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| SlutWalk Seattle |
It all began with a police officer in Toronto, Canada, saying “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised”. Angry women — and men too — took to the streets to protest “damaging stereotypes”. Thus began SlutWalk Toronto in early April and in no time, the movement jumped borders and oceans, with similar marches being held in the US, UK, Australia and Africa.
Their point? “Whatever a woman is wearing, she’s NOT asking to be raped” and “no means NO”. As SlutWalk trundles into Delhi later this month, and tweets and texts on “sexual profiling” and “reclaiming the word slut” fly thick and fast, t2 wonders where Calcutta stands on the issue. We invited five young people to our office to talk the walk…
Abhiroop Sengupta, 26, management student & professional
Sonika Chauhan, 21, city-based model
Anushka Sen, 20, college student
Meghna Nayak, 26, freelance writer
Brinda Dasgupta, 22, MA student & co-founder of the Calcutta-based Safe City campaign
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| Do we need a SlutWalk? Five young Calcuttans got together on Monday evening at the t2 office to debate and discuss the pros and cons of SlutWalk. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya |
first step
Meghna: If the issue here is about women’s safety and the right to say no, no matter what she is wearing or whether she is drinking, smoking or partying, the SlutWalk is a great way to begin. Such a march has shock value, it immediately shines the spotlight on the issue. I applaud the girls who are willing to take the streets to highlight such a grave matter. But I wonder, will a bunch of skimpily-clothed girls walking the street articulate the message?
Anushka: I totally support the cause. To say that women don’t invite rape by the way they dress is very important.
But in Toronto, where they had the SlutWalk in response to a specific comment made by a policeman, it had a certain relevance. It may be radical, it may be extreme, but it had relevance. But in India, when you are suddenly just transferring the vocabulary and inviting people to dress provocatively and march through a city, I think it loses a lot of its relevance.
Sonika: People who participated in SlutWalks around the world came out in their lingerie and a lot less [some women marched topless in Brazil] to drive home the point that we have the right to wear what we want, and that does not mean that we want “it”. I agree. But we all know that we can’t wear certain things to certain places. Would you wear a short, tight dress to a wedding?
Abhiroop: What is the purpose of a SlutWalk? Is it to give women the freedom to wear what they want? We know that we express ourselves through what we wear and the Constitution of the country guarantees us freedom of expression and speech. But all freedoms have to be within a limit. I mean, even this discussion is happening within a limit. We are not pouncing on each other to prove a point. I don’t think there is any need for a SlutWalk, where women take to the road wearing something skimpy.
the word
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| CHALO DILLI: A poster for an open forum ahead of the SlutWalk in Delhi, titled Besharmi Morcha |
Brinda: I have a problem with the word “slut” itself. The moment you use it, aren’t you pandering to a male stereotype? I understand the sentiment that you are going to the extreme, taking the word and throwing it back, but there is a context. I mean you wouldn’t actually walk the streets wearing fishnet stockings and corset, would you?
Anushka: This is India, where to many people, the jargon — slut, not slut, short clothes, tight clothes — doesn’t make sense at all. So, the point that the dress is not responsible for rape needs to be made more clearly. Also, a lot of people may feel alienated by a movement that asks them to call themselves sluts.
Abhiroop: You are identifying certain kinds of clothes with a word, but a lot of people who wear those clothes may not want to be tagged as “sluts”.
Meghna: Terms like “slut” and “provocative dressing” shift focus from a very serious issue. Rape and molestation have nothing to do with what you wear. Then old ladies and children would not be raped.
Anushka: But that’s the very point they are trying to make — that your clothes don’t get you raped. What would be terrible is if this whole thing was dominated by a bunch of confident, elite people who know they can go out in their skimpy clothes and who are comfortable with such jargon.
the walkers
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| word-wise: SlutWalk Toronto, where it all started |
Meghna: That is a very good point. I think this is a very elitist, very niche protest. And instead of helping the cause, it may further alienate the women who face sexual attacks the most. People who don’t understand it will stand on the sidelines and wonder ‘what the hell is going on?’
Sonika: Yeah, this concept is elitist. In India, women who are most vulnerable on the roads or at home are not going to be part of this walk.
Brinda: I have a feeling that people who will turn up for the walk are the safe and protected well-heeled lot.
Sonika: Who will probably hop out of a car, walk, and hop right back in and leave.
Anushka: There is a Facebook group on the SlutWalk in Mumbai, because they are planning to have a SlutWalk there too, and one of the members said that participants will not just be women who want to wear skimpy clothes. People can wear any dress they want. But if it’s about wearing any clothes, yet you’re calling it a “slut” walk, it becomes very confusing.
Brinda: The original Toronto website said ‘come wearing whatever you are comfortable in’. But almost everyone landed up in such clothes. That is very interesting.
road ahead
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Meghna: In London, you can walk down the road showing your bum and hardly anyone looks. I was probably the only one looking because I’m Indian! But that’s their culture. You can’t transpose that here and expect it to act as a catalyst.
If in so-called liberal countries like America and Canada, people are still saying that women invite trouble by dressing provocatively, how on earth can you even think of transposing the same premise and smack it down in the middle of India, where we’ve only just started kissing in Bollywood, where we are still hauled up on the road in the middle of the night if we are with a boy?
Anushka: A SlutWalk may be the beginning. There needs to be more. There should be debates to highlight the issues, more walks, more discussions and frequently. If there’s a sustainable plan of action, then it makes sense.
Meghna: Most importantly, the messages should be in regional languages too.
Sonika: It should reach out to all kinds of people and not be restricted to a particular class.
Anushka: More women should study law, take up the mantle for women’s empowerment, spread education. Just walking and waving banners is not going to help.
Sonika: There has to be an awareness building and a sensitisation process along with shock tactics.
Abhiroop: I have one question. Is the SlutWalk going to infiltrate to the rural areas, where crimes against women are rife and where the literacy level is so low that they won’t understand the word slut?
Anushka: Well, one might say we have to start somewhere. But even in urban India, I wonder how many people actually understand the word slut and its subversion, where it is actually a term for empowerment. Someone compared it to reclaiming “nigger”, but this is not like that at all. All blacks understand “nigger” but all women don’t know “slut”.
Abhiroop: The question is do you want to be called a slut or do you want the number of rapes in Delhi to go down?
Meghna: Where the agenda is to drive home the point that it is not about what we wear, we are actually making it about what we wear.
Anushka: It should actually not be about clothes — short or tight — at all. See, even we have deviated. That is what I am afraid this walk will do.
Abhiroop: What about the need for more security for women, more police in vulnerable areas? We need to talk to cops first, to sensitise them about the fact that a woman does not invite rape, ever.
Anushka: If we are to make the police understand that dress and rape are in no way related, the SlutWalk is not going to do it. A campaign should be launched where people go to police stations and talk to them about the issue.
t2 sums up: We welcome SlutWalk. We admire the shock value it brings to the very grim issue of women’s safety. We understand the need to jolt a society that teaches “don’t get raped”, instead of “don’t rape”. But before Calcutta — or any part of India — can hope for a SlutWalk to have impact, we need to empower the word “slut” by delinking it from its demeaning connotation. Till then, such a movement will grab eyeballs — often for the wrong reasons — and then fizzle out.
