About this time last year, I was walking home from the local post office; my arms were full of packages, I was wearing glasses, a ski parka, and my daggiest jeans. So naturally a carload of passing yobs saw fit to bark "SLUT!" at me as they drove past.
Not long before that incident, Sex & The City 2 had just been released. American critic Roger Ebert's review of the film contained this line: "Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) is still a sexaholic slut."
This year, during the coverage of the "St Kilda schoolgirl" case, one word kept coming up in social media discussions: slut. Slut. Slut.
So when the opportunity arose to organise a Melbourne iteration of the SlutWalk marches that have sprung up worldwide, we grabbed it with both hands.
The "SlutWalk" phenomenon began in January this year, when a group of Toronto women organised a protest following a local police officer's comments (to university students) that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised".
The organisers' stance was simple: to call for an end to victim-blaming, the idea that victims of sexual assault or rape could somehow be blamed for their attackers' actions based upon what the victim was wearing or doing at the time. Was the victim dressed skimpily? Were they intoxicated? Did they have a large number of sexual partners? Yes? Oh well, that explains it then.
In addition, the walks protested against a culture of slut-shaming. As the founders put it, "Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence, regardless if we participate in sex for pleasure or work. No one should equate enjoying sex with attracting sexual assault."
As the protests have spread across the globe, organisers have stayed true to those twin philosophies. What's been fascinating has been watching how participants have expanded the scope of what a SlutWalk can mean.
Some who walk do so to reclaim the word "slut"; to empty it of its power to criticise and judge a person's sexual expression. Some are self-confessed sluts and proud. Some are slut allies. And some walk because they hate the word "slut" and demand the right not to be called it no matter what they do or how they dress.
There's no doubt that the word is problematic for many; for some, it's just too far gone, too marinated in negativity to ever be reclaimed or repurposed. They're entitled to that opinion - though, once upon a time, who would have predicted that slurs such as "queer", "dyke", "wog", "nigga" or "whore" would one day be reclaimed for positive use by the very people the words were originally thrown at in hatred?
SlutWalk participants are not expecting to change the word's meaning, or even necessarily apply it to their own personal lives; as Ray Filar wrote in The Guardian this week, instead they're saying "by reclaiming the derogatory terms that you use to silence my sexual expression, I dilute your power".
If nothing else, we hope that SlutWalk Melbourne — and its interstate counterparts — will lead people to think a little more deeply about their use of language: if they use the term "slut" against people, why and what do they think it means?
However, we hope for much more than that: a day when people (because SlutWalk is by no means a "women-only" event) can dress however they like — whether in a miniskirt or fully covered — and express themselves in whatever manner they see fit, without fear of persecution, judgment or sexual violence.
While organising SlutWalk Melbourne I keep thinking back to my uni days, when a dear friend of mine used to greet us all warmly by saying "What's up, sluts?" She said it with such affection and enthusiasm that ever since I've considered myself a slut — on those terms, not the terms that are yelled from speeding cars or passed down from the moral high ground.
No matter whether you identify as female or male, no matter your sexual preference, religion, age, ability, dress sense or politics, I hope you attend your local SlutWalk. If you subscribe to the radical notion that no one deserves to be raped, who knows — you may already be a slut. If the incredible people who've gotten behind SlutWalk so far are anything to go by, lord knows I'm proud to be one.
Clem Bastow is a Melbourne writer and comedian and one of the organisers of Melbourne's protest on May 28. See here for more details.
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU
Email a friend