Stop Whistling, Start Listening

Slut Walk London!

This afternoon I read the fantastic Vicky Simister’s latest column on the Fresh Outlook and discovered the upcoming Slut Walk London! event on 4th June. It follows the inaugural Slut Walk event in Toronto, which was founded in response to a Toronto police officer’s comment to a group of law students that if they don’t want to get raped “women should avoid dressing like sluts.”

I’ve come to expect a level of victim-blaming when it comes to rape cases but to hear comments like this from a police officer is still pretty shocking. It saddens me to think that it bears repeating that no-one is to blame for rape, except the rapist. Women do not invite rape by what they wear. They do not invite rape by drinking or getting drunk. They do not invite rape by flirting. Victim-blaming is another aspect of slut-shaming (which I recently wrote about), whereby if something happens to her, well, the slut must have brought it on herself.

And so we come to Slut Walk London! I’ll admit that part of me is a little uncomfortable with the attempts to reclaim the word slut. It’s so frequently used and still holds power (which continues in the current generation of teenagers) so inviting people to view us collectively as sluts leaves me feeling nervous. However, this is probably why the word should be reclaimed. Women getting together, reclaiming the streets and dressing and acting however they want to sends a powerful message, and unfortunately it’s a message that needs to be repeated. Women get raped no matter what they wear and it’s no-one’s fault but the rapist.

For more information on Slut Walk London! go to the blog or the event page on Facebook