Clementine Ford: Full complicity
WHEN it comes to the thorny issue of sluts, many people agree that they only have themselves to blame.
WHEN it comes to the thorny issue of sluts, many people agree that they only have themselves to blame.
Ladies, if you're going to step out of the house in anything other than a burqa then you have to expect some men are going to want to touch the goods.
I'm not saying it's right that you get sexually assaulted, but come on, do you think it would have happened if you hadn't been wearing that cheeky blouse and come-hither slip of a skirt? It's like a red flag to a bull, a beacon of light on a stormy sea, an oasis in a blazing desert.
The lesson here is simple: if you're going to leave uncovered meat out, don't be surprised when the cats come a-calling.
There's been a lot of talk about sluts lately. What defines them (revealing clothes and a lack of self-respect, apparently), where you can find them and, most important of all, how they don't deserve the same protection under the law as other people because they frequently leave the keys in the ignition of their car and their wallets on the table.
Or something. I don't know, it all starts to get a bit confusing around the petty theft analogies, mainly because a vagina isn't the same thing as a Honda Civic.
AdelaideNow recently published an article about the global Slutwalk phenomenon, a protest movement started in Toronto in response to a police officer's thoughtless suggestion that women "not dress like sluts" in order to avoid being sexually assaulted.
In droves, commenters on this site and across Australia banded together to reinforce the officer's views that, sometimes, women are to blame for the fact that someone decided to rape them.
In our society, we hold the view that there are two kinds of rape. There's Real Rape, which is the kind that happens when women are jogging or walking the dog or wearing mum jeans. Real rapists probably don't know their victims.
Then there's Cry Rape Rape, which is rape that occurs outside any one of these very specific, mostly uncommon scenarios and where the women are held to be somehow complicit.
This is the rape that society, without knowing any of the facts, declares is possibly, probably the result of a woman having sex, regretting it and then Crying Rape.
There's a simple phrase for this. It's called victim blaming. It's the worst kind of schadenfreude, because what it means for those people engaging in it is that on some level, probably not even buried that deep within, they are enjoying the fact that "these sluts got what was coming to them".
To revel in the sexual assault of a woman, even under the guise of a smug I-told-you-so, is the worst kind of misogyny. It's the kind of attitude that should make people feel ashamed, not satisfied.
In 2006, when Sheik Al-Hilaly talked about women's bodies being temptation for salivating men, we raged against his archaic sexism. In Australia, we yelled, we are civilised. We treat women with respect. We know that women can dress and behave exactly as they like, and if you don't agree you can take your oppressive burqas back where you came from because we will not tolerate it.
Except that, when it suits us, we not only tolerate it, we perpetuate it. When we refer to women as sluts, we are no better than the supposedly archaic cultures we find it convenient to demonise, because we are still reducing 50 per cent of the population to what they do or do not choose to do with their bodies.
The most illogical part is how very little it takes to be slapped with the slut label. Take a good look at every woman you've ever met. I'm talking about your grandmother, your mother, your sister, your daughter, your girlfriend, your doctor, the woman who serves you lunch and the pensioner you pass every day at the bus stop.
Make no mistake about this: every single one of them has been called a slut at some point in her life. Don't believe me? Ask her. Most likely, she'll tell you it's because of what she chose not to do.
The Slutwalk isn't about marching for the right to wear underwear in the street. It isn't about the right to embrace raunch culture or to prostrate yourself before a man for his approval.
It's about the pure and simple fact that there is never any situation in which anyone, be they woman, man (or somewhere or nowhere in between), "asks" to be raped or assaulted. To suggest that there are degrees of complicity because someone was dressed like a "slut" doesn't just demean the survivor, it demeans our society as a whole.
The Adelaide Slutwalk takes place on Saturday, June 11. Contrary to some opinions, it's not just for women. You can wear whatever you want because, hey, you're the boss of you and you can dress however the hell you damn well please. For more information, check out the Adelaide Slutwalk event on Facebook.
Clementine Ford is a writer and broadcaster. When she was but a virginal 16-year-old who had never even kissed a boy, someone wrote "Clementine's a slut" on her front gate. www.clementineford.com.au,
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