SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy

marleymagaziner:

totheexperts:

**Trigger warning for sexist and racist slurs, trans and WOC erasure, privilege denial ** 

kungfucarrie:

cumbersomecummerbund:

Following is from http://tothecurb.wordpress.com

Click to read OP - SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy

I support the purpose of SlutWalk, but I found this an important perspective

I support the SlutWalk because it is enough for some women. And whatever makes even one person feel included or empowered, I think, is worthwhile. But as a movement, I admit it rubs me the wrong way.

First of all, I dont think the name SlutWalk is the most effective. It sounds childish, like the organizers dont have awareness of the greater community of womens-rights-organizations… it doesn’t feel like something that would unite women. It makes me uncomfortable and I expect that it would make older women, those of the second wave, first wave, etc, uncomfortable as well.  Which is too bad, because women should support each other, especially those of different generations. Maybe discomfort is part of the point, but what if it were a “n-word walk” or “fag-walk” or but if it keeps women from feeling included and supported…not so great. Basically—if my mom and I can’t go to a march for womens rights together because of the name? I’ma say…yr doin in wrong.

 Oh what about… “Take Back the Night”? …it’s taken? For people taking a stand against sexual violence?! Dang. Wait, why don’t we just join th—nevermind.

I understand that the poster above feels frustrated and excluded. Having read some commentary around the internet I know that others, especially assault-survivors, also feel excluded because to them, reclaiming “slut” isn’t the point. It also implies that their sexuality factored into their assault and for someone who’s struggling with the emotional repercussions of assault and the self-blaming and victim-blaming that occurs…it’s the opposite of supportive.  The point of the walk is to prevent future assault (right? tell me I got that part right at least). And parading around in revealing clothes…well that brings up a whole slew of issues but it doesn’t really raise awareness of sexual assault. Just sexual fashion. Am I oversimplifying? yes, but…come on, unless “DONT RAPE” is printed on your panties…all I’m seeing is the sign that says “Proud Slut.” and to someone who doesn’t have context (impossible to give in a glance) that sign doesn’t really suggest anything about assault or the prevention of it. #noteffective

If the point to be proven was “look, women can walk around wearing what-the-fuck-ever and not be assaulted therefore ‘watch what you wear’ is moot”—ok, point made. But we’re talking about a huge group of women, in daylight, protesting legally and therefore surrounded by law enforcement…not exactly realistic (Take Back the Night is just that). And how many of them were called sluts while they were marching and really, truly, didn’t feel the sting of that word any longer? Yeah. Imagine if you were a survivor or sex worker or both being called a slut at your own empowerment march… I cant, actually, it hurts too much.

I know I RSVP’d yes to the NYC SlutWalk and invited a handful of people. I haven’t decided if I’m going. I dont know how it fits in with my feminism. I did want friends to be aware of its existence whether they chose to praise, condemn, ignore…or uncomfortably straddle the fence like me. 

Another interesting perspective from a woman of color who attended the SlutWalk in Toronto. She says things much more eloquently than I can.

(via marleymagaziner)

TW for Slut Walk; excellent discussion of WOC erasure

nellgwynnesparadox:

“There is an article (or many many) circulating labeling SlutWalk and its organizers as white supremacists (and a few others things which we aren’t, like all law students). This article was written with reflection, analysis & some necessary criticism, but there are some criticisms we would bring to it also. We are not all white or white supremacists and it’s so sad that people truly think we are. SlutWalk’s representation has been predominately of white women or those who appear white - this is a valid and necessary critique. We may not have done as good a job as others would want and need to see in discussing race, racism or white privilege. We’re constantly working to learn more and do better. It’s important to bring different groups of women, in different parts of the world, who are experiencing sexual violence into the conversation as this article does. We always need to acknowledge the people, in unfortunate increasing numbers, who are being sexually violated. But SlutWalk started in Toronto without any idea of it happening elsewhere. We focused our message locally to discuss sexual assaults upon women, men, children and all genders in Toronto and in Canada. This includes discussing sexual assault experienced by people of colour including indigenous communities that have outrageous accounts of murdered and missing women in Canada, and the experiences of women and people of different abilities, of women who live in poverty and all people who experience exploitation and sexual violence, the experiences of students on campuses, people in their Canadian homes, queer people and the marginalization and violence they face and so many more. We ARE some women of colour and have been working with many women of colour and people of colour as organizers, speakers, supporters, survivors and participants. Assumptions are being made based on names and photos. Do we need to do better to include more representation and address more issues critically? Yes. But is it okay to paint a big, expansive group of people with the same ‘white’ brush and tell them they’re all ‘white’ regardless of their skin colour, heritage, experience and community? No. Please help us share this information and encourage people to engage in conversations with those involved in SlutWalk. We’re a diverse group of people and don’t believe in the supremacy of any identity.”

—

slutwalk (via grrrlvirus)

This response makes me feel as though these women didn’t read the entire article. Instead of getting defensive and starting off by saying that they are being labeled white supremacists (which they are NOT, I repeat, NOT being labeled as) why not respond to some of the issues being brought to question. The title about white supremacy is bringing up the point that the organization has found it better to use white leadership and the media has found it more appropriate to only interview white feminists on the merits of Slutwalk. This is subtle white supremacy because it reproduces the idea that white women’s stories are somehow more relevant, important, or worthy than women of color. The media also paints the picture that only white women have opinions of merit worth debating SlutWalk and that women of color might not have anything to say. And if women of color were more involved with SlutWalk, maybe the media might ask more feminists of color their opinion on the walks merits?

No one ever fucking called you a white supremacist. If you want to understand and learn more, know this. The very idea that you wanted to include women of color’s voices as a second option, the fact that you had to learn and listen to even begin thinking about women of color and their experiences, still expresses the values of white supremacy. Not because you are a white supremacist, but because you have the privilege to think of us as a second group, an after thought, an other. It is white supremacy and its very ideals and systems that make these disputes possible. That make it so that it takes hordes of women of color to say something before white women begin thinking about how they can be more pro-active. 

I don’t think assumptions were being made just on photos. This article you are responding to makes note of the various women who are interviewed and get spotlight time over any kind of woman of color. You don’t see a problem with this? Furthermore, to not address the issue of the police and the fact that even if you decided to organize solely in Toronto, that police collaboration might not be the best way to create what seems like a safe space for women of color. The same women who you say experience disgusting violence and fear, the same women who also are likely to get less justice and service for that violence and fear, less access to healthcare for that violence and fear, less sympathy and access to someone to listen to for that violence and fear.

After I finish this, let me just say, its also a bad start to say we are also women of color. Let us hear the women of color. THEY HAVE THEIR OWN FUCKING VOICES. We don’t need to meld into yours to have a voice. If the women of color in your organization feel this way, let them say this. Give them a voice. As a woman of color, let them say, this was not our intention, we did not mean to be to come off as exclusionary. They can share their stories about how the organization welcomed them and made them feel comfortable. And if those women of color don’t want to speak or tell their story, that is cool too. But don’t say, Oh “we are some women of color” and expect that to erase the critique and real substance to that article. Its like you are trying to discredit the critique that was made in the first place. Just as the article said that woman who was interviewed and complained about her spotlight time just had to condescendingly correct her did. Even if you don’t believe in the supremacy of any one identity, society does. And when women of color talk and explain ways to make us feel that you really want to get rid of that, maybe its time to just shut the fuck up and listen. This might be harsh, but I got pissed the hell off seeing this. 

(via strugglingtobeheard)

Wait…what?! These words are FIRE! How did I miss all this??????

::sits up and pays attention::

(via liquornspice)

^top notch commentary. 

(via kinkyturtle)

Source: facebook.com

SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy

**Trigger warning for sexist and racist slurs, trans and WOC erasure, privilege denial ** 

kungfucarrie:

cumbersomecummerbund:

Following is from http://tothecurb.wordpress.com

SlutWalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy

According to its website, SlutWalk was created by women who “are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by [their] sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result.” SlutWalk aims to “reclaim” the word “slut,” by taking to the streets and demanding people begin to think about the way women are damaged by stereotyping. What’s now grown into a Global North movement, SlutWalk has predictably captivated the media. One can read numerous blogs and articles, and examine diametrically opposed op-eds posted on both sides of the Atlantic – all authored by white women. With such a sensationalized event name, it makes sense that the event would gain attraction. What doesn’t make sense is the racist way in which SlutWalk has chosen to present itself – the result of the group’s white leadership, which has systematically silenced the voices of women of color. Women are left with little assurance that the word “slut” can even be reclaimed at all, and it would be absurd to imagine that SlutWalk’s dramatized events will do anything to stop any kind of violence against women.

SlutWalk was conceived after a cop reportedly told a group of Toronto students that women “should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” during a campus event to address sexual assault, which he was invited to. I understand the need to denounce this type of speech, particularly when uttered by a law enforcement officer. But what struck me was the fact that a group of students gathered with law enforcement to begin with. As people of color, our communities are plagued with police brutality, and inviting them into our spaces in order to somehow feel safer rarely crosses our minds. I’ve attended several workshops and panels on sexual violence and would never imagine seeing law enforcement in attendance. Groups like INCITE! have done a tremendous amount of work to address the way that systemic violence is directed against women in communities of color through “police violence, war and colonialism,” as well as to address the type of interpersonal violence between individuals within a community, such as sexual assault and domestic violence. SlutWalk “want[s] Toronto Police Services to take serious steps to regain [their] trust;” our communities, meanwhile, never trusted the police to begin with. For a group of privileged students to stage such a massive event and dismiss the work that our communities have done to make sense out of the disproportionate accumulation of violence that we face is wholly unacceptable.

As Trymaine Lee has reported, black, poor and transgender women are being disproportionately and systematically branded as criminal “sex offenders” on an online database for engaging in “survival sex” in New Orleans. Under the cover of an obscure, slave-era legal term called “crimes against nature,” police officers target those who engage in oral or anal sex-for-money. Those targeted for a second time are charged as felons (vaginal sex-for-money, meanwhile, is considered misdemeanor prostitution). 40 percent of those who appear on the sexual predator database are there because they were accused of committing a “crime against nature;” more than 80 percent of those are black women.

If SlutWalk truly wanted to bring attention to the systematic ways in which women are harmed by regressive and misogynistic thinking, they could have done the heavy lifting of reaching out and supporting black, poor and transgender women in New Orleans, for whom the word “slut” carries a criminal sex offender record. Instead, they force us to keep bearing the multiple burdens that come with not only being a woman, but also being a working class woman of color. Had SlutWalk organizers considered New Orleans – or perhaps any city in the Northern Hemisphere where undocumented women possess a very real fear that a call to the police for any reason will result in her own deportation – they might have thought twice about sinking so much time and energy into their event. They might have had to listen to women of color, and actually involve them in visioning for what an equitable future would look like. Instead, they decided to celebrate a term not everyone is comfortable even saying. While I will not pretend to speak for women targeted in New Orleans, I doubt that the mere idea of naming themselves “sluts” would be welcomed. SlutWalk has proven itself to be a maddening distraction from the systematic and interpersonal violence that women of color face daily.

On my Facebook feed yesterday, a prominent Boston-based white feminist complained that, although the BBC had interviewed her for one of its internationally highest rated programs, she “was on for like two seconds in the second hour which doesn’t air in the US. Verrrrrrry [sic] frustrating.” This woman had already participated in a 40-minute episode on a Canadian television program with four other white women, where they debated each other about SlutWalk. She was also a featured speaker at SlutWalk Boston, and her speech was posted online with full transcripts (as far as I know, not one person of color spoke at the event in question). The tremendous amount of entitlement implicit in her post felt suffocating. When I responded that two seconds of airtime was considerably longer than women of color had on the topic, she wrote that she agreed “with the larger critique,” but felt compelled to correct me by adding that “there were a number of women of color on this program.”

Her entitlement was coupled with the kind of lip service intended to keep women of color quiet, as well as a dose of correction to prove her superior ability to still be right – all typical of liberal white women who have never truly listened to begin with. Regardless of the fact that a scarce amount of women of color got international airtime on the BBC for the first time since SlutWalk was conceived several months ago, its organizers never reached out to women of color as equals to begin with; instead of making sure our voices participated in its visioning, we have been painted into a colored corner inside their white room. SlutWalk’s next turn, I’m quite sure, will be our tokenization. I imagine that women of color will be coddled by white SlutWalk organizers, eager to save (white)face, into carrying their frontline banners and parroting their messages at a stage near you. I’m hoping my sisters won’t fall for it; I know that I, for one, will stay home. This is not liberation – if anything, Slutwalk is an effective exercise in white supremacy.

There is no indication that SlutWalk will even strip the word “slut” from its hateful meaning. The n-word, for example, is still used to dehumanize black folks, regardless of how many black folks use it among themselves. Just moments before BART officer James Mehserle shot Oscar Grant to death in Oakland in 2009, video footage captured officers calling Grant a “bitch ass nigger.” It didn’t matter how many people claimed the n-word as theirs – it still marked the last hateful words Grant heard before a white officer violently killed him. Words are powerful – the connection between speech and thought is a strong one, and cannot be marched away to automatically give words new meaning.  If I can’t trust SlutWalk’s white leadership to even reach out to women of color, how am I to trust that “reclaiming” the word will somehow benefit women? The answer is, I can’t. In fact, “reclaiming” is defined as taking something back that was yours to begin with, and the word “slut” was never ours to begin with, so it would be impossible to reclaim it.

According to SlutWalk’s website, the event is slated to be reproduced in Argentina sometime this year. It’s the country I was born and raised in, among Spanish, Guaraní and Portuguese speakers – and I can assure you that the word “slut” is not used by anyone there. This is not what we need. I do not want white English-speaking Global North women telling Spanish-speaking Global South women to “reclaim” a word that is foreign to our own vocabulary. To do so would be hegemonic, and would illustrate the ways in which Global North “feminists” have become a tool of cultural imperialism. I will be going back home in about a month, and want to do so without feeling the power of white women bearing down on me from 6,000 miles away. We’ve got our own issues to deal with in South America; we do not need to become poster children to try to make you feel better about yours.

Whether white supremacist hegemony was SlutWalk’s intent or not is beyond my concern – because it has certainly been so in effect. This event will not stop the criminalization of black women in New Orleans, nor will it stop one woman from being potentially deported after she calls the police subsequent to being raped. SlutWalk completely ignores the way institutional violence is leveled against women of color. The event highlights its origins from a privileged position of relative power, replete with an entitlement of assumed safety that women of color would never even dream of. We do not come from communities in which it feels at all harmless to call ourselves “sluts.” Aside from that, our skin color, not our style of dress, often signifies slut-hood to the white gaze.

If SlutWalk has proven anything, it is that liberal white women are perfectly comfortable parading their privilege, absorbing every speck of airtime celebrating their audacity, and ignoring women of color. Despite decades of work from women of color on the margins to assert an equitable space, SlutWalk has grown into an international movement that has effectively silenced the voices of women of color and re-centered the conversation to consist of a topic by, of, and for white women only. More than 30 years ago, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “I write to record what others erase when I speak.” Unfortunately, SlutWalk’s leadership obliterated Anzaldúa’s voice, and the marvelous work she produced theorizing what it means to be a queer woman of color. They might do us all a favor now and stop erasing the rest of us for once.

I support the purpose of SlutWalk, but I found this an important perspective