“My skirt, my choice.” SlutWalk Burlington 2011.
(via snowstorminjuly)
“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 rapist doesn’t know he’s a rapist. You taught him it wasn’t his fault…” SlutWalk DC 2011.
Fight rape culture!
(via riotgrrrlberlin)
before slutwalk I told many people from my private life to come and join us and what really disappointed me and sometimes made me downright angry was one particular response I got more than once.
“It won’t change anything, that’s just how life is and that’s something you ought to accept.”
this statement is just so so so fucking wrong in my eyes, most of the time I don’t even know how to respond to it.
if everyone always thought this way, where were we right now?
in our history were many bad things that got changed through one or the other kind of revolution, all those things wouldn’t have changed if people thought that way about life. slavery, racial segregation, nazi germany, (old time) sexism.. where were we now if everyone would think that way?
again, I feel like I can’t really explain what I mean because I don’t have the skill to do so in a foreign language but I hope you understand what I’m getting at and see why this response makes me so angry.
people tend to not to understand how revolutions in the past affect their personal life in a positive way.
Misogyny exists in many facets in our culture. It’s deep and pervasive and I want my kids to see women making these statements. I want them to see men supporting these statements. But I also want the reality that anyone can be the victim of sexual assault to sink in. There aren’t any safe categories of exemption in a rape-positive culture. I don’t agree with polarizing sexual assault within the gender binary. I do not believe that men are hardwired to rape. (And I’ve read the theories, it’s all a myth.) As a parent, I constantly validate my children’s right to have their own experiences. How they process what they experience is vital information to me as their primary caretaker.
[…] to me, SlutWalk is about confronting the rape positive aspect of our culture. To assume that children are unaware of sexual assault is both naive and ignorant. Every parent who wants to protect their child has to have the conversation with their little dependent being that they have the right to say no to unwanted touching and that if someone does touch them in an unwanted way they need to tell you. I had to have that conversation with my sons when they were 3 years old. 3. Let that sink in. I had to warn my children that someone may try to do something sexual to them against their will. Let me tell you how angry that made me. How unfair and wrong those conversations are and yet totally necessary.
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!
Thank you, SlutWalk
** Trigger-Warnung **
“July 31 marks the one-year anniversary of the night I was raped. On August 6, I will be participating in Slutwalk when it comes to Philly. They could not have picked a better date. I find it ironic that the very word that kept me from getting any help that night a year ago is now the very same word that is saving me. I know that Slutwalk has many critics, and in a way I think that most of it may stem from simple ignorance. I don’t mean this as an insult, but rather that until someone is in the situation of rape, they simply can never understand.”
“Society teaches DON’T GET RAPED rather than DON’T RAPE”
(via slutgrrrlinternational)
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.”
“When I see a man approach and I cast down my eyes
I’m not laying down a hand, I’m not looking for a prize
It’s just a force of habit, this avoiding the male glance
Cos it isn’t worth the trouble and it isn’t worth the chance
Of them thinking that you’re actively ‘giving them the eye’
And not simply acknowledging a fellow passerby
And no, I don’t know what they’re thinking but I know what men have THOUGHT
And I live by my experiences and the lessons I’ve been taught
In a society where one such glance could put me in great danger
I’d rather look down at the floor than smile at a stranger
And in this tragedy of modern times where every man’s a threat
And every woman on her own is clearly ‘asking for it’
I fight and fight and fucking FIGHT to keep my head held high
So if I’m not catching your glances I’ll be looking at the SKY
And I’ve seen the way things could be and I’ve seen the way things are
And there’s nothing nice or wholesome about murder, rape, or war
And there’s absolutely nothing fair about the lack of equal pay
Or the fact that thousands of women are assaulted EVERY DAY
And that’s what’s running through my mind as I walk down the street
So don’t judge me if I look away
And if our eyes SHOULD meet
Just ask yourself how you would feel before you turn to shout
If you were always half-afraid of men when you went out
And ask yourself how you would feel if every single day
When you went to your wardrobe or you walked a certain way
You had to wonder what a judge would say about your skirt
And whether if you wear those heels you’re asking to get hurt
And whether you should have a drink or stick with lemonade
Because you know how many women every minute are betrayed
By someone they thought they could trust, or who they have just met
And whether you can go outside and smoke a cigarette
Without dealing with the ‘banter’ from the usual drunk lout
And whether you’ll need the alarm in the handbag you brought out
And whether you should call a friend to walk the journey home
Because you know you’re vulnerable when you’re walking alone
So if you see me in the street don’t ask me for a smile
And don’t assume I dress for you or appreciate your vile
Assertion of ownership on a body that’s my own
When all I really want to do is make it safely home
Cos I’m already fighting to be here in the first place
Without having to worry about a smile upon my face
So don’t attempt to hit on me with chauvinistic bile
And before you comment on my shoes
TRY WALKING IN THEM FOR A MILE.”
SlutWalk London: “Yes is the only consent.”
(Foto von miss.selina.)
Feminists don’t think all men are rapists. Rapists do.
“A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?
Rapists do.
They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.
Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.”
Of SlutWalks, Perfect Storms and Getting Out of the Way
Ein weiterer Text von Heather Corinna zum Thema SlutWalks:
“I think the walks and all of the discussion around them have given us a really great jolt in the arm to start having those conversations more and having them more widely.
The experiences attendees seem to be having vary, and it’s clear the walks have offered a range of experiences. Survivors of assault have deeply connected with other survivors, or found a place where they felt able — and for some of them, probably for the first time — to feel safe in identifying as a survivor. Others have experienced a powerful and increased awareness about those of us who have survived sexual violence. I expect that someone in a hoodie and jeans walking next to someone in a bustier might have been able to see some common ground they did not before. For others still, the walks have provided an avenue to experience a lightening of the load so many of us have walked around with living in cultures which enable or excuse rape and which make many women feel afraid of expressing their own sexuality or enjoying their bodies.
They have allowed women to deeply connect with other women, something which remains a huge challenge for many. I expect that for many participating in the walks, they brought them out to engage in in-person social justice activism for the very first time (something older feminists have been accusing younger feminists of having no interest in doing for a while now, mind you).
We know that how women dress or don’t dress neither causes rape, nor can it protect against rape. We know that telling women to avoid dressing a certain way is not about protecting women, it’s about controlling women or scaring women (and also about suggesting men need women to try to police or control their sexualities), something anyone who works in or around sexual violence or had education — or should, like a police officer — knows.
We know that calling women names like “sluts” or otherwise arbitrarily applying perceptions of someone’s sexual life or history to suggest someone’s value as a person may be lesser is also about social control and can enable sexual violence. We know victims remain held responsible for their assaults far more often than perpetrators of those assaults. We know that calling these things out and stating and restating the truths they obscure is essential to reducing, and ideally, eradicating rape, and also crucial for an environment in which survivors of assault can heal and where people, whether they have been victimized by sexual violence or not, can truly see sexual violence for what it is and learn real ways to be safer.
All of these are aims of the walks; all of these aims are of great value and import, potential avenues to positive social change that could benefit everyone. And I do think that, so far, the walks have provided new inroads and outlets to cultivating these changes.”
