International SlutWalks have received an enormous amount of media attention andpolarised feminist and non-feminist critique. The marches have either been characterised as feminist triumphs or failures, and the ideas underpinning them as either significant or less than worthless for women. Women who work in organisations like the Centre Against Sexual Assault and Project Respect have expressed many differing views on the marches, all of them strongly held. Why have we latched onto this movement with such force? What have we really been saying in our responses to the marches about women’s sexual autonomy and the nature of rape? Have we really been talking the walk?
It’s so hard to really discover what we desire. Most of us learn so early that our desires are either shameful or less important than pleasing others. We learn this as children and it is reinforced in our schools, media and wider culture.
Particularly as women, we are taught to take pleasure in the desire of others and in making ourselves desirable rather than discovering what it is we really want. This leaves us in a terrible position when it comes to owning our own sexuality. That there is still a concerted effort to hold women responsible for rape only adds fear and anger to the mix. Unravelling our own pleasure and the ownership of our own sexuality and autonomy is complicated and requires courage and dedication. So of course SlutWalk will strike many of us as simplistic and problematic. But sometimes when we begin to reclaim ourselves we do it simply and bluntly and with passionate anger. Subtlety comes later.
There has been an enormous amount of critical discussion about SlutWalk and a lot of talk about how the marches serve to obscure the fact that most sexual assault is perpetrated by those who are closest to us. But I think we may be forgetting how scared many of us continue to be on the street at night. We may be forgetting that part of the joy of a march is feeling sometimes for the first time that the world is ours.
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