The question guiding our thoughts this week is: Is Slutwalk an exciting expression of third wave antirape activism or is it a narrow post-feminist protest? Upon reading the first two articles, I was divided in answering this question. On the one hand, I strongly agreed with much of Megan Murphy’s analysis in “We’re Sluts, Not Feminists. Wherein my relationship with Slutwalk Gets Rocky,” an analysis which leans more towards narrowing Slutwalk down to a post-feminist protest. The fact that the women described in Murphy’s article would rather identify as sluts, rather than feminists, left me unnerved. On the other hand, I was deeply moved by Jaclyn Friedman’s powerful use of rhetoric in: “ You can call us that name, but we will not shut up.” More specifically, I see a thread I can pull at when Friedman asserts: “We’re here to testify that this ends TODAY. It ends because there is truly nothing – NOTHING – you can do to make someone raping you your fault. It ends because calling other people sluts may make you feel safer, but it doesn’t actually keep you safer. It ends because not one more of us will tolerate being violated and blamed for it. And it ends because all of this slut-shaming does more to us than just the violence of rape.”
The term slut can, indeed, be a powerful tool that can challenge the patriarchal ‘madonna/whore’ dichotomy. And, yes, I do want to join in on this walk and end victim-blaming and sexual violence against women. Importantly, Friedman’s speech does contain a lot of politics that I do agree with. But Friedman’s speech itself is not representative of Slutwalk as a whole, and I do not think Slutwalk is representative as thee movement that will end violence against women. Taking this into account, I was left wondering: what voices are excluded from Slutwalk? Who holds the privileged position of power in this protest? Who controls what their position looks like? How does Slutwalk address gendered racialized violence? And how does Slutwalk’s individualist rhetoric of personal empowerment remove politics of difference from this walk? Indeed, Murphy’s critique that “Slutwalk does, in many ways, resemble the same kind of privileged, individualist, ‘anything goes so long as it's my choice’ feminism which argues that prostitution is simply a choice like any other (or ‘work’ like any other kind of work), that objectification can be empowering as long as we are choosing to objectify ourselves” is particularly poignant to me. Needless to say, the clear dichotomy set up between narrow post-feminist protests and antirape activism left me completely unsettled. I simply could not place myself completely for or completely against Slutwalk.
After engaging with these two texts, I found Harsha Walia’s article to be a refreshing counterpoint, a happy medium between Murphy and Friedman: Walia managed to blend the these debates into an argument that I could digest. I, too, could see the benefits of attending this march as a way to “mark the unceded territory of women’s bodies.” Walia, in particular, states that she “did not march under the banner of "sluthood", rather she “marched because language is a weapon yielded against the powerless.” She “marched because rapists cause rape and sexual assault can never be justified.” She “marched to end the policing of women by other women.” She “marched because that day, though understandable, [...she] happened to be tired of the Left ruthlessly eating itself alive.” She “marched in defiance of right-wing pundits like Margaret Wente to make visible the staggering reality of rape and violence against all women in so-called civilized countries like Canada.” These points are all excellent reasons to rethink my own critique of the march itself. Although I feel I am being cynical when I say that Walia's argument seems overly optimistic and even, to an extent, overly simplistic.
This cynicism compels me to extend my thoughts outward: Would you march?
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