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The Great Toronto Slutwalk
To protest a police officer's advice that women should "avoid dressing like sluts" to avoid getting raped, hundreds of Toronto women got together and dressed like sluts. If only they were dancing in unison. #slutwalk
[Via]
go sluts go!
Honestly? I was hoping for sluttier. But I understand it's cold in the Great White North.
I was thinking that too. Such a cold gray day for slutty outfits.
I would also describe most of these ladies' outfits as distinctly unslutty. I hadn't thought about the temperature issue, though.
He criticizes how women dress, but he walks around all day dressed as a bachelorette-party stripper. Tsk!
Dance for my dollar, hypocrite!
You need to stick around here. I like you.
Ugh. Youtube comments make me sad about the world.
That's why I never read them. In this case, ignorance truly is bliss.
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I think the point of the SlutWalk was not simply to protest the comments made by the officer through saucy dress, but rather to raise awareness that rape, in fact, has no dress code. While some participants chose to don skimpy attire, others protested in jeans, in pajamas, in Canadian tuxedos (I hope!).
This draws light to the misguided comments made by the officer that implied that rape only happens to "sluts" in fishnets. Rape can happen no matter what you're wearing and it's atrocious that people, particularly law enforcement officers, still attempt to shame and blame victims.
As a graduate-level student who has studied gender relations, and as a male, I'm going to put myself out on a precarious limb here. The issue (aside from insensitive comments made by the officer) is about exercising caution rather than exercising rights. Yes, women (and men) should be able to dress any way they please and rightly assume that it is not an invitation/excuse/etc for gender-based, sexual, or discriminatory violence/abuse/etc. However, exercising caution is not an issue of whether we have the right to dress they way we want, but is more of a question of 'should' we dress in any way we please despite a given context. Example: when walking through a neighborhood known for violent crime and robbery, we have the 'right' to walk around wearing diamond and gold jewelry and hundred dollar bills hanging out of our pockets. But, does this 'right' protect us from those who have the desire and ability to violate our rights? Answer: no. Relevant to this argument, do women (or men) have a right to walk around campus at night in scantly clad outfits when sexual predators might be around? Yes. Should we? Maybe not. Of course, this is not to say that one's outfit is a causal factor of sexual violence, but in an at-risk area, caution is always the best accessory.
The trouble is, this sort of advice ignores the fact that women do get sexually assaulted no matter WHAT they wear. It's a means of shifting the focus from the person committing the crime to the person who was simply living her life. I found this article dismantling the analogy to be very thoughtful: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2010/02/23/rape-analogy-the-walking-in-a-bad-neighborhood-theory/
I would also add to that discussion the fact that in the robbery analogy it is highly unlikely that the fact that the victim was recklessly walking through a bad area with assets visible would be a significant factor in the institutional response to the crime. That is, I doubt that the police would be less likely to investigate, the state less likely to prosecute, the judge or jury less likely to convict based on that circumstance. The robbery is still viewed as a crime. However, women who have been deemed to have put themselves at risk for sexual assault (by their mode of dress, by drinking, by kissing someone, whatever) will very often face serious barriers in the legal system because of the perception that either no crime occurred, or it was somehow less blameworthy. Do you really think your robber would get a reduced or suspended sentence at the end of the day because he committed his crime in a high risk area and the victim should have known better? It seems unlikely to me. Believing that it is a valid response to the fact of sexual assault to advise women to just take more precautions reinforces the underlying attitude that these crimes are less heinous than we really all know they are.
Thanks for the article, and I appreciate your expansion on the topic to include the legal process. However (and though I completely do NOT support this), if an outfit does put a victim at risk of injustice within a broken system, does this not further support the advice to dress less than scantly?
And of course, this is not to shift any blame on the men and women victimized by sexual violence, my main point was to be cautious and do whatever we can to minimize the risk.
Also: WTF with the "acting like a woman" and "shaving your entire body, coloring your lips and cheeks, lengthening your eyelashes, extending your legs on high heels, "doing" your hair, dieting obsessively, waxing, plucking, padding your breasts, painting your nails, stuffing your tummy into tight spandex casings, wearing skirts and dresses and pantyhose and earrings"? Sheesh! It's bad enough that people are victimized by violent criminals, do they really need to victimize themselves?
Anyway, thanks for the dialogue!