by Camilla Ostrow
On January 24, 2011, a representative from the Toronto police department stated that, “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” Well, yeah, that makes sense. And I say, why stop there? Black people should avoid looking so black so as not to be labeled as criminals. Also, a word to all you Asians out there: if you don’t want me to ask you for help with my calculus homework, you should probably stop looking like you’d be good at math.
Naturally, this comment made a lot of people really angry. The SlutWalks were then formed not only in response to this man’s comment, but as a general way to assert female sexual empowerment. In my very first blog post for the SPARKteam I wrote about why not to use the word “slut” in every day conversation… but the SlutWalks are different, because it’s not like these women are blindly calling themselves sluts, but instead the walks are about reclaiming the term “slut” in favor of women.
But it seems like a lot of what the SlutWalks have done is produce a huge shit-storm of arguments. Let’s just say the broadest of the broad terms like, “Foucaldian,” and, “systematic,” have come up more than once. For example, in an article against the SlutWalks, Gail Dines wrote, “The term ‘slut’ is so deeply rooted in the patriarchal “madonna/whore” view of women’s sexuality that it is beyond redemption. The word is so saturated with the ideology that female sexual energy deserves punishment that trying to change its meaning is a waste of precious feminist resources.”
Now, when I read Dines’ article I really wanted to hate it, because I love the SlutWalks. I think that it’s virtually undeniable that these demonstrations made women feel empowered, and there’s something totally awesome to be said about that. But at the same time, it’s also hard to deny that Dines makes an amazing point, and all of the arguments I’ve heard that try to refute it unfortunately fails to recognize her really solid statement about the effects of language in a patriarchal system.
I get that the SlutWalks are about reclaiming a word in order to debunk the “Madonna/whore” complex, but wasn’t it Audre Lorde who established that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”? And I think that most academics have established that Lorde was right when she said this. So, that leaves me wondering why myself and so many others like me who get the importance of language and who understand the issues with working against patriarchy USING patriarchy, are so apt to defend the SlutWalks. What is it about them–despite all of Gail Dines’ irrefutable brilliance–that makes us want to love them?
And my pondering of such a tough question brings me to this word that I’ve come to really despise, but which I think kind of applies here: Slacktivism. Slacktivism is a term, which I believe was created by annoying kinds of people who say things like, “Oh my god, I’m so sick of email, I wish people still wrote letters!” Really? You wish people still wrote letters? Because…that worked so well for Romeo and Juliet?
These kinds of people say that the rise of social networking allows young people to be “slacktivists” by posting things like “Fight breast cancer!” on Facebook without actually donating any money or spending any time really fighting breast cancer. Hence, “slacktivism” is to “slacker activists” as “Brangelina” is to “Brad and Angelina,” as “CamBeiber” is to…never mind.
The problem with using the term “slacktivism” is how it has been used to totally debunk the efforts of my generation. Tireless critics of the SlutWalks do this really ironic thing by both participating in a somewhat irrelevant criticism of young people, while also being kind of Slacktivists themselves. It’s easy to talk about what NOT to do, but that leads me to ask, other than circulating criticism and theories into the academic world… what the hell are you doing?
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t meant to be some personal attack against Gail Dines or anyone else for that matter, but what I’m saying is that ultimately, sitting around and hating on the SlutWalks, seems like a Slacktivist’s way of feigning feminist action. The SlutWalks were meant to let women know that they don’t have to answer to anyone for their sexual behavior, and I think that they succeeded at this in a really beautiful way. I mean, as a 19 year old girl who has literally sat in a bathroom stall while her unknowing classmates pondered her level of “sluttiness” (FYI, the conclusion was that I was, “Like, kind of slutty… but also nice”), I can tell you that seeing so many women stand up and said “Hey, you don’t have to feel like a monster because someone called you a slut,” felt really good.
To cloud the positive effects of the SlutWalks with this super-academic argument about how language affects society–ergo affects women and all of that–is to deny that so much of this generation’s feminist movement is about reaching real people. And I don’t care if you think we need to focus more on long term systematic changes, because I agree that yes, we definitely do; if you try to tell me that making real women feel good about themselves is not an absolute priority, then I’m going to have to say that you’re just wrong. And this isn’t to say that I think Dines is saying we shouldn’t reach out to real women…but I do think that she, and others like her, neglect to acknowledge how the SlutWalks, and lots of other feminist efforts of my generation, have the immediate effect of making women feel supported, and in my opinion, that just rocks.