"slut walks"

[RGacky3]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/10/new-delhi-slut-walk-sexual-violence-protest-india-_n_874460.html
Any opinion on the so-called slut walks? As they happened in Los ANgeles, and new New Delhi? protesting things like that reprehensible douch bag republican that suggested that women are partly repsonsible for rape by what they wear, also happening all around the world.

I think this sort of thing is great, I am personally a little uncomfortable with the term "slut" perse, the fact that a woman enjoys sex should'nt be something with a word, like slut, its just called a regular person, and slut has such negative connotations, I get they are trying to take it back though.

I think this is something that people need to pay attention to.

[Dimmu]

I pretty much support it.. For one because of the right-wingers accusations that women are now responsible for being raped and because of other classical gender discrimination where women who have sex with a lot of men are "sluts" while men who managed to fk their way through their entire high-school are awesome..

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

I have a pin that has the bisexual colors and says slut. I like the term in context. Hell even my father called me a slut.

[progressive_lefty]

I pretty much support it.. For one because of the right-wingers accusations that women are now responsible for being raped and because of other classical gender discrimination where women who have sex with a lot of men are "sluts" while men who managed to fk their way through their entire high-school are awesome..

Yea it is sad, you get promiscuous men saying 'I want to end up with a nice girl' - implying that a nice girl is 'non-easy'. I remember talking to this player-type guy who told me he 'hates chicks (not in a literal sense)' and he thinks that girls sleep with '100s of guys'. I think its simple, don't expect something of someone that you yourself cannot expect of yourself. I think there's nothing wrong with having a conservative view of sex and dating, just as long as you don't go around disrespecting or attacking those who are promiscuous.

[The Teacher]

Right on. Women need to stand up against this double standard

[Tim Finnegan]

I think this sort of thing is great, I am personally a little uncomfortable with the term "slut" perse, the fact that a woman enjoys sex should'nt be something with a word, like slut, its just called a regular person, and slut has such negative connotations, I get they are trying to take it back though.
This shouldn't be seen as an attempt at "reclamation" in the same sense that "queer" was reclaimed, but, rather, an attempt to defang the term as a pejorative by dragging the ideological hypocrisy that underlies it out into the open. The idea, as you say, is to pursue the dissolution of a distinction between "sluts" and "non-sluts", rather than to establish some recognition of a new sociological minority. (Which, of course, is also the long-term goal of the queer liberation movement, they're simply obliged by circumstance to take a more roundabout route.)

[Octavian]

What exactly are they trying to accomplish? I mean people who agree with them will still agree with them and people who don't will still have the same mindset.

[Tim Finnegan]

What exactly are they trying to accomplish? I mean people who agree with them will still agree with them and people who don't will still have the same mindset.
And what about the people in the middle, which is to say, the majority?

[Octavian]

And what about the people in the middle, which is to say, the majority?
Are you suggesting the majority of people are apathetic towards women?

[Coach Trotsky]

Does anyone seriously think that the old Bolshevik-era revolutionary socialist women would be doing these "slut walks"? What do you think they'd be doing instead, or how would they be intervening among the women in these "slut walks" and what would their key message be?

We've gone a long way backwards, baby.

[Tim Finnegan]

Are you suggesting the majority of people are apathetic towards women?
To women's liberation, I would say that they are broadly so, insofar as they are not fundamentally for or against it. The SlutWalks are a small thing, yes, but they're making publicly and widely visible a movement which has, despite its recent growth, been largely limited to limited spaces among activists and online, and could be a very useful contribution to turning the opinions of the majority in favour of such a movement- as has been at least broadly achieved previously, whatever the hysterical barking of reactionary patriarchs.

The trick after that is to integrate that into a broader emancipatory movement, something which I consider entirely possible- with or without the Coach Trotskys of this world choosing to revel in their nostalgic fantasies of feminisms gone by rather than actually contribute towards the movement as it exists today.

[NewSocialist]

I'll probably be labeled a "sexist" by some of the fanatics here for saying this (even though I've always been sympathetic towards non-"sex positive" conceptions of feminism), but I think these so-called "SlutWalks" are bullshit. Not only are they utterly futile—achieving little more than a bunch of women getting their pictures taken and a few amateur pornstars getting free publicity (see The Young Turks' interview of a few SlutWalk-LA participants for an example of the latter)—but they are positively harmful to other segments of the women's rights movement. No matter what you say, dressing "slutty" is a sure way to be sexually objectified by males. Now this obviously doesn't mean that women who dress like prostitutes should be raped—nor does it excuse the obvious double standard that exists, wherein man-whores get social status for being promiscuous, while women are looked down on—but it does mean that they shouldn't complain when people don't take them seriously. You can blame "bourgeois culture" for this or innate aspects of our psychology, it makes no difference—but if you do blame bourgeois culture, then you should wonder why even socialist states in the past didn't achieve much in the way of changing sexual mores (apparently the base-superstructure theory doesn't explain sexual relations very well, does it?) However, if bourgeois culture is indeed to blame, then nothing short of proletarian revolution will change anything and the "sluts" should be educated to cease with these useless protests and engage in working-class activism.

[La Comédie Noire]

Does anyone seriously think that the old Bolshevik-era revolutionary socialist women would be doing these "slut walks"? What do you think they'd be doing instead, or how would they be intervening among the women in these "slut walks" and what would their key message be?

We've gone a long way backwards, baby.

I think it would make Kollontai smile, but what's your point besides?


You can blame "bouregois culture" for this or innate aspects of our psychology, it makes no difference—but if you do blame bourgeois culture, then you should wonder why even socialist states in the past didn't achieve much in the way of changing sexual mores (apparently the base-superstructure theory doesn't explain sexual relations very well, does it?)

What are you saying here? That women being highly sexually active is inherently detrimental to their status? We've come a long way from the sexual attitudes of 1917 Russia or 1949 China btw.

[RGacky3]

Does anyone seriously think that the old Bolshevik-era revolutionary socialist women would be doing these "slut walks"? What do you think they'd be doing instead, or how would they be intervening among the women in these "slut walks" and what would their key message be?


Well considering we don't like in 1917 it does'nt really matter does it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

We've gone a long way backwards, baby.

Yes we've gon a long way backwards, but that doesn't mean that these slutwalks are a step backwards. When was the last proactive march around women's rights in North America. I don't know about Canada or Mexico, but in the US it was when Bill Clinton was running for President in 1992!

The fact that people are confronting the kind of casual sexism that has been growing and is now more common than anytime since the first wave of women's liberation movements should be far more encouraging to us than the maybe confused idea to title the marches "slutwalks".

I don't believe that reclaiming words is a viable method for fighting oppression at all - it makes people sometimes feel more confident and so I think I understand the appeal of reclaiming words, but it also shows IMO the acceptance of the existence of this oppression rather than the confidence to actually fight and smash it. But I do believe that people taking to the streets and making a stand against the causal acceptance and promotion of sexist ideas is the first step towards building a real strong liberation movement down the line.


Does anyone seriously think that the old Bolshevik-era revolutionary socialist women would be doing these "slut walks"? What do you think they'd be doing instead, or how would they be intervening among the women in these "slut walks" and what would their key message be? Well there were different circumstances back then so what's the use of speculation. But I do think revolutionaries should intervine in these things and what would we say: how about, "why have things gone back so far; why has 3rd wave feminism failed to be a bulwark against sexism; what kind of movement will be necessary to defeat sexism?" I think the radical left has a lot to offer all movements against oppression and so it's important IMO that we bring our class-views of these issues into these movements not just because they are correct IMO, but because historically they are more proven to be effective compared to the bourgeois feminist ideas that have dominated pretty much since the decline of the radical movements of the 1970s.

[NewSocialist]

What are you saying here? That women being highly sexually active is inherently detrimental to their status?

It depends. If a woman lives in a smaller city, where everyone happens to know a lot about their neighbors, then promiscuity will definitely be detrimental to her status. Why? Because local women will view her as either competition among whatever single males happen to live in the area, or as a potential threat to their own relationships (worrying their significant other will be seduced by easy access to another female). This isn't as much of an issue in larger, metropolitan locales—where people's sex lives are relatively private.

Female promiscuity can actually be beneficial for a woman's social status in certain settings as well, i.e., a frat party. However, again, other women will view such "sluts" negatively (for the reasons I went over in my example of small towns), thus being a hindrance to female solidarity.

As far as simply dressing "slutty" is concerned, men will treat such women as little more than sexual objects—since, in many of their subjective experiences, most women who dress in such a manner are relatively promiscuous—and other women will look down on them because they'll also associate them with sexual promiscuity and thus view them, again, as potential competition or threats.

Now is this the result or nature or nuture? I don't know, I'm inclinded to say it's probably both.


We've come a long way from the sexual attitudes of 1917 Russia or 1949 China btw.

How so? Call me crazy, but I don't think "Girls Gone Wild" is paricularly empowering.. To be fair though, women actually have come a long way in being respected for their cognitive abilities. However, insofar as overall sexual objectification is concerned, I tend to think things are worse in many ways.

[La Comédie Noire]

It depends. If a woman lives in a smaller city where everyone happens to know a lot about their neighbors, then promiscuity will definitely be detrimental to her status. Why? Because local women will view her as either compition among whatever single males happen to live in that area, or as a potential threat to their own relationships (worrying their singnificant other will be seduced by easy access to another female). This isn't as much of an issue in larger, metropolitan locales—where people's sex lives are relatively private.


However, again, other women will view such "sluts" negatively (for the reasons I went over in my example of small towns), thus being a hindrance to female solidarity.


Women should contain their sexuality for the good of the community? How… archaic.


Look people get together and they break up, heartache is a part of the human experience for both men and women. My best friend once dated a girl I did immediately after we broke up. I was mad as hell at him then, but we eventually made up. You can’t expect people to stop falling in love for the sake of solidarity, but you can limit it in a professional setting.


Female promiscuity can actually be beneficial for a woman's social status in certain settings as well, i.e., a frat party.


I think it’s insulting you compare the autonomy of choosing whom you want sleep with when you want to with the sexism of a frat party. They’re obviously different.



As far as simply dressing "slutty" is concerned, men will treat such woman as little more than a sexual object—since, in many of their subjective experiences, most women who dress in such a manner are relatively promiscuous—and other women will look down on them because they'll associate them with sexual promiscuity as well and thus view them, again, as potential competition or threats.


I think that’s just silly. Men can get along just fine without the question of their sexual activity ever coming up, mostly because society doesn’t regulate their fashion as heavily as women. Why can’t women enjoy that freedom?


Now is this the result or nature or nuture? I don't know, I'm inclinded to say both.


Almost entirely cultural, attitudes towards womens' sexuality haven’t stood still for 100 years. It seems to be anything, but a biological certainty.




How so? Call me crazy, but I don't think "Girls Gone Wild" is particularly empowering


Err yes… because clearly I am talking about girls gone wild.



But, to be fair, women have come a long way in being respected for their cognitive abilities. However, insofar as sexual objectification is concerned, I'm inclined to say things are worse in many ways.


Women are sexual beings, so are men. The question is why should women be shamed for it, while men are not?

[Coach Trotsky]

There are union-busting and austerity-imposing campaigns going on, there are working people protesting in the streets in several countries, and yet instead of raising the women question and the fight for the liberation of the workers and oppressed in that context, we're talking "word reclamation" and "slut walks"?

That's what my point was about the Bolshevik-era revolutionary socialist women.
Their way of fighting for women's liberation was much different from bourgeois feminism today.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There are union-busting and austerity-imposing campaigns going on, there are working people protesting in the streets in several countries, and yet instead of raising the women question and the fight for the liberation of the workers and oppressed in that context, we're talking "word reclamation" and "slut walks"?

That's what my point was about the Bolshevik-era revolutionary socialist women.
Their way of fighting for women's liberation was much different from bourgeois feminism today.

And how does a new and developing movement move in a more class-based direction - from people wagging their fingers at them and telling them they will support their cause after they adopt X, Y, and Z politics? No, a slightly confused march by people against sexism is a concrete step forward from either NOW or pro-abortion groups lobbying the Democrats on the one hand and 3rd-wave feminists and post-modern academics writing in Journals on the other... or worse still, the media saying "being a stay at home mom is empowering/using your body as a sex-object is empowering".

There hasn't been a real movement in a generation, so obviously anything possibly starting up now is starting from a lower point. But I am encouraged that these marches seem to be youthful and include anti-sexist men. The fact that middle-class feminism has been a failure in adressing the needs of working class women and the fact that US workers are mostly women now tells me that there is a huge opportunity for a new movement more based in the demands of working women to develop than any time in the recent past, so for these reasons I think radicals should support and try and raise political arguments with people inspired to stand up against some of the rampant (and generally invisible due to the lack of any real movement) sexism.

[Olentzero]

SlutWalks are a response to the latest salvo of sexism from a public official - in this case not a US Republican, but a police officer from Toronto who said that women should not "dress like sluts" if they wanted to avoid being raped. Problematic as reclaiming the term may be, the point is not to celebrate the exposure of women's bodies as a form of liberation, but to assert the fact that women should be able to dress as they please without fear of men assuming she is immediately sexually available and therefore treating her as a chunk of flesh to do with as they please. I was with the SlutWalk here in Stockholm on Saturday the 4th, and one woman summed up the point with an admittedly radical but nonetheless accurate formulation: A woman should be able to walk down the street blind drunk and naked without a finger being laid on her.

The organizers of SlutWalks themselves admit the problems with the attempt to reclaim the term, and the organizers of the original Toronto event have even gone so far as to explicitly say "We're no longer trying to do that" on their blogs. Even when that was part of the program, it was a small element - they encouraged people to join whether they agreed with reclaiming it or not - and focusing on that to the exclusion of all else they were trying to call attention to is fundamentally mistaken.

And, just because I wanna prove it actually happened, here's me at the Stockholm SlutWalk behind the RS' student campaign banner "Refuse to be Called a Whore". I'm in the tacky red shirt.
http://rssthlm.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/dscn1170.jpg

[NewSocialist]

Women should contain their sexuality for the good of the community? How… archaic.

Where, pray tell, did I say women "should" do anything? I was merely explaining the way things are today.


Look people get together and they break up, heartache is a part of the human experience for both men and women. My best friend once dated a girl I did immediately after we broke up. I was mad as hell at him then, but we eventually made up. You can’t expect people to stop falling in love for the sake of solidarity, but you can limit it in a professional setting.

Good luck telling people in committed relationships that 'shit happens' and to 'just deal with it.' Obviously relationships will continue to fall apart no matter what people try to do, but sorry, preceived threats to relationships will most likely always be met with hostility (minor exceptions notwithstanding).


I think it’s insulting you compare the autonomy of choosing whom you want sleep with when you want to with the sexism of a frat party. They’re obviously different.

Excuse me, but I made no such comparison. I provided you with one example of when female promiscuity and/or dressing "slutty" increases social status. Perhaps you can think of other examples? Swinger parties, the porn industry, prostitution, sex clubs, etc.?

Women "choosing" who or who not to sleep with isn't an issue in society anymore, but promiscuity and dressing provacatively certainly continues to be (for the reasons I outlined). Now, you're perfectly free to disagree with the way things are and try to fight to change them, but I'm afraid you're fighting an uphill battle when it comes to this issue (to put it mildly).


I think that’s just silly. Men can get along just fine without the question of their sexual activity ever coming up, mostly because society doesn’t regulate their fashion as heavily as women. Why can’t women enjoy that freedom?

I'd bet the majority of fights among men have to do with women. The issue of promiscuity among men isn't as severe, but jealousy certainly is. As for why women can't learn to care not about promiscuity, the biological explanation is: since men possess a near infinite amount of sperm, while women have a finite number of eggs, women evolved to be somewhat more selective when it comes to mating (so when they find a male worth breeding with, they're naturally more concerned about competition from other females and, thus, promiscuous behavior from other women is viewed as a potential threat). This physiological-psychological explanation seems plausible enough to me.


Almost entirely cultural, attitudes towards womens' sexuality haven’t stood still for 100 years. It seems to be anything, but a biological certainty.

What a naive view.. Yes, some things have changed, but not to the profound degree you seem to think they have.


Err yes… because clearly I am talking about girls gone wild.

Well, "Girls Gone Wild" seems to be the most significant change in sexual mores since the Soviet Union and Maoist China passed.. Women could work in the USSR and possessed many of the same rights women have in the bourgeois countries today.


Women are sexual beings, so are men. The question is why should women be shamed for it, while men are not?

Women aren't being "shamed" for merely being sexual beings, they're shamed for dressing slutty and/or being sexually promiscuous. Should they be discriminated against for doing so while men aren't? Of course not. All I'm saying is that you're going to have a pretty difficult time socially engineering people to act differently about "sluts"—that's not to say it can't be done, but I believe the results would be far more modest than you or the SlutWalk crowd would like.

[Coach Trotsky]

And how does a new and developing movement move in a more class-based direction - from people wagging their fingers at them and telling them they will support their cause after they adopt X, Y, and Z politics? No, a slightly confused march by people against sexism is a concrete step forward from either NOW or pro-abortion groups lobbying the Democrats on the one hand and 3rd-wave feminists and post-modern academics writing in Journals on the other... or worse still, the media saying "being a stay at home mom is empowering/using your body as a sex-object is empowering".

There hasn't been a real movement in a generation, so obviously anything possibly starting up now is starting from a lower point. But I am encouraged that these marches seem to be youthful and include anti-sexist men. The fact that middle-class feminism has been a failure in adressing the needs of working class women and the fact that US workers are mostly women now tells me that there is a huge opportunity for a new movement more based in the demands of working women to develop than any time in the recent past, so for these reasons I think radicals should support and try and raise political arguments with people inspired to stand up against some of the rampant (and generally invisible due to the lack of any real movement) sexism.

Thank you...I want RevLefters to consider seriously the quote part I italicized especially. Boldly intervene as revolutionary socialists, and turn the potential opportunity into realized fight-back actuality and an advancement of the struggle against this system.

[Spawn of Stalin]

I basically have the same criticisms as Coach Trotsky. But aside from that even if I did support it I still can't see the point. Most people are inevitably going to view slutwalkers as, well basically as a bunch of dumb sluts. I really don't see something like this going anywhere. Yeah sure, women are marching for women's rights (though I still don't know what rights they are), but if a bunch of confused liberals can organise slutwalks around the world, can't socialist women organise marches for better pay?

Pretty stupid imo. I actually rode my bike across Trafalgar Square on Saturday at about 4pm and there were like maybe 20 people there for the slutwalk, half of whom were men. I don't know if it had finished by then or whatever but I just got the overall impression that I had no reason to take such a "movement" seriously.

It's an insult to feminism is what I think. Go sleep with who you want, wear what you want, but if people are going to judge they're going to judge, that applies not just to women by the way, male "sluts" get zero respect from me. Having slutwalks is ultimately just going to tarnish women's rights, because like it or not people do look down on that kind of behaviour. It's like the Muslims who complain about how they are treated in this country then go on an Islam4UK march....yeah, that's really going to give you a good name.

[Tim Finnegan]

Thank you...I want RevLefters to consider seriously the quote part I italicized especially. Boldly intervene as revolutionary socialists, and turn the potential opportunity into realized fight-back actuality and an advancement of the struggle against this system.
Because if there's one thing that people love, it's college Trotskyists barging in and telling them how to run things. :rolleyes:

Edit: In fact, I just remembered, apparently a few SWPers (or ex-SWPers, or something of that sort) attempted to semi-hijack the Glasgow SlutWalk in that fashion. No prizes for guessing how people felt about that.

And I should clarify, it's not that I'm again trying to raise issues of class or wider political struggle in these contexts, it's just that you have to do it with a bit of tact unless you want to alienate people. Don't just tell people what they should do, help them figure it out for themselves; in this case, don't tell women not to address the harassment and sexism which they face in favour of issues X, Y and Z, but help them connect this sexism to the political and economic form of contemporary society which also produces X, Y and Z. All this "bold intervention" stuff- which, let us be honest, is a rather poorly masked way of expressing a desire to appoint you and yours in a position of leadership- is just going to turn people off.

[Coach Trotsky]

Because if there's one thing that people love, it's college Trotskyists barging in and telling them how to run things. :rolleyes:

Edit: In fact, I just remembered, apparently a few SWPers (or ex-SWPers, or something of that sort) attempted to semi-hijack the Glasgow SlutWalk in that fashion. No prizes for guessing how people felt about that.

And I should clarify, it's not that I'm again trying to raise issues of class or wider political struggle in these contexts, it's just that you have to do it with a bit of tact unless you want to alienate people. Don't just tell people what they should do, help them figure it out for themselves; in this case, don't tell women not to address the harassment and sexism which they face in favour of issues X, Y and Z, but help them connect this sexism to the political and economic form of contemporary society which also produces X, Y and Z. All this "bold intervention" stuff- which, let us be honest, is a rather poorly masked way of expressing a desire to appoint you and yours in a position of leadership- is just going to turn people off.

Agreed on the tact bit. The intervention methodology you described would be smart. Got to go in, try to guide the discussions toward the next advanced level, bring it to working class consciousness and then revolutionary consciousness, motivate action initiatives that are linked to working class struggles and their mass action...and you can do this without starting out by shout at the crowd from the sidelines, or trying to immediately impose on their platform. Just begin with person to person discussions with the participants, and don't begin these discussions like you would an argument online with the rank-and-file. Yes, you are boldly providing interventionist leadership still at this level, but you are also earning the leadership of the mass "from below" through this method (at least of the most advanced elements in the mass). This is where you can make the best distinction between what you are suggesting and what the vacillating and phony misleaderships are providing.
Then, you motivate the rank-and-file that agree with you to start making demands on their current leaderships and to launch their own independent initiative from below as necessary.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I basically have the same criticisms as Coach Trotsky. But aside from that even if I did support it I still can't see the point. Most people are inevitably going to view slutwalkers as, well basically as a bunch of dumb sluts. I really don't see something like this going anywhere.

The same could be said for any number of activities. Besides, if it's "not going anywhere" then why did it become an international thing in the first place?


Yeah sure, women are marching for women's rights (though I still don't know what rights they are),

Obviously you haven't been paying attention. It all started when a cop speaking at York University effectively blamed the victims of sexual assault, and from there it snowballed into a general campaign to raise awareness of the canard that if a woman dresses "provocatively" that she "deserves it" if she is sexually assaulted.


but if a bunch of confused liberals can organise slutwalks around the world, can't socialist women organise marches for better pay?

Maybe they're not as confused as you think they are? Maybe it's because most "socialist" parties would appear to have trouble arranging a piss-up in a brewery?


Having slutwalks is ultimately just going to tarnish women's rights, because like it or not people do look down on that kind of behaviour. It's like the Muslims who complain about how they are treated in this country then go on an Islam4UK march....yeah, that's really going to give you a good name.

Did you really just compare wearing skimpy clothing with being a Muslim fundamentalist? Idiot.

[Drosophila]

I absolutely despise the "slut" look, but blaming women for getting raped because of what they wear is stupid.