#slutwalknyc

[knitgalivey]

Y'all wish you had @amberrose confidence... #ijs Daaayyyyuuummm ! #bodyart #bodypositive #bodygoals #slutwalknyc (at New York, New York)

[lorna-laurentino-blog]

Slutwalk NYC

Protest is in the air in New York City, so it seems only fitting that Slutwalk NYC was held this weekend.   In the midst of an Occupy Wall Street protest gone manic and recent attacks in Park Slope, Over 4,000 protesters organized in Union Square in attempts to take back the night.  Women and men alike marched throughout the East Village, demanding their voices be heard and victim blaming will never be tolerated. The Slutwalk movement has literally taken the world by storm.  Before the organization surfaced in New York, protesters fought to take the word back in over 20 states across the country, as well as India, South Africa, UK, Australia, Ireland, Scotland, and Kyrgyzstan.  Since late August, Park Slope has been terrorized by a serial rapist.  While he has still yet to be caught, the NYPD feel it necessary to stop women on the streets, point out their clothing choices, and claim that they are making themselves, 'targets," of sexual assault. The Slutwalkers of NYC state: No matter who you are No matter where you work No matter how you identify No matter how you flirt No matter what you wear No matter whom you choose to love No matter what you said before: NO ONE has the right to touch you without your consent. SlutWalk NYC is part of a worldwide grassroots movement challenging rape culture, victim-blaming and slut-shaming, and working to end sexual and domestic violence. If you're passionate about helping the cause, please take the time to sign this open petition to the New York City Police Department, demanding that their officials be re-taught the logistics of rape culture:

http://www.change.org/petitions/nypd-train-your-cops-to-blame-rapists-for-rape-not-victims

[originally posted 10/4/11]

[jamiesinverguenza]

This is one of the most helpful things I've read about SlutWalk and The Offensive Sign that appeared at the NYC march. I initially was not very interested in SlutWalk; like the author, the word 'slut' has never been used against me directly, and I didn't really feel any connection to the movement. That is, until people I'm friendly with got involved with organizing the NYC march, people who I believed and still believe worked very hard to put together an event that would be genuinely inclusive. Since then, I've been trying to read as much about it as possible.

This is the paragraph that really caught my attention:

"All of this gnashing of teeth about whether or not white women get to claim the word, "n****r," as ours. Isn't that what this is? That is, a slightly more sophisticated take on the old question, "Why don't we get to say it if they get to say it?" Why do we feel entitled to dictate the terms of these debates? Do we, the beneficiaries of slavery, think—in spite of everything—that we own these racist words too?"

I eventually came around on SlutWalk because I realized that even if I've never been called a slut, the unspoken threat that I might be labeled that way has definitely affected my behavior, or to be more precise, it affected how my mother and grandmother taught me to behave. But my belief, cynical though it may sound, is that the majority of human beings have absolutely no understanding of how powerful language really is, and that especially in this country, our understanding of what we are doing when we communicate verbally is deliberately and brutally depoliticized.

I guess if you've learned that language is merely a means of communication, and you have the luxury of never having been the victim of hate speech, they're 'just words' to you. That privilege, not just light-skinned or white privilege, was at work in That Sign. Good on Kristin Rawls for speaking up about it.

[afrolez-blog]

...I do not dig debating with young white feminists late into the night about white privilege and having other Black women in the thread have to call out the supposed anti-racist feminists for not speaking up, for yet again forcing Black women to do the exhausting work of teaching. I do not dig being told on the interwebs, –tumblr, other blogs, the Slutwalk NYC FB page–that Black women are being hyper-sensitive and divisive. I do not dig being intellectually insulted with the assertion that I simply didn’t understand “Yoko and John’s intent.” As if. Y’all know that saying about intentions and well, perhaps you should also recognize that we are long past the point of talking about intent when we talk about racism. We should be talking about impact. (Rest in Power to the venerable Dr. Derrick Bell, father of Critical Race Theory, whom we have to thank for that little insight.) Intent is about individual relationships and hurt feelings; impact is about systems of power and their impact on material realities..." ~ Crunk Feminist Collective "I Saw the Sign but Did We Really Need a Sign?: SlutWalk and Racism" ~

READ IN ITS ENTIRETY HERE

http://bit.ly/qRf9kK

[afrolez-blog]

...But can you appropriate a term like n****r if your body is not defined/ terrorized/ policed/ brutalized/diminished by the word? Can we use it in a context that is supposed to belie gender solidarity, without explicitly being in racial solidarity? I think not. And I am not alone... ~ Latoya Peterson, "Which Women Are What Now? Slutwalk NYC and Failures in Solidarity," RACIALICIOUS

READ IN ITS ENTIRETY HERE http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/05/which-women-are-what-now-slutwalk-nyc-and-failures-in-solidarity/#more-18267

[womanofsteele-blog]

For the record...my own response to my own quotation in Sady Doyle's piece about Slutwalk...

From Doyle...

"Speaking to Steele, however, raised uncomfortable questions. At one point, she referred to SlutWalk as the “next global feminist movement,” and said that there hadn’t been anything like it “in the last 20 years.” She also said that “I don’t think the media would be paying attention to us if we were called, you know, ‘March To End Sexual Violence.’”

It’s precisely this—the implication that SlutWalk is not only a feminist protest but the feminist protest; the uncomfortable feeling that despite the long-term work of many feminist anti-rape activists, and a New York feminist community which organized a huge rally against the acquittal of the NYPD “rape cops” and multiple protests against the handling of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case this summer alone, feminism itself is now being effectively rebranded and subsumed into the media-friendly presence of SlutWalk—that many people find problematic. There is concern that SlutWalk promotes itself to the exclusion of other feminist protests and communities; that it has pitched itself so eagerly as the “next” feminist movement, and maybe the first real feminist movement in decades, that it has inadvertently devalued the movements that exist.

To steer away from the idea that SlutWalk represented the only sizable feminist protest since 1991, I asked Steele whether SlutWalk wasn’t comparable to Take Back the Night, an international feminist protest against rape that began in 1975, and has been a presence on American college campuses for the past three and a half decades."

“I’m only twenty-six,” she said. “I can’t speak about stuff that I can’t remember. But since ‘Take Back the Night,’ I can’t remember something like this."

WHAT I REALLY MEANT:

So for the record, I realized during the interview that I had no business saying the line I did about 20 years and asked to have it taken out, since I had gotten caught up and said something that I couldn't vouch for.  However, I would just like to state that I called myself a feminist before Slutwalk, and in no way think it is the only face of feminism.  I do, however, have no recollection of anything inciting as much global activism as Slutwalk, which, again, in no way negates the work of any feminists, WITHOUT WHOM I COULD NOT CALL MYSELF A FEMINIST, prior to Slutwalk.  I do however believe that victim blaming and rape culture are uniting feminists worldwide in a way I have never seen before.

That is all.  Excuse me while I go feel like a huge asshole for the rest of the evening and attempt to drown this feeling in whiskey.

[smallerthings]

Slutwalk NYC! 

[lizimajig]

Hey hey! Ho ho! This rape culture has got to go! [Blanket TW]

I went to Slutwalk NYC by myself, but I wasn't alone.  (Photo by Denise Ginley. That is me, and my sign, and my little black dress that isn't saying anything BECAUSE IT'S A GODDAMN DRESS.)  I don't have a story to share. I've never been raped, or assaulted, and I thank god this is the case every day. The worst that has happened is that there have been guys who have made me uncomfortable -- usually in a public space. I have friends and family -- some of them talk about it, others don't, but statistically, it's the case. I remember during a college orientation meeting we had the old, "Look to your right, look to your left, chances are one of you will be sexually assaulted in your lifetime." Since it wasn't (isn't) me, I sometimes wonder whether it was (will be) Right or Left. I wanted to walk. I went to walk for my friends and family who can't, for whatever reason, or aren't comfortable. Because it pisses me off that people will take one of the most horrible things to ever happen to people that I LOVE and make a joke about it, expect me to laugh, and try to ostracize me and them when I don't. It pisses me off when people try and ask details, of "What was she (because it is usually, but not always, a she -- and if it's not we don't talk about it at all, which is in some ways worse) wearing? Was she drinking? How well did she know this person? How many other people has she slept with?" IT'S IRRELEVANT, OKAY. You can't ask to have a violent crime committed on your person. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. Sometimes I read things on the internet that just make me so upset and depress me so horribly and I can't believe that people seriously think that if someone wanted to rape me while I was walking down the street, or at a party, or in my own bedroom, that it would make a difference whether I was wearing a little black dress, jeans and a sweatshirt, pajamas, if my hair and make up was done, or if I was having a good day or a bad day. A rapist whether they be a stranger or someone you trust is not going to look at a girl with a messy ponytail and ratty jeans and an oversized hoodie and say, "Oh, gee, not hot enough. I'll catch the next one." Because it's not about sex. And it pisses me off that people don't get that. So, instead of sitting on my ass in my room, I went and got mad with a thousand other women and men of all sizes, ages, and races and all manners of dress. And we filled the streets with our anger. People took my picture, I took theirs, and we did our best collectively and individually to get our message out. As it started to rain, a guy from Vanity Fair (I'm pretty sure that's what he said) asked me some questions. He said he'd follow up with an e-mail with some more questions so I'm waiting for those and will keep an eye out. If we changed one mind, changed one heart, or made someone think about their behavior, then I think it was worth it. I'm aware that "Slutwalk" in itself has problems wrt the terminology it uses, and who feels comfortable with it and who doesn't, particularly in regards to WOC. But I can't live in a world anymore where victims are blamed for crimes that are perpetrated on them, particularly something so violent and devastating as rape and sexual assault. I don't want to live here anymore, my mother and aunts have lived here long enough. I don't want my little sister -- my AWESOME baby sister who does things like head butt Brazilians in Japanese night clubs when they try and get fresh with her and her friend -- to live here anymore. I don't want my friends to be here anymore. I don't want my children, boys, girls, and otherwise to have to worry about... anything, but least of all whether someone will try to blame them for something that is not their fault.