Well, asking for a blog post.
It occurs to me that Tracey Barnett is a complete twit.
Why?
Her latest column at the Herald is titled "SlutWalk confuses rape message".
Ok, so first of all, it should be an anti-rape message. And no, SlutWalk isn't that hard to comprehend.
Rape myth:
If you dress like a slut, you'll get raped. Just by being out in town "dressed like a slut" (which is what, exactly? high heels? tight skirt? showing cleavage? spangles? a combination of the above?), you set yourself up as a target for rape.
Myth busted:
a) This is called victim blaming, and it is bullshit.
b) It doesn't matter what you wear if a man decides he will rape you.
c) Most women are raped in places they felt safe by men they thought they could trust. So there is no real correlation between being out on the town (while dressed like a slut) and being a rape survivor.
(Kudos to Scuba Nurse for reiterating that women who are raped are not victims)
So Tracey Barnett's column this week should be called "the media confuses SlutWalk anti-rape message".
Also, what the hell is a "proud non-slut"? Get off your high horse, Tracey. If you've slept with more than one man, that makes you a complete trollop in the eyes of Islam.
And one more thing:
"I could give a whore's thong over whether the word "slut" should be "reclaimed"."
Um, yeah, grammar fail (I could not care less, vs I could care less, same format), and sex worker prejudice in one fell swoop. Also, "queers" have "reclaimed" the "word" for "themselves", so "why not" "sluts" too? Patronizing much?
So yeah, the NZ Herald are a bunch of ninnies. Situation normal, then.
By contrast, the Dom Post has an article from Deborah Russell which spells out the reasons for SlutWalk perfectly. The comments look like a shitstorm though. Just a heads up.
Interestingly, Tracey Barnett was there, and very positive about it, and not dressed as a radish. I had a brief chat to her, chickened out of mentioning that her column had been not entirely helpful.
ReplyDeleteOne of the ideas that came to me while thinking and writing about SlutWalk in the lead-up to it, is that no woman (or girl) is immune from being called a slut. So you can't be a proud non-slut, unless you believe that slut is an actual thing that means the same thing to everyone which it's not of course.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great point La Ranita - one of the things I have been thinking a lot about in the last few days is that there is no definition of "slut" really. Your comment is a much more sensible way of thinking about it than how I was grappling with it. Ta!
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