SlutWalks and the Future of Feminism

Jessica Valenti has a long article in the Post today about a phenomenon I had never heard of before: "SlutWalks."

Thousands of women — and men — are demonstrating to fight the idea that what women wear, what they drink or how they behave can make them a target for rape. SlutWalks started with a local march organized by five women in Toronto and have gone viral, with events planned in more than 75 cities. . . . In just a few months, SlutWalks have become the most successful feminist action of the past 20 years.

The protests began after a police officer told students at Toronto’s York University in January that if women want to avoid rape, they shouldn’t dress like “sluts.” (If you thought the days of “she was asking for it” were long gone, guess again.)

Heather Jarvis, a student in Toronto and a co-founder of SlutWalk, explained that the officer’s comments struck her and her co-organizers as so preposterous and damaging that they demanded action. “We were fed up and pissed off, and we wanted to do something other than just be angry,” she said. Bucking the oft-repeated notion that young women are apathetic to feminism, they organized. What Jarvis hoped would be a march of at least 100 turned out to be a rally of more than 3,000 — some marchers with “slut” scrawled across their bodies, others with signs reading “My dress is not a yes” or “Slut pride.”

I don't have any particular feelings about "slut pride"; if that's what some women want to call themselves, whatever. I do think it is important for feminism not to be anti-sex. There was a time when women who wanted to dress sexily were criticized by self-proclaimed "feminists," and I think that did some damage to the cause. The anti-sex crowd has not gone away, of course, as Valenti notes:

Anti-pornography activist Gail Dines argued, along with victims rights advocate Wendy Murphy, that the SlutWalk organizers are playing into patriarchal hands. They say the protesters “celebrating” the word “slut” and dressing in risque clothing are embracing a pornified consumer sexuality.

To which I can only shrug.

Reading about this phenomenon I am having all my usual ambivalent feelings about things that can be called "the movement." (E.g., "Reclaiming, or more accurately, reappropriating the word “slut” is a fundamental cornerstone of the movement.") In what sense have SlutWalks been, as Valenti calls them, "successful"? Her criterion seem to be simply that they get young women involved in feminist action. It strikes me that they will be successful if they lead to a decline in rape, or at least a decline in people excusing the sexual assault of scantily clad women, which will not be known for years (if ever). (Rape -- at least what police call "forcible rape" -- has declined by more than 20 percent in the US over the past decade, so things are already moving in the right direction.) Does all the energy that organizers put into marches and meetings and whatnot actually matter? I wonder, and I am so appalled by the whole business of marching around chanting slogans that I can't participate myself. I don't think we really know how or why social change takes place, though, so I imagine that sometimes an organized movement can make a difference. And if these marches make some women feel safer, stronger, and better about themselves, that is a good thing in and of itself.