The Fractured Feminist Position on Slut Walks
Rebecca Traister, a longtime feminist and staunch supporter of sex-positive feminism, has a piece coming out tomorrow in the New York Times Sunday Magazine: Ladies, We Have a Problem. In it she addresses the truly cringeworthy aspect of the Slut Walk phenomenon – that is, the fact that a bunch of women parading around dressed as sluts harms the feminist cause.
Traister begins by saying “At a moment when questions of sex and power, blame and credibility, and gender and justice are so ubiquitous and so urgent, I have mostly felt irritation that stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts is passing for keen retort.”
Traister is a smart woman – why is she having an aha moment now, when in fact, feminists have been stripping down to skivvies and proudly calling themselves sluts for years? SlutWalking is just the latest opportunity for women committed to a promiscuous lifestyle to proudly display their sexuality, a “F you!” in the face of convention. There’s much more going on here than a statement that no one deserves to be raped. Indeed, we’re being asked to withhold judgment of sluthood itself:
“I understand that SlutWalkers want to drain the s-word of its misogynistic venom and correct the idea it conveys: that a woman who takes a variety of sexual partners or who presents herself in an alluring way is somehow morally bankrupt and asking to be hit on, assaulted or raped.
…To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women.”
The whole point of proud sluthood is that women have the right to advertise and enjoy their sexuality without being judged (or apparently even approached!). That’s a lot to ask, as it is natural for human beings to judge the behavior of fellow citizens according to their perception of what is good for society. The social contract is guarded by the majority to preserve civilization.
In fact, sluts are asking for more than that. Sluts are free to have sex with anyone they wish – ain’t nobody stopping ‘em. We don’t need to know about their sex lives – indeed, we’d rather not. While many may disapprove of their choices, ignorance is bliss, and no one is hunting sluts to hold them up for public ridicule. If anything, it’s chaste women who endure shame in our culture.
The truth is, promiscuous feminists want more than total sexual freedom. They want their choices to be celebrated, and for it to be politically unfeasible for anyone to question their morality. They wish to silence those who would call their lifestyles morally bankrupt (or even think it). They wish to shame men for imposing a sexual double standard, or even for simply preferring to partner with women of limited sexual experience.
“Scantily clad marching seems weirdly blind to the race, class and body-image issues that usually (rightly) obsess young feminists.”
I haven’t heard a word about race and class from SlutWalkers. In fact, those issues don’t appear to be a priority in the church of the sex-positive congregation. Body image, though? That’s a different story. Fat-shaming has become a movement of its own among the sex pozzies. Would it be indelicate of me to call your attention to the photo above, by a photographer for the nation’s most liberal newspaper? It’s representative of Slut Walk photos in general, in my experience.
If moral bankruptcy is defined as judging slutty behavior, coupled with judging obesity in women, then what feminists are arguing for is the right for every woman, regardless of her physical attributes, to get laid by the partner of her choice. This removes all agency from men, who are treated as sex machines who should be grateful for whatever they can get. Oh how they will be judged if they recoil at the sight of a “Proud SLUT!”
Traister believes that “donning bustiers” to “grapple with issues of sexual power” amounts to a lack of precision and self-protection, but she believes in the struggle, and she is eager to reassure her feminist sisters that she has not abandoned the cause.
“I found myself again wishing that the young women doing the difficult work of reappropriation were more nuanced in how they made their grabs at authority, that they were better at anticipating and deflecting the resulting pile-on. But I also wondered if, perhaps, this worry makes me the Toronto cop who thought women should protect themselves by not dressing like sluts… there is still no way for women to tell stories of sexual injustice that allows them to bypass character assassination.”
The problem, as Traister herself uncomfortably senses, is that proudly proclaiming one’s sluthood does lead a vast majority of observers to question the slut’s character, and trading in their black bras for polo shirts wouldn’t change that. Such a notion is unthinkable – it’s the Girls Gone Wild “Sex as empowerrrrrrment” shtick that is sex-positive feminism. The bared midriff, the revealed nipple, and the angrily scrawled Sharpie tats are the epaulets of the uniform. Without the salacious reveals, we’re left with an army of indistinguishable BMI-challenged women.
“Social progress is imperfect, full of half-truths and sloppy misrepresentations…Fighting for power is a complicated, messy process, especially for complicated, messy human beings. Often, the best we can hope for is that our efforts draw a spotlight.
Which, I guess, is enough to make SlutWalkers of us all.”
By this standard, the half-truths and sloppy misrepresentations of sex-positive feminism are a success. Their efforts have drawn a spotlight. That doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to look away.
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