The SlutWalk Movement As women living in a patriarchal society, assumptions are constantly made by men based on what we wear. If women wear less clothing, they are labeled as sluts and told that they are ‘asking for it.’ If they wear too much then they are judged for being too modest, or in some cases, still asking for it. The SlutWalk movement was started in defiance of this intersection of gender and sexuality; however, the movement lacked the acknowledgment of the privilege of white feminism. The SlutWalk movement was started by two white students named Heather Jarvis and Sonya Barnett in Toronto, Canada in 2011. This was in response to a comment made by a police officer (Michael Sanguinetti) regarding a correlation between sexual violence and women’s clothing. Sanguinetti proudly declared he had “been advised [not to] say this, but women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” (Lindsay). In response, white women took to the streets dressed in both everyday clothing and lingerie to make a statement that no one should make judgments about what anyone wears, “Don’t tell us how to dress. Tell men not to rape” (Valenti). Their goal was to draw attention to the word slut and reclaim it. However, as the SlutWalk movement spread across the country and world, controversies began to arise. One critique of the movement was that many women of color felt like they had no place in the SlutWalk movement, showing the inherent privilege held by the white organizers and participants. The white counterparts did not take into account the historical significance of women of color’s sexuality. History that is written through rape, oppression, and sexual exploitation (Reger). With the lack of intersectionality and discussion of race in the movement, women of color are silenced and forced to be complacent with their sexuality, which is rooted in a dark history of white supremacy, inherently making the reclamation of “slut” only for white women. The SlutWalk movement was not the first of its kind, but given the founders’ socioeconomic statuses as privileged white women, the movement quickly gained momentum. The movement gained a lot of media attention such as front-page reports in the Washington Post, New York Post, and Guardian. The SlutWalk movement overpowered other groups and movements started by women of color. These movements tended to include and welcome an intersectionality of identities, joining forces to fight for an end to sexual violence and police brutality. The movements led by women of color did not gain as much media attention as the ones that were started by white women. One example of a group started by women of color is INCITE! It aimed to end systemic violence against women of color, mainly in their homes and communities (Bogado). Bogado states in her article “Slutwalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy” that if the SlutWalk movement wanted to “bring attention to the systemic ways in which women are harmed by regressive and misogynistic thinking,” they could have reached out and listened to women of color, poor women, and transgender women. With this, they could have taken into consideration what an equitable future might look like for safe female sexuality. The movement instead decided to base itself solely on classist, white feminism. The movement also decided to reclaim the word slut, which not everyone desires to reclaim (Bogado). In one of the SlutWalk’s in New York City, a white woman was gleefully holding a sign quoting Yoko Ono’s song “Woman is N*gger of the World” (Bogado). This display of privilege and blatant ignorance demonstrates how white female protestors in the marches were clear in wanting to end violence against women but turned their heads towards obvious racism. How might a black woman’s sense of belonging to this movement change in response to such an obvious racist display? This showed that women of color were not safe within this movement. Feminist Uprising to Resist Inequality and Exploitation (FURIE) is a grassroots, pan-womanist, third-world internationalist marxist movement that originated in Chicago. FURIE is a prime example of an organization that uses an intersectional approach to the systemic injustices communities face, similar to the ways in which INCITE! fights for the sexual freedom of women of color. In practice, FURIE focuses on mutual aid and promoting campaigns like Blame the System and Not the Victim Rally, inclusive self-defense classes, and more. These efforts demonstrate a complete and inclusive attempt to break down a violent patriarchal society to end violence against all women. One significant figure within the sexual expression movements is Emily Linden who is the founder of the Unslut Project. She raises the idea of how problematic the word slut can truly be. In her eyes, when labeled as a “slut” you are no longer seen as a multidimensional person but instead marginalized, ignored, and dismissed, even outright denied your successful motherhood by society (Linden). The SlutWalk movement wants to reclaim the word “slut” however, according to the organization of black women, Blueprint, many women of color believe they have struggled tirelessly to eradicate the term along with Jezebel, Hottentot, mammy, mule, or sapphire (Tanis). In Problems with Names, Ahmed points out the difference between a white female body and a woman of color “a white female body is assumed to be vulnerable and in need of protection from others [while] a brown body is not perceived as a fragile female body” (Ahmed). He elaborates on this claim by stating that one might be “stopped because they think you are Aboriginal; you are allowed to start up again when you pass as white” (Ahmed). These two quotes stated by Ahmed truly encapsulate why the SlutWalk movement can be interpreted so differently for a woman of color and for a white woman as society treats their bodies so differently. White women are seen as pure until they are not, and as a woman of color, you are seen as hypersexual from the start. Corroborating this idea is Tanis writing that the notion that one will not be raped no matter their level of clothing and the assumption of knowing what a black woman wants, needs, and deserves has transcended the boundaries of what she wears. For women of color the personal becomes political and therefore “rape and the absence of justice are intersected with race, gender, sexuality, poverty, immigration and community” (Tanis). Women of color feel as though they do not have the privilege or the space to call themselves “slut” when half-naked or fully clothed without validating the history and ideology of what a black woman is. Historically, black female bodies have been considered unnatural and almost animalistic (Bryana & Rasul). When we look at media, especially rap and music videos, black women are portrayed as hypersexualized objects and labeled as “bitches and hos” (Malveaux). “Ho” is derived from the word “hooker” or “whore,” as in “Jezebel whore,” which is meant to strip one of their humanity (Tanis). The first stereotype to portray hypersexualization in women of color is the term “Jezebel.” The “Jezebel” is defined as a “hypersexual, manipulative, animalistic and promiscuous female who cannot be controlled” (Bryana & Rasul). This image has been used to justify rape and sexual exploitation of women of color by white men; they use this term by claiming that women of color cannot be raped because they already constantly crave sexual intercourse (Bryana & Rasul). This dismissal of sexual violence towards women of color perpetuates the normative ideology in our patriarchal society that women of color are allowing these sexual acts of violence to occur. The critiques of the broader euro-centric SlutWalk movement are better understood with these concepts as contextualization. The SlutWalk movement failed to use an intersectional approach and a feminist theory lens and thus silenced women of color. The SlutWalk movement adopted a single-axis framework and refused to consider race and sexuality under the same umbrella. In the paper Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex, Kimberle Crenshaw states that problems cannot be solved so simply by just adding women of color to an already established analytical structure (Crenshaw). This is because of those structures like the SlutWalk movement only focused on how white privileged women deal with sexual violence. They can not adequately address the ways that Black women are overpowered (Crenshaw). Crenshaw brings up SoJourner Truth’s iconic speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” SoJourner Truth used her experiences in slavery to reveal the ideological myths of womanhood and the reality of black women’s experiences in America (Crenshaw). Furthermore, Crenshaw’s note regarding Truth’s speech exemplifies how in our patriarchal society, women of color are placed into a structure that doesn’t cater to the importance of their racial and gender identities. Essentially the SlutWalk fails to address issues that affect non-white women. The SlutWalk movement under a feminist theory lens reveals its faults as feminist theory attempts to address patriarchy and sexuality, without consideration of race. White women, especially in the SlutWalk, oftentimes do not comprehend this phenomenon because of their own personal racial privilege–this contributes to the domination of other women, more specifically women of color (Crenshaw). The Question ‘who gets to be a slut?’ if answered by the SlutWalk movement, it would seem that everyone gets to be a slut in an attempt to reclaim the word and its meaning. However, as we have learned from the movement's exclusion of women of color, that does not seem to be the case. When women of color are labeled as a slut it carries a heavy connotation of their hyper-sexualization. White women on the other hand are seen as not sexualized until they are meaning the word slut is not as obstructive. As the group in power, this difference in meaning is often overlooked by the white women leading the SlutWalk movement. In conclusion, the SlutWalk movement had good intentions but was deeply flawed because of their single-axis framework lens when looking at the ways sexual violence and the word slut connect with only white women. The SlutWalk movement, therefore, is plagued by white supremacy while prioritizing white women and a lack of intersectionality, silencing women of color and the problems pertaining to the term ‘slut’ and the hypersexualization of women of color past and present. Finally, the answer to who gets to be a slut, is singled to one race, privileged white women, who make up the majority of the SlutWalk movement, begging members and potential participants to reconsider their decision to join the SlutWalk, and to contemplate the entire picture of all historically-included and historically-excluded women’s sexualities. Works Cited Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822373377. Bogado, Aura. “Slutwalk: A Stroll Through White Supremacy 1.” Gender, Sex, and Politics, 1st ed., Routledge, 2016, pp. 33–37, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315817798-5. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” Droit et Société, vol. 108, no. 2, 2021, pp. 465–87. Herriot, Lindsay. “SlutWalk: Contextualizing the Movement.” Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 53, 2015, pp. 22–30, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.08.001. Kocieda, Aphrodite. “We’re Taking Slut Back”: Analyzing Racialized Gender Politics in Chicago’s 2012 Slutwalk March. Digital Commons @ University of South Florida, 2014. Malveaux, Julianne. “Knowing Our Beauty: Reclaiming the True Images of Black Women.” Urban League=opportunity Journal, 2007, pp. 60–64. Reger, Jo. “The Story of a Slut Walk.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 44, no. 1, 2014, pp. 84–112., https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241614526434. “‘Slut’ Isn’t Just a Word. It’s a Word That Can Kill; Emily Lindin Is Directing a Crowd-Funded Documentary About the Word ‘Slut’. She Explains Why.” The Telegraph Online, 2015. Sprengeler, Chelsey. “About Furie: Chicago.” Panwomanist, 20 Feb. 2021, https://www.panwomanist.org/about-furie. Tanis, Farah. “AN OPEN LETTER FROM BLACK WOMEN TO THE SLUTWALK.” Gender & Society, vol. 30, no. 1, 2016, pp. 9–13, https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243215611868. Valenti, Jessica. “SlutWalks and the Future of Feminism.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 June 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/slutwalks-and-the-future-of-feminism/2011/0 6/01/AGjB9LIH_story.html. Watson, Laurel B., et al. “A Sociocultural Examination of Body Image Among Black Women.” Body Image, vol. 31, 2019, pp. 280–87, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2019.03.008. Wayne, Chloe. “‘Baad Bitches’ and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, Bridgewater State College, 2009, p. 239–.
