source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=3876 -



Reasons I Will Not Go On the Slutwalk

10 mai 2011

par Rebecca Mott, writer

Slutwalk can appear to be a strong feminist statement, but for me as an exited prostituted woman, it feels a negative way to approach male violence against all women and girls.

I do not believe that reclaiming the word "Slut" does anything to say to violent men that their behaviour is out of order, rather it plays into their hands. Naming yourself as a Slut is framed yourself as what abusive men want women to be. The naming of the Slut is commonly used to keep women and girls as sexual objects for men to use. The naming of the Slut is used to keep women and girls heterosexual, and not liberated, but there to please the man.

Reclaiming the word Slut does not make that history magically disappear.

But for me as an exited prostituted woman, I am very cynical about the reasons behind Slutwalk - and that it so quickly s taken up by liberal and often pro-sex trade feminists - is because being a Slut defined as "work" when it is inside the sex trade.

Wonderful, another magic slight of hand that makes violence to women inside the sex trade disappear, for it just their work, and therefore cannot be male violence but just the role of the prostitute.

Slutwalk is in the interests of privileged women who can play with the role of the Slut, dress as a whore, have signs with words like "Sluts Say Yes", can imagined that women inside the sex trade are empowered as they call us their Sisters.

Slutwalk is about saying rape is bad when done to "real" women and girls whatever they wear and wherever they go. But ignore with a fierce will, the day-to-day rapes and sexual torturing of women and girls inside the sex trade.

That is ignored - because in the view of Slutwalk it is just work - so we must not judge or even look too deeply.

Some women on Slutwalk think it is radical to dress as their stereotypical view of the Slut, or the cartoon version of the whore. They may call it burlesques, but for exited women it is an insult.

Dressing as whore for a night out is often done from a position of deep privilege. You do so because you assume you will safe, and if you are raped there would outrage.

Playing the whore is not to be a whore.

Most prostituted women and girls have no protection from rape, have no outrage when it happens - their clothes and whereabouts are minor problems compare to living in a society that dismisses their suffering, and just uses their image to party down.

Also, how dare you dress in stereotype whorish ways that most prostitutes are attempting to get away from. You are really showing your privilege.

Of course, I believe no woman or girl should be rape in any situation, whatever she is wearing.

But Slutwalk is avoiding the elephant in the room that men that make the choice to rape will rape any woman or girl, no matter what she wears or the situation she is in.

It is male entitlement that believes that all women and girls can be made in nothing but sexual objects that is the issue - it is the male view that he will take and rape without serious consequences that is the issue.

It not about women trying to work out how to conform enough that violent men may change their behaviour - it about fighting for justice and serious punishment to end male violence.

I will go to Reclaim the Night - but Slutwalk does nothing to me and for true justice for the prostituted.

Rebecca Mott, Facebook Page, 1 May, 2011

* French version.

On Sisyphe, 6 May, 2011

Rebecca Mott, writer


Source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=3876 -