SlutWalks: confronting the attacks on women’s rights

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Feminists across the globe were angered as they learned last month that the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and French presidential hopeful, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, would likely be exculpated from the charges of attempted rape of a Guinean immigrant working as a maid due to questions about her credibility. Regrettably, Strauss-Kahn’s defense and the capitalist media have colluded to tarnish her image by digging up details from her past, including alleged forgery on her taxes.

Notably missing in big media reports is information that is readily available about Strauss-Kahn’s history of sexist and abusive behavior. Indeed, another of his victims has already come forward. That the defense’s questionable slander may be enough to discredit her case both in the public imagination and in court underscores the flimsiness of the American legal system and its quickness to dismiss complaints of working and immigrant women.

Unfortunately, the direction taken in Strauss Kahn’s case is not surprising to feminists internationally but merely affirms a common experience among women in which the sex crimes of wealthy, powerful men are regularly justified.

Feminists are watching Diallo’s case carefully after having just witnessed a major defeat for the women’s labor movement, in which the class-action suit against WalMart filed by 1.6 million militant female employees was recently dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court despite ample evidence of WalMart’s sexist discrimination. This defeat left people across the U.S. with a bitter taste in their mouths as they learned that the most powerful multinational corporations are beyond accountability. The decision should come as no surprise given what we know about heavy representation of corporate interests in the American political system, as evidenced by collaborative bodies such as ALEC—the American Legislative Exchange Council—a group that joins state legislators and powerful corporate representatives in order to draft corporatefriendly anti-labor bills to be introduced in state governments across the United States.

The reproductive rights movement also has faced mounting attacks this year, which has set a new record for the number of new laws that infringe on reproductive freedom. So far this year, 19 states have enacted 162 laws seeking to hinder women’s access to reproductive health-care services, including abortion.

Along with recycled tactics aimed at curbing reproductive freedom such as redefining fetal viability to an earlier period of gestation, launching media campaigns centered on fetal personhood, and defunding the procedure, anti-abortion forces are becoming more creative in their campaigns. Five states have passed laws this year that ban abortions after 20 weeks, claiming that this is when the fetus begins to feel pain. New legislation reflects an egregious infringement on women’s privacy, such as a proposed Georgia bill that would mandate police investigations of all women who miscarried their pregnancies, including victims of rape, and require the issuing of a fetal death certificate. If enacted, this would disproportionally affect women of color, who must already contend with heightened discrimination and criminalization by police.

Some liberals attribute these attacks to a reaction against what they perceive as a progressive administration in Washington that will secure gains for women. Despite campaigning as a pro-choice candidate, however, President Obama disappointed women across the country when, as part of his health-care overhaul, he renewed the Hyde amendment—a virulent erosion of Roe v. Wade, which prevents federal funding for abortion (including Medicaid) and effectively precludes low-income women, including high numbers of women of color, from their right to the procedure.

So how can we make sense of this mounting offensive on reproductive and other rights of women? In the midst of an economic recession that threatens to duplicate the Great Depression of the 1930s, it is predictable that women are under attack. Within the capitalist system women serve as a reserve army of labor that can be conveniently manipulated according to the 12 Socialist Action august 2011 Police and others in the ‘justice’ system have a history of blaming victims of rape. In response, institutionalized sexism.

(Above) Boston SlutWalk passes the Massachusetts Statehouse, May 7.

As feminists within communities of color have been quick to explain, the dominant perspective reflected in the SlutWalk is that of privileged and white women, for whom it is easier to don revealing outfits while re-appropriating sexist slurs than for women of color, who suffer doubly from widespread characterizations of sluttishness, pornographic objectification, and sexual victimization often at the hands of law enforcement.

Undeniably, the SlutWalk has a post-modern flavor. It attempts to celebrate individual choice without reflecting on how these choices affect our most oppressed sisters. In doing so, the SlutWalk conveniently ignores that as women our choices are severely constrained within a patriarchal society and conceals diverse definitions of an empowered womanhood across ethnic and class lines.

As South Asian organizer and writer Harsha Walia aptly notes, “In the post 9/11 climate, the focus on a particular version of sex(y)-positive feminism runs the risk of further marginalizing Muslim women’s movements who are hugely impacted by the racist ‘reasonable accommodation’ debate and state policies against the niqab.”

Further, the character of the actions can be interpreted as an extension and endorsement of “raunch culture” perpetuated by the multi-million dollar porn industry, which commodifies women’s bodies and sexuality for large profits.

The SlutWalk has magnified a generational divide in ideology and tactics between second and third-wave feminists and has facilitated imperative inter-generational discussions on the best strategy toward women’s liberation. While younger generations of women and men have been quick to join in, many who came out of the women’s movement of the 1970s are cautioning against sacrificing hard-won gains. Although they support the message and are moved by the energy it has harnessed, they remain turned off by the problematic packaging.

As Rebecca Traister noted in a New York Times op-ed, “To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women.”

SlutWalks have now been organized in over 70 cities in the U.S., Australia, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Canada, and South Africa. Most recently, SlutWalks have spread to India and South Korea. International organizers have faced challenges adapting the SlutWalk to local cultural norms and sensibilities while trying to preserve its objectives and character. In Delhi, Indian organizers have had a tough time reassuring (continued on page 10, in “Activists discuss SlutWalk perspectives”)