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An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk

September 23, 2011

We the undersigned women of African descent and anti-violence advocates, activists, scholars, organizational and spiritual leaders wish to address the SlutWalk. First, we commend the organizers on their bold and vast…

scotchandpancakes:

I recently learned about the SlutWalk, and it’s gotten me thinking a lot about the experiences of certain people in my life with sexual assault and how we can change the cultural norms, mindsets, or attitudes that propagate violence against women.  Though I am fully aware that men also experience sexual assault, because I am a woman and I also know that women are more often the victims of – or, rather, survivors of – sexual violence, my focus here is on women.

In the U.S., 1 out of 4 women will experience sexual assault in their lifetimes, and many are taken advantage of simply because they choose to wear what they want, drink what they want, or socialize in the places and with the people they want.  It is incredibly sad to me that we live in a world where making simple choices with the goal of having “fun” opens women up to dangerous situations, whereas men rarely have to wonder about such things as, “If I go drinking with my friends/if I wear this outfit/if I try to have a friendly conversation with this person – is someone going to force themselves upon me sexually?”   What’s worse is that many men who commit acts of sexual violence don’t even realize what they’ve done.  They’ll have no idea that their actions deeply affected another human being.  They won’t be able to understand how a single encounter, a relatively fleeting moment in their lives, will actually stay in that woman’s mind – probably vividly – forever.  

The SlutWalk got its start this year in Toronto after a Toronto police officer stated that, in order to avoid being sexually assaulted, “…women should avoid dressing like sluts…”  Sonya Barnett and Heather Jarvis, the founders of SlutWalk, were outraged by this flagrant victim-blaming and decided to organize a march wherein women can come together dressed in whatever manner they please and protest the idea that the way a woman decides to dress can be an invitation for sexual violence – a seeming reality in our culture, and one which men almost never have to take into account when they open their closet doors.  The goal of the SlutWalk is twofold:

1. Raise awareness as to the fact that the decision on the part of the perpetrator to sexually assault a woman is his and his alone – he is actively choosing to commit an act of violence against another human being, a decision that cannot be attributed to the victim of that crime.
2. Redeem the word “slut” and other derogatory, anti-female terms such that they can no longer be used to tear woman down but, instead, can be owned by women (much like the LGBT community did with the word “queer”).

As Barnett and Jarvis have stated, they are “…tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result…Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence…No one should equate enjoying sex with attracting sexual assault.”

 The inaugural SlutWalk in Toronto this past April attracted nearly 3,000 participants and has quickly spread to other major cities around the world, such as Washington, D.C. and Dallas.  In fact, some people have gone so far as to describe this event as the “…most successful feminist action of the past 20 years,” as it has quickly brought together thousands of people to protest sexual violence and engage in critical discourse regarding the identity of women and male/female gender roles in the 21^st century.

The SlutWalks have also been the source of intense criticism.  Certain commentators – many of them men – have said that guidance on how to dress is simply “risk management,” even drawing analogies between sexual assault and home invasion:

I have a perfect right to leave my windows open when I nip to the shops for some fags, without being burgled. It doesn’t lessen the guilt of the burglar that I’ve left my window open, or even remotely suggest that I was deserving of being burgled. Just that it was more likely to happen. – Rod Liddle

Despite Liddle’s assertion that a woman’s personal choices do not make her “deserving” of having a sex crime committed against her, according to statistics posted in a British newspaper, a survey taken in London in 2009 showed that:

• 27% of people believe a woman is responsible for her assaults if she was “flirting”
• 26% of people believe a woman is responsible for her assaults if she was walking alone in a dark place
• 17% of people believe a woman is responsible for her assaults if she was dressed in “sexy clothing”

These are incredible statistics.  It blows my mind to know that people believe that a women essentially “deserves” to be assaulted simply based on the clothing she wears or the path home she chooses.  As Elizabeth Webb, organizer of the SlutWalk Dallas pointed out, “If someone breaks into a house, do you blame the owner for having a house that looks appetizing?” 

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