Reclaiming the word

In case you've been living under a rock these past few months, Slutwalk was originally started when a Toronto policeman gave this advice to a crowd of women: If you want to avoid rape, don't dress like sluts.

These are the statistics - one in four North American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, 80% of sexual assaults occur in the home, 80% of victims are assaulted by someone that they know, and 60% of victims are under the age of 17. (statistics come from www.sexassault.ca/statistics )

We don't all dress like 'sluts' when we are raped. Slut is a social construct, used whenever someone feels that it's necessary to take that woman down a peg. It's been an insult and a dirty word for as long as anyone can remember. You can be called a slut pretty much any time, no matter what you're wearing or how you're acting. Probably every woman has been called a slut at some point in her life.

Slutwalk originated as a protest against this policeman's narrow and victim-blaming attitude. It was called Slutwalk because that's essentially what the policeman called all victims of rape: you must have asked for it, you were dressing like a slut. How else was the poor rapist supposed to act towards you?

Slutwalk spread across the globe, with protests occuring in Toronto (the home town), New York City, Calgary, Indonesia, South Africa, Berlin. Men, women, children all walked in every type of dress, holding signs, just to tell victim-blamers that no one asks to be raped, that rape victims have only one thing in common - that they were raped, and that it's not their fault.
But some have taken offense at the word Slutwalk. Organizers have claimed that they are trying to reclaim the word slut, to make it so that it's not an insult to call a woman that any more, for people to acknowledge that slut really has no definition except something to make a woman feel shamed. They're trying to reverse that shame. The naysayers are arguing that no one should want to reclaim the word slut, that it's a dirty word and it should stay in the cupboard of shame. They aren't arguing against the idea of Slutwalk, simply with the connotations of the word slut.

I've heard both sides of the argument, and I agree with neither. To me, Slutwalk is more than reclaiming the word slut. I support Slutwalk no matter what it's called, because the concept behind it is more than reclaiming the word or denying it. Slutwalk, to me, is saying that no one has the right to blame me for something that is out of my control. If I am raped, it isn't my fault. Slutwalk is about telling the victim-blamers that no woman should ever, ever be blamed for her rape. Every woman should get justice for her rape, no matter what she was wearing or what she was doing or what she was drinking. That instead of teaching a woman all the rules that we all know (don't drink, don't walk outside after dark, don't wear a skirt, don't look a man in the eye, don't take the same route home twice, don't go someplace alone) and telling her that it's her fault if she doesn't follow them, we should be telling men a very simple, easy rule: Do Not Rape. The onus should be on a man not to rape, not on a woman to not get raped.

That's why I'm going to be going to the next Slutwalk. That's why I don't care if you call it Slutwalk or Rapists Should Go To Prison Walk or Anti-Victim-Blaming Walk. They all boil down to the same thing: it's not your fault. It's not your fault.