Have you heard about the “slut walks” sweeping the globe?
No, they aren’t being organized by frat boys. Quite the opposite: Thank the gals in the so-called feminist movement for this one.
Toronto, Ottawa, Boston, Dallas and London have all seen “slut walks” in recent weeks, with 24 more planned around the world. It was all spawned by a Toronto police officer’s boneheaded comment at a January campus-safety forum that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”
Women bear responsibility for their rapes? OK, anger at that notion is plenty righteous. So, the Toronto slut walk was born to demand respect for sexual-assault victims. But the idea that being a “slut” is a bad thing also raised ire — it’s why the Toronto organizers announced on their Web site that they were “tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality. [We are] taking the [the word slut] back.”
Just what the women of the world have been clamoring for: to call themselves sluts.
No wonder a 2008 Daily Beast poll found that just 20 percent of women call themselves “feminists,” and only 17 percent would want their daughters to use the label.
Want to cringe some more? A Slut Walk Boston organizer told a reporter, “We are using these efforts to reclaim the word ‘slut.’ ” So at one event after another, women held up signs saying, “Proud Slut,” “Sluts Say Yes” and “Slut Pride.” They marched in bras and fishnet stockings, some with the word “slut” scrawled on their bodies with lipstick.
And slut-supporting men beamed in their “I love sluts” T-shirts. You bet they do.
In Boston, feminist writer Jaclyn Friedman bellowed, “Today we all march under the banner of sluthood!” In Ottawa, revelers chanted, “Slut, slut. Ho, ho. Yes means yes, and no means no!” The Web site “Feministing” described the slut walks as a “movement,” with one blogger saying, “Sign me up for Team Sluts.” The Slut Walk DC Web site boasts a banner, “Reclaiming the word slut.”
This is supposed to pass as progress for women?
Slut-walk defenders say that they’re being ironic, that it’s supposed to be funny that women are turning a word used to dehumanize them into a badge of pride.
If you don’t like the slut walks, then you just don’t get the hilarity of women debasing themselves in the name of empowerment.
OK, the early feminists — from whom the imposters ruining the movement claim to descend — did manage to turn the pejorative “suffragette,” coined to mock the seekers of equality, into a positive word. But a name that meant to mock is different than a word meant to dehumanize.
Here’s a prediction: Feminists will no sooner turn “slut” into a positive word outside their ever-shrinking bubble than African-Americans who call each other the “N-word” have taken away the sting of that dehumanizing epithet. Some words should be retired for good.
And many gays may now march proudly as “queer” — but plenty still bristle when an outsider uses the word. That’s unlikely to change, considering the original intent of it.
Sex-positive feminist icon Erica Jong presciently told writer Ariel Levy in 2003: “I was standing in the shower the other day, picking up my shampoo. It’s called ‘Dumb Blonde.’ I thought, ’30 years ago you could not have sold this.’ I think we have lost consciousness of the way our culture demeans women. Let’s not kid ourselves that this is liberation.”
Yes, please, and let’s not pretend that women holding “slut walks” is a step forward for womankind or will in any way change the treatment of rape victims.
While the so-called feminists are tarting up themselves to reclaim a vile, misogynist word, perhaps the rest of us should fight to reclaim the word “feminism” and return it to its roots of working for true equality.
If we leave it to this gang, we’re screwed.
kirstenpowers@aol.com