SlutWalk is something we’ve been reading and thinking A LOT about lately, so I guess it’s time we asked what y’all think. I just recently found out people are organizing a SlutWalk in Bmore, and I’m not convinced this is a good idea. In fact, Gina and I, who are both self-identified sluts, find the protest problematic.
If you’re unfamiliar with the critiques, I recommend the Racialicious article, but I also think it’s worth reading what some of our friends wrote here, and here.
So please sound off! Have you been to a SlutWalk? What was your experience? What kind of perception of feminism does the protest project? What other responses to victim-blaming can we envision?
I just read an awesome interview with a woman organizing a SlutWalk (Marcha de las Putas) in Mexico. It made me consider the possibility of how organizers could tailor SlutWalk to be relevant to the women of their communities. Perhaps this could be an exciting possibility to tackle the different manifestations of patriarchy and gender oppression around the world.
http://www.genderacrossborders.com/2011/06/28/slutwalk-in-mexico-city-%E2%80%9Ctool-for-peace%E2%80%9D/#more-19777
i hadn’t heard of slutwalk til my friend, joanna, pointed me towards this (http://tothecurb.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/slutwalk-a-stroll-through-white-supremacy/) article. my first reaction was “y’all were SURPRISED that the pigs are sexist? who in their right mind would invite a cop to a community meeting on campus safety?” and while, surely, this man well deserved to be publicly shamed, i doubt the efficacy of large scale “spectacle” demonstrations.
maybe in new orleans, we’re a little sluttier. or maybe we have bigger fish to fry. i can’t possible imagine pouring myself into organizing an event to get girls to strut it.
PREACH
the only way I’d ever attend a SlutWalk is if it had a large FUCK THE POLICE and WOC contingency. Also, thanks for linking to my response!
While I still think SlutWalk is problematic, and remain ambivalent about the concept as a whole, I’m still really glad that I went anyway. These marches really touch something in people, and they aren’t all people who read articles about racial/class justice. Some of the things that were brought up by the speakers were rape as a military tactic and sexual assault not just forgiven by, but committed by police. And while it seems obvious to point out that women of color are sexualized differently and the exclusion of trans* folk from these discussions… it wasn’t that apparent to many of the people we talked to there. I feel like as a privileged white girl I have a responsibility to go to these events and try to shift the conversation. I feel like we at least partially succeeded in that, and we helped a good portion of attendees to think about what it means to build a community against sexual assault in a way they might not have otherwise.
That said, I’m partly biased because SlutWalk gave SWOP-LA a good chunk of the extra money they raised, gave us a platform to talk about sex workers rights in front of a larger audience than we would have raised on our own, and introduced us to some allies that will lead to bigger and better projects later. So my view is slightly colored with anticipation for the awesome projects that could be born out of this problematic one.
http://pugetsoundanarchists.org/node/695
An Open Letter to SlutWalk
GRRRL, WE DON’T NEED POLICE!
There is this idea that the government and police should be appealed to in order to protect women-identified people from rape culture; that women, trans, anti-racist, sex worker, and queer inclusive legislation should, in theory, protect us. Unfortunately, this faith in a fatherly liberal government neglects the investment that capitalism, the state and the prison industrial complex (PIC) have in perpetuating rape culture and monopolizing “violence” as well as “justice”.
In early 2011, two high profile cases in Chicago and New York City explicitly illustrated the ways that police their power to exert force over others and walk away exempt. In Chicago, two officers routinely escorted women home and then raped them; in NYC, officers were acquitted despite a recording in which one officer admitted to the rape. It is not merely an issue of a few bad apples, as the system will always excuse their actions, and perhaps send a few politicians to community forums in a feign of “accountability” and openness. This is not new to us in Seattle, as we hold Ian Birk’s vicious murder of John T. Williams, and Birk’s exoneration, fresh in our minds; or Officer Clayton Powell, who was investigated by the SPD for threatening and stalking his ex-wife, but as reported by the Seattle PI, “cops who abuse their wives rarely pay the price”.
As demonstrated by a Toronto cop, the demand for “more dialogue” with the police ignores the crucial role the cops and the state play in upholding rape culture. As supporters of survivors, why would we ever ask for justice under a system that puts the survivor on trial and reinforces the violence of gender, heteronormativity, race and class? Police and prison culture creates a false notion of served justice in which our ability to take back our bodies and our lives is crushed by the gears of capitalism and the state.
More legislation for justice and “hate crimes” seems especially farcical, as the law is commonly used against us when we fight back. In Winnipeg, a city with a deep history of “starlight tours” where police drive indigenous women out of the city to rape and abandon in the snow, a transwoman has been incarcerated for nearly a year awaiting trial. Her charges stem from defending herself against the taunts and attacks of a man who propositioned her and tried to steal her shoes. In the summer of 2006, seven queer women of color in NYC were assaulted by a man on the street who threatened to “fuck them straight”. Despite being assisted by two other men, the women were put on trial for attempted murder, accused of a hate crime against a white man, and called a “wolf pack of lesbians”. Meanwhile, the PIC will profit off of their captivity, as four of the seven were sentenced to between 3 and 11 years in prison.
Creating more opportunities to send people to jail, in fact, only furthers the PIC’s ability to continue to do harm and attack individual and community capacities for self-organization and safety. One of the most insidious myths of rape culture ignores that most assault happens within immediate communities and many survivors can name their rapist. Calling the cops becomes less of an option when survivors know that their rapist is equally vulnerable to violence at the hands of the police. Prisons and the police do little to address the root of rape culture in our communities, especially non-white, queer, immigrant and low income communities.
Prisons are just another face of big business; not only are they a source of free/slave labor, but the private ownership, food and construction contracts to be won create a cyclical need for more prisoners. Additionally, many rapes that happen in prison go completely undocumented because of the systemic attack on criminalized classes that enables the PIC.
It is not enough to ask for reform from a system that disappears people through the construction of borders and jails, while affirming cultural values about rape, gender, race and straightness. The only people who should be in the business of articulating and setting boundaries for how they experience their bodies are people themselves, NOT the State, NOT the police, and certainly not industries hellbent on manifesting insecurities that keep us tied to mythical protectors. Instead, let us consider other ways of affirming our own agency and dismantling the apparatus of the State and all of its constituents.
As anarchists, we want the extinction of police and prison culture. As survivors, we want to set the boundaries for how and when we fight back against sexual violence.
(A)!
some tuff bitches
RESOURCES
http://www.pugetsoundanarchists.org // http://www.criticalresistance.org // http://www.incite-national.org/ // *http://www.incite-national.org/media/docs/9261_anti-prisonbrochure.PDF
(and I’d add that imprisoning rapists, where they are free to rape more easily, increases the amount of rapes, te exact opposite effect taking rapists off the streets is supposed to have!)