SlutWalk

The Dude and I are doing the SlutWalk on Sunday. Why? What's it about? It stemmed from a Toronto police officer telling female university students that they could avoid being raped if they didn't dress like sluts.

This is bullshit. One, what the hell is a slut? Seriously, the more I think about it, the less I understand. Is it not being a virgin prior to marriage? Is it wearing revealing clothing? Is it being popular with men? Because I've heard women called sluts for all of those things.

Is it because your "number" is higher than the "number" of the man you're dating? If you like to drink in bars? If you have had a one-night stand? If you plan ahead for sex and buy condoms? Because I've heard women called sluts for those things too.

Fuck it. It's crap. It's a crap belief.

1. Having consensual sex is a personal decision, and if a woman is actively sexual that's her choice, and she remains 100% control over which interested parties she wants to sleep with.

2. Clothes are not sexual invitations or evaluations of a woman's availability. Women dress for themselves, to look good and feel confident. They dress for other women, to be admired and envied. They dress for their partners, to nurture an attraction and make them happy. And while they do dress to attract men, it's only to draw men into conversation, in the hopes of meeting someone (who she may or may not want to sleep with), nothing more.

3. Rapists who wait for victims in the shadows look for opportunity without witnesses. They don't let lone conservatively dressed women pass by with no one watching, thinking, "Oh, that woman isn't wearing enough makeup and she's in flats. Guess I'll have to wait for a slut."

4. Women are more likely to be assaulted by men they know, and it doesn't depend on her clothes. It depends on the man and what sort of man he is. Men who rape are predatory.

We live in a rape culture. I've heard too many stories of women getting treated like garbage by the police, courtrooms tearing them apart, media outlets focusing on the wrong fucking thing: What was she wearing? What was her reputation. And what gets lost is the fact that a man committed a sex crime, of his own free will. But no, you'd think that men were animals and a look at fishnet stockings removes a woman's right to safety.

I'm marching against this. There is no empirical data that comes close to suggesting clothing choices cause rape. The only thing all rapes have in common are rapists, and victims who were unfortunate enough to come across them.