The Toronto demonstration against victim-blaming and in favour of a woman’s right to dress as she pleases without being accused of attracting rape celebrated its first birthday Friday to international acclaim. There are SlutWalks around the world again this year, sadly necessary but still good fun.
The Toronto march took place in extreme heat Friday from Nathan Phillips Square to Queen’s Park during rush hour. It was as exuberant as last year’s despite the fact that since then something known as “the war on women” reached full-throttle.
Last year, it was a Toronto cop’s statement at a York University law seminar that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” that inspired two young women, Heather Jarvis and Sonia J.F. Barnett, to set up SlutWalk.
This year, you could plow through minefields of vicious remarks about women. U.S. radio host Rush Limbaugh would get his own hellish half-acre with his “slut” attack on law student Sandra Fluke for testifying in Congress on birth control rights. Birth control? It isn’t enough that women have to take care how they dress in the morning, it’s that they’re not even allowed to stack the odds against getting pregnant. How dare they?
Planned Parenthood, of all things, came under fire in the U.S. As MoveOn.Org reports, the state of Georgia considered changing the legal term for victims of rape, stalking and domestic violence to “accuser.” If you were robbed, though, you’d still be a victim.
A Toronto teenager was applauded for telling his female classmates to dress more modestly. Schoolgirls were shamed for wearing their skirts too short on the subway. (Thank you, middle-aged men, for your emails on this subject.) There’s a weird obsession with how females dress. Eerie is not too strong a word.
Astonishing, the power of words like “slut,” “bitch” and “c---”, especially when combined with “ugly,” “trashy” and “asking for it.” Words can hurt, they can help, but this past year they hurt so much.
As Jarvis told The Grid in an interview this week, “I’ve spoken to a lot of young women who are devastated because they’ve been called words like slut, but the idea is that they can think about this word differently and realize that it says more about the person using it. You know: It sucks, they’re jerks, and I’m fine.”
That’s the Jarvis demotic. (She herself “identifies as queer,” using a slur that is now welcome in academia.) When you’ve been called a name, recite her last sentence to yourself and feel strong. I offer this advice especially to teenage girls, for this was a year of revelations about how they are bullied, made unready to be pushed into the adult world where the bullying will take a different form.
Though the name may shock some, SlutWalk helps.
And one of the most heartening things about the parade was that so many men showed up in solidarity with women, and that women of all ages wearing a wide variety of garments —brazen, tight, tight, casual, sacklike, wonderfully ill-advised, from fashion-forward to borderline bathrobe — walked happily together, everyone absolutely fine with wearing whatever.
I have no idea what the police made of it, though it must be embarrassing having had one of your own spark a worldwide shout-out.
SlutWalk co-founder Heather Jarvis
SlutWalk is one of your more cheerful demonstrations. This is the attitude that is most useful in defusing the hatred women have seen in the past year. Anger is great but laughter is best, especially when it’s loud and in the company of freedom-loving feminist men and women.
As a fashion note, I wore a blue dress by Joseph, low-cut but worn with a Roarke New York scarf in tribute to Jarvis, a scarf-wearer, and purple flats by Arche, French maker of comfy shoes. Not very sluttish at all but no one minded. Which was the whole point.
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