Abigail Ross-Jackson wonders why SlutWalkers would want to “live in a world where women can wear what they want but men are never allowed to woo or whistle?”
Why should men be demonised for wolf-whistling or for attempting to chat up a woman whom they think is attractive? The Slutwalkers’ demand of the right not to be judged is profoundly backward and anti-social. Several of the banners on Saturday’s protest seemed to suggest that men are more like animals than rational human beings. One said: ‘Why am I dressed like a slut? Why are you thinking like a rapist?’ This is worrying, because it points to another serious problem with the Slutwalk phenomenon: its embrace of the widening definition of ‘harassment’. While most people would agree that stalking, groping and so on is unacceptable, amounting to harassment, the idea that looking, thinking, flirting and chatting someone up is also no longer acceptable, and that it amounts to ‘thinking like a rapist’, shows that everyday human interaction is now increasingly being labelled ‘harassment’. What next: no eye contact without written permission?
One woman who took part in the London Slutwalk later tweeted: ‘Thirty-seven people have taken my photo so far on #slutwalk. Just one sought consent first. (Of those I challenged, it’d not occurred to them to ask.)’ This just about sums up the preciousness, and the social aloofness, of Slutwalkers: they seem to imagine that even on a public demonstration at which they have dressed in the most attention-grabbing way, it is somehow a violation of their person for someone to take a photo. Feminists are warping the word ‘consent’, taking it from the realm of rape and applying it to such everyday actions as chatting and taking photos in public. But if we had to seek consent for every form of human interplay, nothing would ever happen; it would be a boring world indeed.
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Many millions of us negotiate our relationships, sexual or otherwise, on a day-to-day basis; we don’t need contracts or written consent or any clearly established boundaries. In trying to formalise human relationships, the Slutwalkers’ attitude is actually quite arrogant: they seem to want to reshape the public sphere, and even parts of the private sphere, according to their own tastes and desires, with no regard for the rest of us. One Slutwalker said: ‘I wear what I want. Because I dress this way it doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. I get upset if a girl gets dressed up for male attention.’ This really gets to the heart of the double-standard in the Slutwalk phenomenon: they can wear what they like because they are apparently empowered and strong women, but if other women chose to dress in order to attract attention then they should be pitied and looked down upon. Meanwhile men can’t look, pass judgement or flirt for fear of being branded sexist and vile, while women apparently exist in a bubble where they are elevated and protected from the prying eyes and judgements of society.
