The first SlutWalk took place in Toronto Canda on April 1^st, after a police officer suggested women avoid dressing like ‘sluts’ in order to avoid sexual assault and rape. Since then SlutWalks have taken place on 3 continents and thousands are expected to join the SlutWalk protests in London and Manchester on June 11.

Here, Eleanor B, a member of Revolution and Leeds University Union Feminist Society presents a discussion piece.

SlutWalks have been named specifically in reference to a particular instance, but that doesn’t mean it’s progressive to try and reclaim the word.

Women’s sexuality has terrified society throughout history, and this is particularly noticeable in the legislative discrimination and cultural attitudes which prosper within the UK and beyond. When it comes to morality, the way a woman expresses her sexuality is full of societal blame and contradictions. Women are either contested for their vulgar overt sexuality, or dismissed as void of sexual desire.

The blaming culture which accompanies many female survivors’ experiences of sexual assault and rape illustrates how women are oppressed directly by the person who has harmed them, but also indirectly by society which tells them that their experience is in some way a consequence of their actions.

Sometimes society tells women that they must have deserved it, and that is what the police officer in Ontario was implying. The recent SlutWalk demonstrations that have swept across Canada, the USA, Australia and the UK are direct responses to the officer’s remark that if women students did not want to be sexually assaulted, then they should not dress like ‘sluts’.

The widespread attitude that a woman’s conduct is a factor in whether she will experience or deserve rape or unwanted sexual contact is dangerous. This belief is held by men and women of all ages in contemporary society. It is also shared by the Coalition government, who have recently declared their interest in replacing science-based sex education with promoting abstinence instead.

Abstinence is a doctrine based on telling young women that they are responsible for not arousing the animalistic sexual tendencies of boys, and that they must preserve their purity (because obviously that is their only measurement of worth) by abstaining from sex. Who’d want to have sex anyway right? Girls don’t, that’s icky and unrefined. Besides, girls and women don’t have real sexual urges like men! Abstinence disempowers women by denying them control over their own sexuality.

The idea that women essentially do not or cannot enjoy sex is unfortunately still popular; remember Stephen Fry’s valuable insights into female sexuality as a homosexual man?

Under a capitalist system, a woman’s value becomes contingent upon her sex appeal before she has even reached puberty. Young girls are of course encouraged to be many things in their childhoods, as long as they all adhere to the gender role which is assigned to their physical female form. Girls may be princesses, little mothers to dollies and objects to be adorned with beauty so that they can be admired.

Women are supposed to want to be admired by men, and that is why they wear ‘attractive’ clothing, for men, not themselves. This ridiculous and demeaning stereotype simply reinforces a set of cultural values which insist that women exist for men, and that they must conduct themselves in a way which increases their value as a consumer and sex object without doing anything too risqué or offensive to the social order.

It is not uncommon for some people to think that women should indeed be flattered by harassment in the street, because it is a compliment to their sex appeal. Similarly, women are expected to look sexy but not too sexy. Sexual but virginal (think Britney Spears’ early career).

The contradictions continue as we see the expectations on young women to respond positively to stripping and pornography consumption whilst at the same time not practising casual sex. The pressure on young women is at breaking point. The contradictions of conservatism versus consumerism under capitalism are too much to bear. Presumably this is where SlutWalk steps in.

But it doesn’t seem that simple. Feminists in the blogosphere have been going crazy, with opinion divided over whether the language is progressive enough to embrace the issues of female oppression today. I am tempted to suggest it is not. I understand that the specific use of ‘slut’ by the police officer in Ontario which launched the wave of demonstrations, but that does not make it ‘reclaiming’ this word an empowering struggle for women’s sexual liberation.

I do not want to reclaim the word slut; I want to make it redundant. I don’t want to repackage a variant, unified expression of female sexuality which just focuses on the single-issue aesthetic of all women being ‘sluts’. I don’t even understand what ‘sluttiness’ is supposed to encompass as a lifestyle.

The recent youth mobilisations around the SlutWalks are fantastic, and a progression from some of the essentialist understandings of heterosexuality which emerged from the second wave feminist movement. However, I am unhappy with the word slut being so readily welcomed as empowering for all women just because the original organisers in Ontario decided so. Celebrating ‘sluttiness’ seems regressive. It’s still promoting one sexual lifestyle as more valid than another.

What about asexual people? What about women who do not want casual sexual relationships? What about women who don’t want to describe themselves with words that have been spat at them with the poison of centuries of women’s oppression behind them?

The women’s liberation movement must not dictate how all women should conduct their sexuality in order to free themselves from oppression – an error which brought on the downfall of radical lesbianism and fractured the second wave feminist movement in the 1970s.

Reclaiming ‘sluttiness’ is essentially as regressive as dictating abstinence is, and will not improve gender relations or ameliorate oppression under capitalism.

The word slut is so deeply rooted in the Madonna/Whore dichotomy of female sexuality that it becomes lost in translation. Is the right message really being conveyed here? Even as a feminist activist with the time to explore the issues at hand, I am struggling to identify the message that is meant to be empowering me. Am I supposed to be more sexually suggestive now to counteract largely male attitudes towards sexual assault? It doesn’t feel like a particularly authentic sexual expression.

Women’s bodies have been subjected to the control of legislators, scientists, medical professionals, government agencies, religion and men throughout history, and this is not liberation. Men and women have both been alienated from the possibility of authentic sexual expression because of religious and capitalist sanctions. Consumerist markets package up the sexual expressions of humans and sell them back to us in distorted forms.

The message that women’s bodies must be under their own control, free from consumerist and conservative violation under capitalism must be at the heart of these demonstrations.

Yes, women should wear whatever they want when they go about their lives. They should be free from fear of reprisal. Women should not have to take the responsibility of counteracting sexual attacks through the modification of their own behaviour.

Self-defence classes are not the answer. Assuming men are animalistic sexual predators is not the answer. Talking about women as if they are all the same is not the answer.

I do not think reclaiming the word ‘slut’ is the answer either, but I don’t want to punch the enthusiasm out of this new youth mobilisation. Further discussions are needed of course, but let’s support the SlutWalk demonstrations as an act of recognition to the repression of female sexuality, with the acknowledgement that embracing this word is not our ideal first port of call to win the fight.