From the website of the Edmonton SlutWalk 2011
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the most odious misogynist bullshit I have seen thus far on the topic of the Slutwalks: a post on The Third Edge of the Sword, a blog that seems to go out of its way to be offensive and “edgy,” that takes victim blaming to a whole new level. Here’s the basic, er, argument of the post, which the author has put in giant pink letters so we won’t miss it:
Every woman marching in the Edmonton Slut Walk is publicly declaring herself a slut. This means every woman there desires sex with any and all partners. Any sexual activity you initiate with them comes with implied consent. They cannot say no, and if they do understand all their ‘no’s mean yes. They are all asking for it. They want it bad. Now. From you. Go get ’em!
Some other highlights:
[I]f you … dress slutty, men are going to stare at you. We’re going to catcall. We are going to tell you all sorts of sexual things we want to do to your body. And if you dress slutty and wave your ass in our face, we will do them. The organizers of this event are not oblivious to this point: what they want is a fake sexual revolution. They want to be able to impersonate sluts without actually being sluts, and that’s unacceptable. If you don’t want to be treated as a piece of meat, don’t marinate and grill yourself and sit perched on a piece of garlic toast. You dress slutty, you show off the goods, you try to get a reaction, you will get one. Hint: it’s not always going to be the one you want. …
The “reaction” he has in mind is rape. By calling rape a “reaction” instead of what it is — a criminal assault on someone, an act of sexual violence, a violation — he of course is attempting to switch the blame to the victim. He spells out his “logic” in more detail:
[W]hen you impersonate a slut we don’t fine you, and we don’t throw you in jail. There’s really only one punishment for dressing like a streetwalker when you aren’t one: you do have to endure the occasional rape. You should really suffer it in silence. Accept the character flaw within you that caused this, and move on. Police and court resources are already busy enough with real criminals: like actual rapists who do nasty things to their niece or the homeless native chick passed out under the bridge, or a conservatively dressed urban professional walking to her car, or a girl out jogging in a track suit. To equate the act of actually violating and raping one of these people with having sex with a girl who’s every square millimetre of public persona screams anybody who wants to can screw me right now is ridiculous.
Once again, this brand of misogyny leads to some conclusions that are pretty misandrist – namely, the notion that men are at heart rapists who can’t control their violent urges:
If you go out on the street in an outfit that would make Britney Spears feel uncomfortable, you do so knowing that your ultimate aim is to make men want you. Well, they want you now. Congrats. Oh, wait, you mean you didn’t understand what that implied? That in the great Bell curve of sexual congress you’ve just pushed everybody on the right-hand side of the -2 std devs line past that imaginary barrier that says “there is no power in the universe powerful enough to stop me from sliding my finger inside your panties”? I call bullshit. You do know. But you want to be a virginal slut, to dress in ways that makes men helpless to their urges but still leaves you fully in restrictive control.
The blogger concludes by arguing that the Slutwalkers are all “lying bitches” because they dress like they wasn’t to be raped, but do not actually want to be raped. Then he makes this lovely suggestion:
If your wife is one of them, I’m very very sorry. Maybe a good rape might make her a little more manageable around the house.
Now this post is an atmittedly extreme example of a misogynistic response to the Slutwalks. But the basic “logic” of this blogger’s would-be argument is essentially identical to that of many MRA and other “manosphere” pieces I’ve seen on the subject, the main difference between them being that this guy embraces the logical conclusion of his argument — that Slutwalkers deserve to be raped — while the MRAs who make essentially the same argument (and fling the same sorts of insults at the Slutwalkers) make a show of saying that they don’t really think the Slutwalkers “deserve” it. And maybe they’ve convinced themselves that this caveat means something . But in that case the extreme reaction that manosphere misogynists have had to the Slutwalks – the insults thrown at the Slutwalkers, the “jokey” references to rape, the prurient sneering – makes little sense. If you argue that women are “asking for it” when they dress like “sluts,” you’re essentially saying they deserve it. You’re making the same argument this guy is making, but pretending you aren’t.
NOTE: The graphic above is taken from the official web site for the Edmonton SlutWalk 2011, which took place a week ago. Here are some pictures of the march.
Tit-again with the pseudo attempts to be friendly-you do realise that most of us find it creepy right?
Elizabeth
I thought you were smarter than that. Sarcasm, thick.
I need to scrub with a wire brush. Uck.
That you do.
Titfortat: So, it seemed like you were grasping, at least a little, the idea that when people talk about a “privilege,” they’re not saying that everything’s going to be perfect in every way for the person who has it, and shitty in every way for the person who doesn’t. And I could swear you said that you didn’t deny that white privilege and male privilege can exist, at least sometimes.
And it also seemed like you were very on board with the idea of kyriarchy — which is a fancy word for what I’ve been calling intersectional privilege. After all, you brought kyriarchy into this discussion.
But now you’re back to “All those benefits that I derived from being born white with testicles seemed to have clouded my vision. To infinity and beyond, I now see the world is mine to take.”
I … I don’t get it.
Bee
Go back and re read and try to view the comments directed at me from my perspective. All of them. You then might get an idea of why I was sarcastic in my last couple of posts to Poster and Amused. If you then cant understand my frustration so be it. Mind you, even the fact that you think Im just grasping and not trying to have a legitimate thought makes me cautious with your feminism also.
You are not frustrated, you are angry that we do not accept your premise that since you had bad things happen to you, you are oppressed and therefore privilege does not exist for a white male heterosexual such as yourself.
Your examples are shoddy, your rebuttals are paltry and your attempts to be “friendly” are not sarcasm, they are creepy.
Bee
You just got a taste of what I mean. Elizabeth gave you an example. I never said privilege doesnt exist, I just dont agree that it exists as much in my favour as others want me to believe. Kyriarchy at least attempts to put a name to an overall issue, rather than gender specific.
T4T: I don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe. And I know the reason you don’t like feminists like me — because women are, of course, small children living in pink palaces, and you get to mansplain life’s hard truths to them. About how you aren’t privileged and how what happened to you is the worst thing that any woman could ever imagine, living in her pink palace that doesn’t exist. Your sanctimoniousness won’t fool me, and I don’t think it fools anyone else either. Not only are you clearly sexist, entitled, and hypocritical, you are also a coward — attacking people’s word choice and relying on vague insinuations, rather than saying what you want to say and defending it.
Amused
I get you, I really do. I know the energy, been there done that.
MRAL: kinda late to the thread so you might see it, but I cannot resist.
women aren’t common, and thus, receive more attention and likely praise for their uniqueness
In my experience, having been the first/one of the first/one of the few women in male-dominated areas (that are NOT the army and NOT computer science but HUMANITIES for crying out loud–because of my age! I was the ONLY woman Classics major in my first university) does not in fact lead to praise, or good attention, but harassment, bad attention, claims of affirmative action benefitting me (I went into classics after history because history dept. head told me that I’d only get a job because I was a woman, and I’d be taking it away from a man), and at that point (early 1970s) sexual harassment was, as Gloria Steinem, has explained “life.”
And I’ve read accounts of women at West Point and women in computer science and yeah, NOT the praise, not the glory, not the positive attention–quite the opposite.
Again: you don’t know shit about what you are talking about, so why do you keep claiming things that you know nothing about?
Well then the same could be said of men in female-dominated areas like nurturing or lower-grade teaching or anything else. You can’t have it both ways, my poor hypocrite fymynyst.