Der SlutWalk Berlin 2012 kommt!
(Foto von milenskaya)
Ja, ihr lest richtig! Auch 2012 soll ein SlutWalk in Berlin stattfinden. Die Planung hierfür steht in den Startlöchern und braucht nun wieder eure Unterstützung um Wirklichkeit zu werden!
Blick zurück: Was ist ein SlutWalk überhaupt noch mal?
SlutWalks sind Demonstrationen gegen Sexismus, sexualisierte Gewalt, Vergewaltigungsmythen und -verharmlosungen. (Wann, wo und wie die Idee zu dieser Protestform entstand und warum sie überhaupt SlutWalk heißt, könnt ihr hier nachlesen.)
Denn wir haben es satt, in einem System zu leben, das sexualisierte Übergriffe, Gewalt und Belästigungen verharmlost, legitimiert und den Betroffenen die Schuld gibt.
Wir stellen uns zugleich gegen andere Unterdrückungsmechanismen wie Rassismus, Homo- und Trans*- und Queerphobie, da diese ebenfalls Ursachen sexualisierter Gewalt sind.
Am 13. August 2011 kamen hierzu allein in Berlin 3.500 Menschen zusammen. (Wie das so aussah, könnt ihr auf unserer Presseseite nachlesen und anschauen.)
Blick nach vorn: Der SlutWalk Berlin 2012 kommt!
Das erste Orga-Treffen des SlutWalk Berlin ist für den 18. März geplant (Ort wird derzeit noch festgelegt) und natürlich braucht der SlutWalk Berlin auch in diesem Jahr euer Feedback, eure Ideen und eure tatkräftige Hilfe, um überhaupt stattfinden zu können!
Ihr wollt mitmachen? Großartig! Dann meldet euch hier oder direkt per Mail an slutwalkberlin@gmail.com. Stellt euch dabei einfach kurz vor und verratet gerne schon mal, in welcher Form ihr eure Unterstützung zum SlutWalk Berlin am liebsten beitragen möchtet.
Ist es eher Pressearbeit? Oder Webseitenbetreuung? Die Soli-Partyplanung? Möchtet ihr Redner_innen für den Walk recherchieren? Oder packt ihr einfach gerne an, wenn Dinge aufgebaut werden müssen? Egal, wo eure Talente liegen: es gibt wie immer viel zu tun und wie immer gilt, dass alle Gender und sich solidarisch Zeigende herzlich willkommen sind!
Also meldet euch, teilt diesen Post mit euren Freund_innen und lasst uns auch 2012 mit dem SlutWalk Berlin zeigen, dass Sexismus, sexualisierte Gewalt, Vergewaltigungsmythen und -verharmlosungen keinen Platz in unserer Gesellschaft haben dürfen!
Thoughts on SlutWalk from a Wheelchair
As a sexual violence prevention educator, I find hope in the grassroots activism and passion that radiates from SlutWalk. Anything that gets people talking, that breaks down the myths and reduces victim shaming, is a step in the right direction. This activism is so badly needed in a society that still justifies violent victimization according to what women are wearing or how they choose to spend their Friday nights. The photos of women clad in sneakers, jeans and comfy t-shirts carrying signs that read “THIS IS WHAT I WAS WEARING WHEN I WAS RAPED” make my heart ache. But after reading all of the discussion, I’m left wondering if there’s a place for me in SlutWalk.
Much has been written about SlutWalk and the problematic nature of the word “slut.” Many women of color, in particular, have made it clear that they don’t want to reclaim the word because of the way their sexuality has been constructed throughout America’s racist history. As a woman in a wheelchair, I have a very different problem.
No, my problem is that the word “slut” has never felt like mine to reclaim. While women all over the world are waiting for people to stop seeing them as sex objects, women with disabilities are still waiting to be seen at all. We are less than a woman, somehow–certainly less than “slut.” Too often we are viewed as pitiable, pathetic and devoid of desire. We could never be “sluts.” If we are “lucky enough” to have partners, they get congratulations and pats on the back from strangers when they “take us out” in public.
It’s not, as you might guess, the word “walk.” Some may find it ableist, but I say it all the time: “I was walking down the street.” When I imagine saying, “I was rolling down the street,” I get this picture in my head of kids log-rolling down hills for fun.
No, my problem is that the word “slut” has never felt like mine to reclaim. While women all over the world are waiting for people to stop seeing them as sex objects, women with disabilities are still waiting to be seen at all. We are less than a woman, somehow–certainly less than “slut.” Too often we are viewed as pitiable, pathetic and devoid of desire. We could never be “sluts.” If we are “lucky enough” to have partners, they get congratulations and pats on the back from strangers when they “take us out” in public.
“Slut-shaming is the deliberate act of insulting a woman using sexist slurs in order to shame, humiliate, embarrass, degrade or intimidate her.”
– What is slut-shaming?
(via rollahardsix)
“A woman dressed like this still gets raped. What’s your excuse now?”
“I’m a bitch if I say no. But I’m a slut if you rape me anyway!”
“Blame rapists, not boobs.”
(via takealookatyourlife)
“We Are SlutWalk NYC” (by SlutwalkNYC)
***TW This video touches upon discussion of rape culture, victim blaming, slut shaming, assault, and other potentially triggering topics.*
(via slutwalknyc)
“My outfit doesn’t require a seal of approval.” SlutWalk Greensboro 2011.
“My rapist doesn’t know he’s a rapist. You taught him it wasn’t his fault…” SlutWalk DC 2011.
Fight rape culture!
(via riotgrrrlberlin)
“I fight back! Against a mindset that first makes me a victim and then blames me for what was done to me. Against policies created solely to control or humble me. …”
I wish I could have joined the other ladies on the Slutwalk but, unfortunately, I had other important things to do last Saturday.
Ever since I was followed by a guy at 1:00 in the morning while walking the dog, I am overly conscious of my surroundings or rather: the men in my surroundings. I was wearing jeans and a black hoodie, it was dark and raining a little. The guy walked past me, then turned around and started to follow me down a street which was lined with a kindergarten and a school on one side and mostly dark apartment buildings on the other side. No one else was out and about. I only realized that he was following me because the dog started to turn his head back while walking, nearly walking straight into a fence. I then heard the footsteps coming closer and closer, the dog getting more and more anxious and angry.
“So, what’s your name?”, he asked.
“Please leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“What do you think about going for a beer?”
“As I just said, please leave me alone. I only want to walk the dog.”
The dog started to growl, angrily peering up at the unknown man.
“So what’s the name of the dog?”
I started to pull the dog down the street, hoping that the man would leave me alone. No such luck.
“Do you know a bar around here, beautiful?”
…
“What’s your name?”
…
“Oh, the dog doesn’t like me.”
He came closer and closer while I was tellling him to back off or otherwise the dog would certainly bite him. I think he was scared of the dog who was working on giving an Academy Award worthy impression of “big angry scary dog”. He finally turned and walked across the street. Or at least that’s what I thought.
In reality, he just used the street to pass me, walking behind the line of cars, and then climbed the sidewalk again, popping up just in front me.
“So, what about the beer, bitch?”
“Just leave me the fuck alone! I want to go home. Don’t come closer because I cannot vouch for the dog!”
The dog tried to jump at the man, growling and barking. The man finally left, shouting obscenities as he walked on. In my mind, I had already made a plan about how I would run to the nearest “safe” place, a bar down the road, even though that would have been impossible with my angry dog at the other end of the leash.
I was terribly scared that he would start to follow me again, getting to know where I lived. Thanks Godess he just walked on, leaving us behind. Scared. Nearly terrified.
I told this story to several people. I was asked what I was doing outside at 1 in the morning, implying that it was my fault that the man had harrassed me. I did not ask to be harrassed. It’s ALWAYS the aggressor’s choice to harrass/touch/rape another being, never the victim’s. In 2011, too many people are still too ignorant to realize this.
He did not follow me because it was 1 in the morning. He did not talk to me because of the way I was dressed. He harrassed me because he wanted to, because he felt that he had the right to do so. This seriously and urgently needs to change.
And that’s why I would have loved to walk the Slutwalk.
Photo credit:
Slutwalk Berlin 2011 by pierreee on Flickr.
Video vom SlutWalk Berlin.
(via riotgrrrlberlin)
AfroLez®femcentric: Stephanie Gilmore's POWERFUL Speech at SlutWalk Philadelphia
With her full permission and consent, I’m sharing the entire text of my Dear Sister/Comrade/Friend Stephanie Gilmore’s speech at SlutWalk Philadelphia. It was powerful to hear her deliver it. Reading it is also very powerful.
Mi nombre es Stephanie Gilmore y yo soy una puta.
My name is Stephanie Gilmore and I am a slut.
Men and women, boys and girls, label me as such. Why? I wear short skirts. I wear makeup. I drink alcohol. I am a woman. So, in the United States, I can be – and am – a white, middle-class woman from Alabama who now lives in Wilmington. I can – and do – possess a Ph.D. in history. I can be – and am – a professor at Dickinson College and a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University. I can be – and am – an out lesbian. These things do not matter because I am a whore. A slut. As a slut, I am always-already asking for it because of this short skirt and tight t-shirt. Because I might get drunk. Because I will walk alone. Because I will do something to provoke uncontrollable sexual desire in men, or I will threaten men’s power, or I will simply be. And when I say no, they will become so enraged that they will rape me.
This is the current social script for many women and men in our society.
It is a script bounded by histories of race, class, and sexual identity, as well as by gender. Black, Latina, and Asian women can – and do – point out that their bodies are often accessible not just because of their womanhood but because of their racialized histories and realities of enslavement, trafficking, and entrapment in global battles of colonialism. Women who work outside of the home have long been assumed to be sexually available to male coworkers, bosses, and men passing by on the streets as they move from home to work. Women who are lesbian, bisexual, queer, gender nonconforming, or otherwise just not monogamously heterosexual trace long histories of being assumed that they are, at best, sexual entertainment for men, and at bottom, need only a good fucking by a man to get back on the straight and narrow. There are significant differences, then, among women’s experiences. But as a wonderful Nahuatl spiritual guide and man shared with me recently, beneath our differences we are the same. If you hurt us, cut us, rape us, we all bleed red.
So I look out here and see all of us, and with our differences and our similarities, we come together to take back the DAY! We unite under the banner of SlutWalk!
Is the SlutWalk Movement Relevant For a Black Feminist?
Gespräch mit Aishah Shahidah Simmons, die beim SlutWalk Philadelphia eine Rede hielt.
Jaclyn Friedmans großartige Rede beim Boston SlutWalk. Anschauen, durchlesen und ausgedruckt als Poster an die Wand hängen:
“Well hello you beautiful sluts!
Do you see what I did there? I called y’all sluts, and I don’t know the first thing about what any of you do with your private parts. (Well, maybe I know about a couple of you, but I’ll never tell.)
That’s how the word “slut” usually works. If you ask ten people, you get ten different definitions. Is a slut a girl who has sex too young? With too many partners? With too little committment? Who enjoys herself too much? Who ought to be more quiet about it, or more ashamed? Is a slut just a woman who dresses too blatantly to attract sexual attention? And what do any of these words even mean? What’s too young, too many partners, too little committment, too much enjoyment, too blatant an outfit? For that matter, what’s a woman, and does a slut have to be one? For a word with so little meaning, it sure is a vicious weapon. And, while the people who use it to hurt may not agree on what they mean by it, they’ll all agree on one thing: a slut is NOT THEM. A slut is other. A slut is someone, usually a woman, who’s stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We’re messy. We don’t behave. In fact, the original definition of “slut” meant “untidy woman.” But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line. To separate us. To make us police each other, turn on each other, and turn each other in so that we can prove we’re not “like that.” That word comes with such consequences that many of us rightly work to avoid it at all costs. But not today. Today we all march under the banner of sluthood. Today we come together to say: you can call us that name, but we will not shut up. You can call us that name but we will not cede our bodies or our lives. You can call us that name, but you can never again use it to excuse the violence that is done to us under that name every, single, fucking, day.”
