year, in the wake of yet more allegations of sexual assaults against footballers, TV personality Kerri-Anne Kennerley suggested women who socialised with ovoid ball wranglers were “strays”.
Former AFL star Peter “Spida” Everitt chipped in with a Tweet that read: “Girls!! When will you learn! At 3am when you are blind drunk & you decide to go home with a guy ITS NOT FOR A CUP OF MILO!”
(Note to footballing meatheads: Boys! When will you learn? Your self-serving chauvinism may be sanctioned in the locker room but the rest of us think it HAS ALL THE SENSTIVITY OF A PAIR OF FLARING FOOTY SHORTS.)
Since that first SlutWalk march in Canada, rallies have been held across the world and are about to begin in Australia: in Melbourne and Brisbane today, in Canberra on June 4, in Adelaide on June 11, and in Sydney on June 13.
The latter was originally planned as a small stroll through the inner-city suburb of Newtown but a massive response on Facebook means the starting line has been relocated to Sydney Town Hall.
SlutWalk may be popular but it’s also controversial. In fact, it’s been condemned for encouraging the sorts of behaviour and attitudes it purports to reject.
“Part of me thinks hooray, reclaim that word,” says a friend who has previously protested semi-nude during political demonstrations. “But then the other part of me thinks a bunch of dirty old pervs will find it a turn-on for all the wrong reasons.”
Similar criticisms were made about Boobquake – an international baring of cleavages in response to an Iranian cleric’s claim that immodestly dressed women incur religious wrath in the form of natural disasters.
Organisers of a rival crusade called Brainquake attacked Boobquake for arousing the insatiable enthusiasm of men who couldn’t wait to see their female friends “showing off their tits”.
While some feminists will always claim that taking to the streets in skimpy garments is counterproductive, the reclaiming of sex and sexualisation is a hallmark of modern manifestations of the women’s movement. After all: staying home looking demure can also look like capitulation.
Rather than accepting the dominant damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t attitude to women, we need to remember that there is no such thing as lust-repellent clothing
Niche sex sites on the internet reveal that ladies are fetishised even when wearing conventionally drab attire such as conservative, buttoned-up office blouses. For other sectors of society, the mere fact of femaleness poses an untenable provocation.
Earlier this month, a Brooklyn-based Orthodox Jewish newspaper digitally deleted Hillary Clinton and a second female staff member from a photo of Barack Obama’s inner sanctum watching Navy SEALs launch their attack on Osama bin Laden.
Apparently the paper excised the women because of its longstanding policy that including images of females in the paper could be sexually suggestive.
“I’m with the Hasids on this one,” agreed American comedian Stephen Colbert. “There is nothing more sexually suggestive than a woman killing a terrorist. At at my bachelor party, a Margaret Thatcher impersonator in a thick tweed pants suit clubbed an Ayatollah Khomeini lookalike to death. Don’t tell my wife. She thinks I was at a strip club.”
The (i)moral of the story is that sexual suggestiveness really is in the eye of the beholder. In fact, like rape, aggressively calling women sluts is about power, not sex. It says little about the outfits and behaviour of the women it is used to deride, but speaks volumes about the insecurity and sadism of those who wield it as a weapon.
Reclaiming the s-word will be tough (and possibly quite chilly given that many SlutWalkers are likely to be wearing microskirts in early winter).
But so long as there is such a sexist disconnect between the “stud” and the “slut”, activism – especially activism involving the physical she-bodies deemed so problematic – is essential.
No plain Jane - see more of Emma’s work here at The Australian.
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