Katherine Sansom's opinion articles |
Slutwalks and the future of feminismOpinion piece by Katherine Sansom June 2011
In January this year, addressing a group of students at a Toronto college, PC Michael Sanguinetti expressed the view that women “should avoid dressing like sluts in order to not be victimised”.(1)
Sanguinetti prefaced his remark with,
Where sex for women is thought to be a form of interaction; sex for a man is deemed the act of making use of another person’s body. If male sexuality is inherently bestial, a rapist is merely a man who has failed to restrain himself. And yet it is politically incorrect to take this to its logical conclusion, and instruct women to avoid provoking men unless they’re willing to face the consequences.
And then a Sanguinetti or a Dewar speak out of turn, and tensions boil over. ‘BECAUSE WE’VE HAD ENOUGH’ is the name of the Slutwalks Toronto website, and that infuriated exasperation says it all.
As this issue is clearly a complex one and appears to cause quite a lot of discussion in attempting to clarify what the demands are and represent, this is to be the subject of the July Manchester Salon. |