Being a self-confessed feminist is a lot like having an STD. It’s anti-social, more common than you think, takes chutzpah to admit to and oh my gosh does it ever scare the boys off. I’ve heard it all: from outraged cries of “But you’re not a feminist! You’re wearing a dress!” to leering assumptions about my sexual choices/fertility levels/marital status. The mutation of the feminist from a legitimate (if despised and often frightening) political activist to a cartoon hairy-legged harpy who can’t get a husband is one of the cleverest moves a hostile culture could have made. Instead of confronting feminism it shifted the movement, and any woman who dared to vocalise the way in which the scales of power still seemed tipped against her, into the realms of comedy. There’s no better way to engage with serious political challenge than to make it ridiculous.
Is this all about to change? Are we reaching a point where the dreaded F-word can finally be spoken aloud? From the furore around the SlutWalk ‘phenomenon’, you’d think so.
I’m in two minds about SlutWalk. On the one hand, the sentiment needs to be screamed from the rooftops: rape is not about what women wear or do or drink or say, it’s about men using their genitals as weapons. It’s about violence, control, domination and power, not about sex. For every woman who gets raped in a skirt there’s one who got raped wearing jeans, one who was only seven years old or one who was 90, one who was wearing a hijab, one who was in her pyjamas, in her own home, talking to a friend. Making the conversation about how women invite rape means, yet again, avoiding the conversation that tries to find out why men do these things and how we can get them to stop. Those women walking through cities in their fishnets are doing more than any of our governments have to make this point, and to make it loudly. It’s easy to criticise the impulse but if you’ve never experienced how physically threatening it can feel to walk down a street in heels then you probably won’t understand the charge of going out wearing whatever you want without fear.
All of which said, while the idea behind SlutWalk is both sound and necessary, I’m slightly wary of aligning myself with a movement that makes women’s issues all about women’s bodies. I spend a lot of time trying to avoid the world’s determination to define me by my biology (yes I have ovaries! But I can read too!), and experience has taught that certain people find it easy to dismiss my arguments with reference to my bosoms. For me, then, a version of feminism that emphasises how I look and what I wear, however subversively, feels a little too narrow. It’s saddening but not surprising, given our cultural obsession with biologising women, that the most vocal strain of feminist dialogue is about bodies.
Attitudes to rape are an enormous social issue but they’re not the only issue that we should be thinking about. I’m not convinced that ‘slut’ is a label that needs to be reclaimed; unlike other slurs that have undergone reclamation it has no real historical precedent. SlutWalk makes the statement that women should not have to be afraid on the streets but it also runs the risk of reiterating to the less thoughtful that rape is related to what we look like and to our sexual practices, which it isn’t. Maybe the core of the issue is that the SlutWalk isn’t really about rape, but rather about rape apologism. While these things need to be said, I worry about the possibility of replacing one cartoon feminist with another: from Angry Lesbians to Slutty Schoolgirls.
This isn’t the first time the media have proclaimed the Next Coming of Feminism, and the announcement of the end of patriarchy seems a little premature. But if there’s one thing these trends are making clear it’s that there are a lot of very angry women out there, and a lot of them are younger than hoary old mid-30s feminists like me. There’s space for all sorts on these marches. A lot of them are sex workers and school kids and they cross racial and class boundaries in a way that 1970s feminism never managed. There are men involved (I know! Men!). People are stomping and shouting instead of discussing tattered copies of Simone de Beauvoiur. Whether or not I entirely subscribe to their methodology, the SlutWalk organisers and participants are making it clear that feminism, and the need for feminist action, never went away. No, an Ann Summers on every corner doesn’t make up for institutionalised blindness to sexual violence, more flexible maternity leave doesn’t mean we can forget about equal work for equal pay, and you know what? Lots of us don’t find pole dancing empowering.
I may have a few reservations about their tactics but SlutWalk has got people talking about serious issues that usually get ignored. Could they be subtler, less provocative? Probably, but then that’s what was said about the suffragettes. Whispering never got us anywhere.
If you’re looking for an easy and visually accessible way to explain the issues to idiots I suggest you direct them here. With thanks to Bee for the tip