Sexuality and the SlutWalk

While strolling through a bookstore some years ago, I noticed the book Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch by Elizabeth Hilts about how assertive and confident women are labeled “bitch”, thinking surely there aren’t women out there that want to be called something that means a female dog.  Yet, I remember that I was in my young twenties when I really starting to self-identify as a feminist simply because I refused to accept the “caricatures... drill[ed] into [me] through popular culture and education” (Feinstein 188).  So I read the book and learned to accept with pride (after all, female dogs are very smart, protective, and confident) and embrace the reality that until antiquated notions of what a respectable woman is supposed to be behave like evolve, I will be called a “bitch” every time I stand up for myself in the same manner a man would defend himself.

Having stated the above, I wholeheartedly believe that the notion that a woman can reclaim the word slut is something, as the Open Letter from Black Women states “we cannot afford to label ourselves” (admin).  The group AF3IRM furthers this ideology on their website stating the argument “we cannot truly ‘reclaim’ the word ‘Slut’. It was never ours to begin with. This label is one forced upon us by colonizers, who transformed our women into commodities” and being personally involved with issues of human trafficking, in particular the sex trade, I wince every time a woman tries to reclaim this word. The subjugation and oppression of women involved in the dehumanizing sex trade is no one that can be understood by women claiming they can dress however they want and thereby shouldn’t live in fear of unintended consequences.  The Black Women’s Letter agrees with the SlutWalk‘s stance that victim-blaming is one of the core issues to be addressed, they can still “continue to fight for the development of policies and initiatives that prioritize the primary prevention of sexual assault, respect women and individual rights, agency and freedoms and holds offenders accountable… without resorting to the taking-back of words that were never ours to begin with” (admin).  In the same sense that Leslie Feinberg expresses her preference for “gender-neutral pronouns like sie… and hir” (Feinberg 188), so too should women express their objection to a term the Black Women say “may compromise more than we are able to recover.”  To provide understanding to core issues Feinberg states “we must not forget that these widespread discussions were not just organized to talk about oppression. They were a giant dialogue about how to take action to fight institutionalized anti-woman attitudes, rape and battering,… and other ways women were socially and economically devalued” (189).

Works Cited

admin, . "An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk." Black Women's Blueprint, 23 Sep 2011. Web. 26 Oct 2011. <http://www.blackwomensblueprint.org/index.php/an-open-letter-from-black-women-to-the-slutwalk/>.

"AF3IRM Responds to SlutWalk: The Women's Movement Is Not Monochromatic." AF3IRM. AF3IRM, n.d. Web. 26 Oct 2011. <http://af3irm.org/2011/9/af3irm-responds-slutwalk-women’s-movement-not-monochromatic>.

Feinberg, Leslie. "We Are All Works in Progress." Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 188-89. Print.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.