Our womenfolk are taking to the streets again in an attempt to convince us that they should be allowed to be called sluts without men thinking they might be ‘sluts’.
Our womenfolk are taking to the streets again in an attempt to convince us that they should be allowed to be called sluts without men thinking they might be ‘sluts’. There is a ‘slut walk’ about to take place in London and there have been similar events in India, Canada and the USA. In them, lots of feminists march up and down wearing skimpy and supposedly provocative attire; clothes which I might add, perhaps unchivalrously, do not always suit them.
Normally the idea of thousands of women dressed in thongs and boob tubes and proclaiming themselves to be ‘sluts’ would be a cause for rejoicing, but perhaps not in the case of some of these women. Of course I do not mean this disparagingly: it is every woman’s right to be a munter or a moose, words which, like slut, they may well wish to ‘reclaim’ from the misogynist’s lexicon. I put reclaim in quotation marks in order to cast doubt upon it, by the way.
Many of the women behind this march have said, rather mystifyingly, that they wish to ‘reclaim’ the word slut, as if it once meant ‘strong independent woman in a very real sense’ and men have somehow, over the years, debased it; but of course it didn’t. The word slut has always meant an ‘immoral’ woman, or a prostitute or a slattern. I suppose they could try to reclaim the word immoral, too, mind. Some of the more sensible feminists (the more radical ones, as it happens) think that the slut walk is a very stupid idea indeed and do not wish women to revel in what is, simply put, a long-standing term of misogynistic abuse. For years feminists fought against such abuse and had thought that by now the battle was won.
The whole shebang, though, has been occasioned by the injudicious words of a lowly Canadian policeman, a certain Michael Sanguinetti, who said: ‘Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised.’ This was, at the least, a tad untactful and also misleading; the majority of women who are subjected to violent sexual attacks by men are not dressed as ‘sluts’. Sanguinetti has since apologised, but a fat lot of good that has done. The protests have spread around the world in very much the modern manner, like a viral non-sequitur, a meme of stupidity. Like a binary-coded version of Chinese whispers. Some of the marches have been arranged because women do not wish to be called sluts by some copper just because they are wearing revealing clothing. Others like the word slut and think sluts should have the right to be sluts without being attacked. Well, sure, indeed. But that’s where the first non-sequitur comes in: of course they should have that right, but we do not live in a perfect world. The copper was not saying that a woman who dressed as a slut deserved to be attacked, or that the attacker was any less guilty than if she had been dressed as, say, Caroline Spelman. Merely that she was more likely to be attacked.
I’ve read through the conclusions of 11 studies into rape statistics and every one (bar one) suggests that so-called provocative clothing is cited by the assailants as having been a spur to the attack in a minority of cases, ranging from a low of 5 per cent in one study (Utah and Arizona state universities) to a high of 60 per cent. The exception, incidentally, was a study which excluded from its findings the reasons cited by the rapist, which demonstrates a wilful blindness all of its own.
And then more non-sequiturs follow. One woman, who was attempting to organise a similar march in London, complained to me that ‘society does not tell men not to rape women’. Doesn’t it? I thought it did, given that rape is the second most serious offence on the statute book. And what do you mean, doesn’t ‘tell them’? I then became involved in a bizarre argument on this point, with the slut walk woman (who was quite foxy, actually) demanding that men should be told not to rape women and me replying that we don’t tell burglars not to steal things for the simple reason that it would be pointless. She said that we do tell burglars not to steal things, and that there were signs up telling them not to steal things. I’ve never seen any — and I think this argument is not merely disingenuous, but actually bonkers.
Following from this is another disingenuous argument which is marshalled out of expediency: that women wear skimpy or revealing clothing not in order to appeal to men, but in order to feel good about themselves. The truth is that they wear those sorts of clothes for both reasons — and an even worse transgression as far as the feminists are concerned, that attracting the attention of men contributes towards them feeling better about themselves. Not all women, obviously, but many. I would have thought that this point was incontestable, but it is dismissed out of hand by the feminists, as if it were wishful thinking on the part of men. But it isn’t, is it? And the inevitable non-sequitur which follows; that this point has to be asserted — women do not dress to attract men — because if they concede the point it somehow makes rape more acceptable. But it doesn’t make rape any more acceptable, or a rapist any less guilty.
But this is how we are, I suppose, all of us — men and women. We have become so thinned and delicate of late, so anxious to be slighted, so determined to take offence, that the comments of one thick Canuck copper can reverberate around the world.
Offer ends in:
