On Friday, Jessica Valenti (famous third wave feminism blogger and author of Full Frontal Feminism and many other important reads!) wrote on SlutWalk in the Washington Post! In SlutWalks and the future of feminism (thanks, Jeremy, for sending the article and provoking this post!), Valenti praises SlutWalks for being the most successful feminist action in 20 years. As a highly critical, informed and brilliant feminist author herself, Valenti critically situates the SlutWalk in the recent history of second and third wave actions, both in its style and its cultural goals, and confesses that the fed-upness revealed through this initiative and its popularity give her hope for the future.
I obviously loved it for many reasons. Here are my thoughts:
1) I'm thrilled to see Slutwalk getting so much attention - because it is grassroots, it is active and it is organized by women who seem to know the ebbs and flows of the feminist movement in its political and theoretical messiness. Through the noise both inside and out, they have compiled a series of sound bites that pack punch.
2) Speaking of active, Valenti gives due credit to the proactive-ness of slutwalkers. Feminism as a movement, she acknowledges, is often on the defense. How true! Instead of complaining and moving on, women reacted to a statement that arguably points to a bigger problem, they got angry, they organized around an extremely comprehensive and inclusive mandate, and they collected (are collecting) a ton of labour to maintain a hub for copycat marches all over the world! Bravo Toronto!
3) On a personal note, it's hard to believe this all started in a Canadian city among my distant peers. This inspires me and will continue to give me a sense of purpose on low activist days. Valenti gives the original organizers due credit.
4) Sidebarring Valenti's article for a moment, SlutWalk Toronto has done an incredible job managing a touchy subject. They deal with all sorts of flack (death threat style even) and the responses I've seen in public forums have been strong and eloquent. Once I noticed that someone was writing some seriously misogynist comments on the facebook page. He was given fair warning to please participate in productive dialogue. When his comments were eventually banned, the folks at SW posted an apologetic explanation to fans of the page. How cool is that?!
5) Okay, reason 5 is a bit of a secret. I hope this doesn't get me in trouble (note: above praise for SlutWalk!), but here goes: I hate that in order to get attention, women have to take their clothes off in public. Fuck. The burning bra myth, Riot Grrl sexuality, SlutWalks. This is how we have to do it. Ironic (is it?), and so fucking backwards. I get the other side -- we usually have to spend our time in the public domain covering up, so expressions of the body, especially nudity, are radical acts -- fine. I'm just sayin'...
To close, it's clear to me that the future of feminism (post? Patty?) is moving in many directions: even further toward anything goes (on the left and the right), and in some cases, back to the core tenets of liberalism. Want to wear heavy makeup? Do it! Raunch clothing? Sure! Religiousity? Alright!
In practice, I like the inclusivity. It certainly works for my many contradictions. In theory, I hope we know what we're fighting for.
No comments:
Post a Comment