I have a confession to make: I’m a slut. Or a skank, or a whore—however you’d like to put it.
The thing is, I’m not exactly sure what the term “slut” means any more. From my understanding, slut is generally used as an insult to someone who appears to have loose sexual morals. Yet I’ve heard many girls called sluts—some who frequent clubs and have an active sex life, and some who don’t do either. Actually, anyone can be called a slut, regardless of how they dress, regardless of their level of sexual activity. So I’m sure that to someone out there, I’m a slut.
The idea of perception plays a big part here. Slut is a term that operates on others’ perceptions of someone’s promiscuity, rather than reality. Moreover, slut-shaming, by women and men alike, can be incredibly hurtful. A 15-year-old girl named Phoebe Prince was bullied to such an extent by a group of students—she was called an “Irish whore,” among other things—that she ultimately hung herself in 2010. While tragedies like this are not the norm, they reveal a disturbing truth about our society: Apparently, if a woman acts promiscuously or has an active sex life, she should feel guilty or inferior, like she’s doing something wrong. Furthermore, to some, slut-shaming could provide justification for rape.
On January 24, 2011, Constable Michael Sanguinetti spoke at York University in a safety forum addressing the topic of crime prevention. During the discussion, he made the suggestion that in order to avoid rape, women should “avoid dressing like sluts.”
In protest, the SlutWalk movement was formed. The first SlutWalk took place on April 3, 2011, in Toronto, Canada, where more than 1,000 people gathered in Queen’s Park, for a march to the Toronto Police Headquarters. The participants were mainly young women, dressed in both ordinary and provocative clothing. The event was so successful that it has spread everywhere from Seattle to Chicago to Brazil to Australia to Scotland. There are more SlutWalks scheduled later this month in New Delhi, India; Auckland, New Zealand; and Morelia, Mexico.
Jessica Valenti, author of “The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women” and founder of the Feministing blog, described these SlutWalkers as, perhaps, “the future of feminism.” In a June 3 column in The Washington Post, Valenti said SlutWalkers are changing the face of feminism by “generating excitement, translating their anger into action and trying to change our supposedly respectable society into one that truly respects men, women and yes, even ‘sluts.’”
SlutWalks emphasize an important, relevant point: It is simply not justifiable to use any aspect of a woman’s appearance to explain or excuse rape.
Still, the movement has been criticized in its efforts reclaim the word slut. For activist Harsha Walia, the term’s racist implications are not to be ignored; as she points out, “I personally don’t feel the whole ‘reclaim slut’ thing. I find that the term disproportionately impacts women of color and poor women to reinforce their status as inherently dirty and second-class.” For Gail Dines, an anti-pornography activist, the celebration of the word slut embraces a problematic “pornified consumer sexuality.”
Luckily enough, our society has provided ways to deem the term slut a little less hurtful. Many of us use the term in jest, in a context where it’s not an insult. For one, I’m prone to calling my friends, male or female, “slut toboggan” and “skankmuffin” (obnoxiously so), only because of the sheer absurdity of combining a potentially derogatory term with a pastry or mode of transportation in order to conceive a nickname neither derogatory or food-and-transportation related—one of affection. When I emphatically declare that “I’m wearing something slutty to Shooters tonight!” I’m not trying to be politically incorrect—I’m just being silly. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with wearing a slutty outfit to Shooters.
The slut label applies to every facet of our lives—how we think, drink, walk, talk. In some context or the other, every woman fulfills the slut label—whether we have active and fulfilling sex lives, wear tight miniskirts, tell dirty jokes, dance suggestively or voice our opinions. More importantly, there’s nothing wrong with any of these. If SlutWalks are capitalizing on the universality of the term slut in order to fight a victim-blaming rape culture, it definitely encourages us to lessen the power of the word, whether through silliness, humor or marching—scantily or ordinarily clad—in a SlutWalk. If we know we’re all sluts, it sure makes it easier to fulfill Valenti’s vision of a society that respects all women, men and even sluts—it puts us all on equal footing. After all, isn’t the best way to effect social change to change the way we think about ourselves?
Indu Ramesh is a Trinity junior.
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