We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes. – Camille Paglia
Our monthly collection of articles related at least tangentially to issues covered in this blog.
Walk Like a Slut, Talk Like a Slut
I first saw this story on Huffington Post a couple of weeks ago and didn’t really feel it lay in my sphere of coverage. But when Dave Krueger, who guest-blogged on The Agitator for the past two weeks, asked for my opinion about the story I thought about it a bit harder and decided I would write about it after all. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, “SlutWalks” are protests against the sort of attitude displayed by Toronto cop Michael Sanguinetti, who told a group of female students at a safety seminar that the best way to avoid being raped is to “Avoid dressing like sluts.” While I agree that a woman should take responsibility for her own safety by not carelessly putting herself into dangerous situations, the idea that men are such savages that their passions can be inflamed beyond control by the mere sight of a woman walking down a public street dressed in a provocative manner, is like something one might expect to hear from the nearest Ayatollah. Getting drunk at a frat party and going upstairs alone with an equally-drunk frat boy will probably get a girl raped even if she buys her clothes from the boys’ department, and blaming rape victims for their manner of dress is a lot like blaming prostitutes for being robbed (see next item) or murdered. This distinction seems unclear even to the usually-reasonable crowd over at The Agitator, which is part of why I changed my mind about covering the story. But the final deciding factor was a comment by reader Beste linking this May 8th Guardian editorial from anti-porn fanatic Gail Dines and prohibitionist lawyer Wendy Murphy:
…The organisers claim that celebrating the word “slut”, and promoting sluttishness in general, will help women achieve full autonomy over their sexuality. But the focus on “reclaiming” the word slut fails to address the real issue. The term slut is so deeply rooted in the patriarchal “madonna/whore” view of women’s sexuality that it is beyond redemption. The word is so saturated with the ideology that female sexual energy deserves punishment that trying to change its meaning is a waste of precious feminist resources. Advocates would be better off exposing the myriad ways in which the law and the culture enable myths about all types of women – sexually active or “chaste” alike. These myths facilitate sexual violence by undermining women’s credibility when they report sex crimes. Whether we blame victims by calling them “sluts” (who thus asked to be raped), or by calling them “frigid” (who thus secretly want to be overpowered), the problem is that we’re blaming them for their own victimisation no matter what they do. Encouraging women to be even more “sluttish” will not change this ugly reality…While the organisers of the SlutWalk might think that proudly calling themselves “sluts” is a way to empower women, they are in fact making life harder for girls who are trying to navigate their way through the tricky terrain of adolescence. Women need to take to the streets – but not for the right to be called “slut”. Women should be fighting for liberation from culturally imposed myths about their sexuality that encourage gendered violence. Our daughters – and our sons – have the right to live in a world that celebrates equally women’s sexual freedom and bodily integrity.
Obviously, Dines’ and Murphy’s prohibitionist definition of “sexual freedom” does not include the choice of what to do with our own bodies, since Dines believes we shouldn’t be allowed to be photographed naked and Murphy thinks only her kind of whoredom (namely, law practice) should be legal. The very fact that these disgusting hypocrites (who condemn the Madonna/whore duality while aggressively promoting their own version of it) are against SlutWalks is sufficient reason for me to endorse them. A comment on the Facebook page for Boston SlutWalk says that “…the nature of your being is not determined by how many sexual partners you have,” to which I would add “…nor the reason you choose to have sex with them.”
And Speaking of Victim Blaming…
It’s entirely absent from both this May 5th Huffington Post story and the bulk of the commentary which follows it, though the headline writer apparently felt compelled to cater to cheap sensationalism by referring to the girls as “Craigslist prostitutes”:
Two prostitutes were assaulted and robbed in hotel rooms by a man responding to their online ads, and police on Friday were looking for two suspects…A 24-year-old who advertised on the classifieds site backpage.com was robbed of her cash and phone on April 30. She was sliced in the hand and treated at a hospital, police said. The second woman, who is 30 years old and advertised on Craigslist, was at the Roosevelt Hotel at about noon on May 1. Police said the suspect brandished a knife and she struggled with him, until she was choked unconscious and then awoke to discover her money, a phone and a laptop were missing. She didn’t request medical attention. Police said the suspects were of similar height and build and were asking anyone with information on their whereabouts to call the New York Police Department’s Crime Stoppers hot line, (800) 577-TIPS…
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for most of the comments on the New York Daily News version of the same story. Clearly, at least a few people are waking up (despite the best efforts of government agencies and prohibitionists to keep them asleep), but they don’t read the Daily News.
Saddest Story of the Month
I’ve written before about governmental attempts to legislate “sex offenders” out of existence by restricting where they can live so tightly that, apparently, the government believes they’ll just all move away to Pervertland or something. Of course, any reasonable person would understand that if government makes it impossible for someone to live legally he’ll simply live illegally; what choice did the man from this May 4th Guardian story really have?
Albuquerque authorities arrested a homeless man for failing to notify them that he had moved out of the industrial rubbish bin he listed as his address. KOB-TV reported that Charles Mader is a convicted sex offender and is required to give the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department a physical address. Detectives say Mader violated his sex offender registration requirement after moving out of the dumpster and failing to report the move within 10 days. On Monday, deputies found Mader at a homeless shelter and arrested him…Sheriff’s officials say Mader could face up to three years in jail for failing to register for a third time.
The excuse used by the police was the “failure to notify”, but I’ll bet if some reporter cares to research it he’ll find that there are no homeless shelters in Albuquerque to which the man could legally move due to residency restrictions. In other words, he was actually arrested for daring to crawl out of the dumpster to which the “justice system” had consigned him.
The homeless man in the garbage dumpster breaks my heart. I don’t care what he did, no one should live in a garbage dumpster. That’s just terrible.
This whole slutwalk thing – I’m not sure I agree with you completely, Maggie. These women seem to be claiming that women should be absolutely free to wear anything they like, under any circumstance, in any situation, and not have to face the possibility of sexual assault. Their bodily integrity should always be guaranteed.
Nice theory. Not so simple in reality.
I SHOULD be able to walk down any street, any where, at any time, with hundred dollar bills pinned to my clothes and be perfectly safe from robbery. Sure. It’s my money – you take it, you’re a thief.
I think most reasonable people would think I was a complete fucking MORON if I decided to get drunk and stagger through a poor neighborhood with said money pinned to my clothes. I OUGHT to be able to pass out and wake up with all my cash. Sure. It ain’t gonna happen.
So I kind of agree with the officer. Use your fucking heads, bitches. Don’t dress like a slut and stagger through a park in the dead of night. Come on. Is that really revolutionary advice? Sure, you should be ALLOWED to dress however you damn well please. You should also be willing to wrap your head around the idea there could be consequences, and then make your call.
Theory and practice. So far apart sometimes.
It is a more complex situation than the two “sides” pretend, isn’t it? That’s why I had to think about it for a while. What I eventually decided is that it’s the situation a woman puts herself in, not how she’s dressed. In other words walking down a well-traveled street in broad daylight isn’t going to get one raped even if she’s in “clubwear”, but going upstairs drunk with a frat boy will probably get one raped even if one is clad in dirty sweats. And being alone at night in certain neighborhoods is dangerous no matter what one’s sex or clothes.
Any “slutwalker” who thinks she should be able to get naked with a guy and he’ll just politely stop if she changes her mind after penetration is living in a fantasy world, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that a prosecutor not be allowed to bring up my clothes if a cop rapes me after using the excuse of a traffic stop to get me in his power.
And besides, anything women do that pisses off neofeminists is worthwhile even if it’s flawed. 😉
We no longer know how to fight real battles, so now we’re just making some up.
Because apparently concepts like “nature,” “responsibility,” and “consequences” don’t mean a thing any more.
I’m a sci fi geek, so my imagination is out there, so you know what I’d like? I’d like a ray that would turn off a man’s ability to be attracted to a woman. Just to see what would happen.
Wonder who’d be crying then.
Actually, I was toying with attending the Chicago SlutWalk…I think that Mrs. Kaiju0 may like it as well. I’ll have to ask her tonite!
The problem, Andrea, is that the cop either knows or ought to know that he’s talking out his ass. Most rapes are by acquaintances, not strangers who see an “opportunity”, and rape victims range between two months old and eighty. The notion that what you are wearing means sweet fuck-all is, to use my usual blunt vocabulary, horseshit.
An answer which is both more helpful and more accurate is that the best way to avoid being a victim of rape is to carry a weapon you know how to use. My first weapon of choice is my brain, followed by a .38 and a knife.
I remember listening to the radio one day back in the mid-90s. The issue was homelessness, and a proposal for a new city ordinance which would ban sleeping under bridges and the like. Some silly bitch actually called into the show to say that she supported this because, if Dallas were to get tough on the homeless, “then maybe homeless people will quit coming to Dallas.”
It didn’t seem to have ever occurred to her that those homeless people were FROM Dallas.
My husband told me that one California city (I don’t recall which, but I think San Francisco) used to have periodic raids in which cops arrested as many homeless as they could find and then put them on buses to other California cities with one-way tickets.
They sent them to Dallas!!!
Man, I’m thinking the other Golden State mayors must have just looooooved those cops, and whatever city official allowed that.
Oh no, it’s the other way around. There are several cities, including Reno, NV (IIRC) who ship their homeless people to San Francisco. From what I’ve read, homeless people are given a few bucks and put on a bus to SF.
The cops in San Francisco are real bastards to the homeless as well. I used to temp for a non-profit that advocated for homeless. You see, the cops would hand out citations to homeless people – loitering, vagrancy, etc. – but because they didn’t have a mailing address, they would have no way to receive their summons. Soon, a warrant for their arrest would be issued for missing their court date. Then, if they ever turned up at a shelter or soup kitchen, they would be picked up by the boys in blue.
A lot of homeless people would sleep/camp in Golden Gate Park (which is HUGE!) and cops would regularly do round ups of homeless there – chasing people with police cars and mounted police. There were more than one “accidental” death of homeless people in these park raids.
Shades of Tasmania.
Maggie, I would agree with you that the situation a woman (or a man for that matter) puts herself in is the determining factor in any harm that may befall her. This should be a matter of common sense for anyone. Having studied the hobby by lurking on message boards for 7 years before I actually participated in it (weird, huh?), I had formulated a very good idea of what situations I needed to avoid and what my personal tolerance for risk would be. Everybody, regardless of gender should be aware of their own threshold for risk and avoid those situations which may cause harm.
That being said, it doesn’t matter how provocatively a woman may dress. Any man who would excuse his or others abhorrent behavior citing a woman’s manner of dress is incapable of critical thinking. He is displaying the “groupthink” present in a prohibitionist society. Don’t get me started on the drug war.
I’m surprised we don’t see more stories like this, given the number of people on the registry and the surprising number that are on there for, say, having sex with a 16 y/o when they were 18 (which some states, like Texas, still haven’t fixed (http://tinyurl.com/5tywwzh).
I’m willing to bet the majority of so-called “sex offenders” are on there for crap like that. 🙁
Having worked in the court system in Illinois for 6 years, I can tell you that the number of dangerous pedophiles (child killers) I encountered was one.
There were a number of people convicted of such minor “sex crimes” that were then registered sex offenders. There were two men in my county that were registered sex offenders for urinating in public. Both because their act was witnessed by a minor. One of the men was extremely intoxicated. Didn’t matter.
Most were men who were under the age of 22 with sex partners under the age of 17 (but almost all were over the age of 15). It gets very grey in there for me.
There were some sex offenders who merely exposed themselves to minors, some who were caught having sex in public, a few prostitutes (almost all were from massage parlors) and a few honest to badness kid touchers. Very few kid fuckers.
Just my non-scientific, but first person observations.
Austin’s police chief confirmed it, for Austin anyway – 90%+ of people on the “sex offender” registry are not predators or pedophiles. That’s why the registry is one of my favorite punching bags when pointing out what refusing to think gets people. As targets go, it doesn’t get much easier.
It’s also a great “slippery slope” argument, considering the registries were specifically established for child rapists and all the other “offenders” were added on afterward.
Maybe Perry should just have Texas secede. That should fix everything. @_@
Never happen. He might not be able to import his special hair gel from New Yawk City, and that, my friend, would be a catastrophe.
😀
A lot of this comes from colleges. Educated college men and women are disproportionately the focus of laws. why? The masses are uninteresting.
So when a drunken college girl goes into a frat boy’s room and they grope each other, there’s a moral panic: Who is to blame for her loose morals? Him or her? many people want to single the man out from the beginning. This is then extended by both sides to the general population. In fact, the general population has nothing like their problems.
Basing what the general female population does on the retarded shit that happens in colleges (with its politics) is dangerous and gives us dumb laws.
And persecuting homeless people – progressives do this as much as conservatives. Why? Again – homeless people are inconvenient.
Don’t blame cops. They just do what their middle-class overlords tell them.
Well, yes and no. Some of the abusive crap police pull does come from above, but a lot more is simply due to their not suffering any consequences for their actions, no matter how outrageous. 🙁
Bingo… many police position themselves above the law..every day without consequence.
If they grope each other, I hardly think it’s her loose morals.
And is it so bad that two people grope each other?
THANK YOU! I’ve always laughed at how the women are talked about being with everyone, etc. Why aren’t the men they’re with called sluts? Seriously? Are these women with invisible men? The men are doing the same with the women so aren’t THEY SLUTS also? Also want to point out that some “wild women” (sluts to some…eyeroll) like me have RESTRICTIONS on who they’ll see. Did I compromise myself a few times in the past? YES. But, have never done that again and never plan to. I thought all of us are with anyone at any time? HHMM…thank you again for pointing this out.
So, who do I call to get a Slut Walk started in my town? I’m sure we have lots of sluts, but I’ll be damned if I can find them.
I found 140 something pages of women looking for men on a personals website I used to find my latest sex only friend. At least some of the women were looking for sex only friends. But, I thought we’re so rare we don’t count, etc.? HHMM…I’m convinced that the “you’re such a small group you don’t matter” mindset is at least in part a very sad fear thing, like we’re some kind of “threat”. I say the opposite: those of us who are wild and also break the evil dating game rules give (gasp…you mean giving without thinking like a miser and breaking everything down into I gave this, so you give that, etc.) to the men who deserve a break in regards to getting sex. Also other men who are seen as “write-offs” for various reasons. Why does sex have to be made so complicated? I.e., I won’t be with you unless you have X amount of $, have a certain type of job, look a certain way, etc., etc. Why not just have sex for fun and to help out men who are frustrated, poor (in the money area, not the goodness area), etc?
Do you make a habit of having sex with men you find unattractive?
Blossom makes sure I do…lol…on a serious note, you know I’ve always been attracted to men that a lot of women don’t find good-looking. Also, there was at least 1 sex only friend I had that my physical attraction for him grew over time (I’ll call him T. He’s the 1 you knew and liked who you’d like to autograph something of yours). Remember not long ago you mentioned a woman in the past who was into free love that purposely had sex with men who weren’t the best-looking? I think that was wonderful and also needed.
I have an affliction where I only find out they were interested in having sex after they’ve changed jobs and moved to a different state. And, it’s only after they don’t work at the same place as you that you can talk about sex without the risk of a sexual harassment complaint.
Of course, the real problem is that the only place I meet women is at work.
And as I get older and uglier, I find that I am oddly attracted to blind women.
Yeah, you celebrity was a good guy. Not the hottest hunk in town, but as soon as I met I felt like this was somebody I could get along with. And the two of you allowed me to actually feel compersion.
But my question wasn’t “Do you make a habit of having sex with men who aren’t uber-hunks but to whom you are attracted for other reasons?” The question was “Do you make a habit of having sex with men you find unattractive?”
Dear Sailor B, what’s compersion?
Compersion is a feeling of happiness that comes from knowing that the person you love is experiencing pleasure with somebody. Sort of but not exactly jealousy in reverse. Not just that hearing about your sexual activities with T is a turn-on (which it is), but a genuine happiness in knowing that when I couldn’t be there, you had this pleasure and comfort.
I want you to know that it is a wonderful feeling, and you gave it to me. Compersion. Thank you.
Wow, that’s a great word! It even has a Wikipedia article. That’s exactly what women like Andrea or me feel when we know our husbands have enjoyed themselves with a working girl! 🙂
Dear Sailor B: The question was “Do you make a habit of having sex with men you find unattractive?” My answer: way less than I used to. You know I changed some things when I started what I call my “2nd round” of sex only friendships. I do think it’s wonderful for women to do what the free love woman you told me about did and that’s something I’d never completely rule out for myself.
FYI
http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/435-482.pdf
I read this a while back and this thread make me think about it.
Will start reading tonight.
Sorry to derail where the discussion had headed, but your article brought a couple of comments to mind.
Firstly, while I agree that women are entitled to dress how they please, I do feel that the idea behind the slutwalks is naive at best. Like you, I don’t agree that the sight of a woman wearing not much will inflame men to the point where they are slavering beasts, but there are some men out there who will take provocative dress as a come-on, and this could lead to rape for a variety of reasons (not good reasons, you understand, but reasons in the mind of the attacker). The problem is that you just don’t know who these men are; you can’t tell just by looking at them. So whilst such men exist – and if we’re honest, they always will – it’s more sensible not to dress in a provocative – or ‘slutty’ – manner. Sure, you have the right to, but that doesn’t mean you should exercise that right with no regard for the possible consequences.
Please don’t misunderstand me here – I am not defending in any way a man who commits rape and neither am I saying that it is in any way the victim’s fault if she is attacked; but I AM saying that everyone should look first to their own safety. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have tp, but this is not a perfect world.
Second point is this; when you say “going upstairs alone with an equally-drunk frat boy will probably get a girl raped “, how are you defining rape? If it is drunken consensual sex, then surely it’s not rape if the man is equally drunk? Neither party is really able to make a sound decision. If she passes out, or says ‘no’ and he carried on then it certainly is rape, and should be treated as such. But two drunk people having a roll in the hay is surely no more than that? They may both regret it the next day, but why is only one of them criminally culpable?
I don’t think one should be, but the way the law is currently interpreted…
Yeah, it sucks. Men, when drunk, retain full responsibility for their actions, whilst drunken women are not responsible at all, under the law. Demeaning to both sexes and ultimately equally destructive. I wonder to what degree the powers that be are aware of this?
Love your blog, by the way. A quiet voice of reason amidst a cacophony of monkeys…
Thank you! That is such a great compliment you’ve earned yourself a place in my “criticisms, witticisms and praise” section! 🙂
🙂
“The very fact that these disgusting hypocrites (who condemn the Madonna/whore duality while aggressively promoting their own version of it) are against SlutWalks is sufficient reason for me to endorse them.”
It’s surprising to hear this from a libertarian. Slutwalks are pro-state demonstration. They are a demand for more control, more strong good men to protect the poor helpless women from all the bad strong men (who might, for instance, look at them, or even – heaven forbid – judge them).
That’s why slutwalkers are not teargassed and thrown into cells like other protestors. They want the world to be bubblewrapped for their peace of mind and by god, there’s plenty of bureaucrats and petty tyrants prepared to promise exactly that.