Listen to the interview with the F Word Media Collective's Meghan Murphy here.
Slutwalk started in Toronto in response to a cop saying that women should avoid dressing like sluts to not get raped. Of course this sparked outrage among the entire female community in the city, and slutwalk was the formalized reaction to the statement. The original point was to challenge the culture of victim-blaming which is still incredibly, shockingly prevalent, and I guess the idea was to highlight the fact that no matter how a woman dresses, she never deserves to be raped or assaulted. The call was for women to come out dressed however they like and show the Toronto police and the rapists of the world that any woman, dressed in any manner, could be called a slut, in an attempt to remove the power of the word. So very quickly, right from the beginning, this was as much about the reclamation of the word itself as it was about addressing the notion that a woman could be asking for it. As the founders have said “we called it something controversial. Did it get attention? Damn right it did!” And maybe that’s a valid point, as there have been more conversations about this than any other motion the women’s movement has ever made. But I’m not sure that any publicity is good publicity, particularly in this case.
Slutwalk started in Toronto in response to a cop saying that women should avoid dressing like sluts to not get raped. Of course this sparked outrage among the entire female community in the city, and slutwalk was the formalized reaction to the statement. The original point was to challenge the culture of victim-blaming which is still incredibly, shockingly prevalent, and I guess the idea was to highlight the fact that no matter how a woman dresses, she never deserves to be raped or assaulted. The call was for women to come out dressed however they like and show the Toronto police and the rapists of the world that any woman, dressed in any manner, could be called a slut, in an attempt to remove the power of the word. So very quickly, right from the beginning, this was as much about the reclamation of the word itself as it was about addressing the notion that a woman could be asking for it. As the founders have said “we called it something controversial. Did it get attention? Damn right it did!” And maybe that’s a valid point, as there have been more conversations about this than any other motion the women’s movement has ever made. But I’m not sure that any publicity is good publicity, particularly in this case.
