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Why the slutwalk is the worst thing to happen to the cause

June 20th, 2011 Posted in gender, india, personal, women

I recently came across this post by @mysti and having read a lot on the issue and having debated the slutwalk to death, I have just 3 arguments against it.

1. It alienates current victims

The slutwalk isn’t going to make any difference in India. There. I put it in writing. Men will not stop staring or touching, unasked. Women will not start fighting for their rights.

The women who will participate in the slutwalk are already the ones that speak up and fight. In order to further the cause, other women need to be encouraged. And they won’t be if you’re asking them to shed their clothes. A cause must be in sync with its victims. This one is more of a spectacle, giddily forgetting the hapless women who have a hard time even glaring back at the offender, much less shed their t-shirts in protest.

2. It will be seen as just a silly tantrum

A cause that is both serious and a social stigma, needs sensitivity and a powerful argument. The slutwalk is a tantrum. And like most tantrums, it will be either ignored or seen as a nuisance.

Is that what we want to do to a cause that traumatizes millions of women?

Is that what we want to do to women’s right to be respected?

I believe that this overzealous endeavour will harm more than it will benefit the cause. It alienates the cause, the shame, the unease, the ruthlessness of inequality. It makes it so easy to dismiss a serious cause. It makes it okay for a man to wave his hand and say ‘pagal ho gayin hain’. That is the danger. Sexual harassment is traumatic. Shedding our clothes and making a point against it sounds too much like a marketing tactic with complete disregard for the objective.

3. It takes too long a stretch to make the connection

In a world where it’s hard for a man to make the connection between ‘no’ and ‘need to stop touching her’, I think it’s laughable to expect him to think: Scantily clad women > slutwalk > to make it okay to wear what they want > to not touch or ogle > to be a nicer man

And with that I rest my case. Any debates are welcome.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 20th, 2011 at 12:32 am and is filed under gender, india, personal, women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • Aparna

    I agree with you on this one. My initial reaction was one of euphoria, that women in Delhi are making an extremely strong stand for this issue, and that persisted till I read comments by guys who were looking forward to the Slutwalk for all the skin on display. That’s when I realized that this would not work in an Indian setting, and we need something different, something that brings across the message that when a woman says No, she does not mean Yes, and it is Not OK to invade her personal space.

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      yes. i dont think i can comment on the slutwalks that have happened elsewhere, but in India we need something else. How can this work in a country that is labeled the 4th most dangerous country for women in the world!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3T636ED5P7D45MYYS23UDUD3YI Nitin Kumar

    Instead of promoting this stupid walk, I think people should work on the real solution. Its about time. These people are themselves saying that dressing is nowhere related to rape, then why the hell are you misleading people. Why can’t you work on the real solution?

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      absolutely nitin. I think a start would be to make your own women friends comfortable with speaking out against men who harass them.

  • http://twitter.com/duniyakashaana Anurag Chugh

    I’ll skip a few intermediate steps of discussions here and jump straight to what I have to say. There haven been numerous seminars and workshops regarding rape and other social evils affecting women in this “male” dominated society. A generic conclusion is that the only way to stop this is to change the way society (the men and the victims) looks at such evils. Also it has been found that any kind of punishment (including capital) has found to be ineffective in curbing these. So the only solution is to start educating kids (girls and boys), till then the women will have to fend for themselves and the seminar ends.. This still felt incomplete to me. And after many many days of pondering, trying to close the chapter, I latched on to a few realizations. Firstly, humans have a evolutionary predisposition to aggression, hunger for power, lust etc. etc. Denying the existance of these feelings islike denying being humans. Being animals, sight of a previously unseen attractive female’s body will trigger some erotic feelings in men. The thing which seperates the good guys from the lecherous ones is not the absence of these feelings but the conscious mechanism which begins diminishing these feelings within a split second of them being triggered.
    How did his secondary control mechanism develop in guys? It was inculcated in them as they grew up in good families.

    So now the question was, if I know I am a good guy and I want my kids to be good what do I do? I dont remember the exact words that my parents told me or the stuff we did as a family that helped me develop that conscious self control. I am not even married yet but a few years down the line, when my kids stand in front of me, what would I tell them or do with them to set them on a trajectory towards being better humans?

    I am actually pissed at all these seminars because its exactly this question that I want the answer to.
    So here is what I came up by myself:
    http://blog.lithiumhead.com/2012/06/evolution-manual-update-required.html

    A bit incoherent, but I guess I have may years to polish it before I use it.
    Also I am glad that Amir Khan’s started the show SMJ. He has a knack for completely analysing a problem and bringing the topic to a complete conclusion by articulating each action item that we as individals can do to become a part of the solution.