SlutTALK Vancouver: for feminists, is now not the time for talk?

As a SlutWalk Vancouver organizer, I’d like to respond to the following important critique:

 “Events like SlutTALK are great, but the fact is, they're generally not appealing to the members of society that most desperately need to attend—the men who rape, harrass, batter or otherwise harm women, and the men and women who encourage them, directly or not.” 

This sentiment was also expressed in the interesting discussions at the Clip-Hop event.  There was a comment that events like last year’s march and this year’s Clip-Hop are important, but that they easily turn in to “man-hating” or “man-bashing”. Concern was expressed that, by addressing men as a social group and placing responsibility on them for sexual assault, we could be alienating men from a movement where they have a very important role. It was also expressed that sexual violence isn’t always perpetrated strictly by men against women, so it was suggested we should not be talking about it as such.

In our defence, our mission statement is pretty clear about the fact that it’s not always “men against women”, and that men have a place in activism against sexual violence and victim-blaming. Here are a few points from the mandate:

SlutWalk recognizes that sexual assault is not something solely done by men to women.All people, regardless of gender, have a role in challenging victim blaming and sex shaming that create a culture that justifies acts of sexual violence. This event is not just about the violence, but the excuses that allow violence to continue.Women are most often the targets and men are most often the perpetrators, but all genders are affected. SlutWalk recognizes all gender expressions as those that have been and can be negatively impacted. All genders can be sluts or allies.

 

You can view our full mission statement on our website: http://slutwalkvancouver.net/about-slutwalk-vancouver/

 We were going to read out our mission statement at the Clip-Hop, but didn’t end up doing so. Perhaps we should have, to avoid any misinterpretation of where we’re coming from.

I’d also like to point out that there were a handful of men in the audience on Tuesday, and that we had some inspiring men involved in SlutWalk Vancouver last year. One of the main organizers who helped start SlutWalk Vancouver was a man, and there were other men on the organizing team as well. We had our Thousand Stories Campaign, a blog which invited people of all genders to share their reasons for marching in SlutWalk. We had a surprising amount of posts from male allies. Some were rape survivors themselves, while others wanted to express their support for the women in their lives who had been raped or who lived with the daily fear of rape.  I was surprised by this and by the amount of men who marched last year. They carried signs saying things like “Real men don’t rape”, and the atmosphere was one of solidarity and support.  I’ve never been to an anti-rape that was so well-attended by men.

Now I’d like to address the comment made at Clip-Hop about how the march last year and some of the film clips we showed this year turned in to “man-hating” or “man-bashing”. To be honest, I don’t really see how asking men not to rape, not to support rape culture, and not to participate in victim-blaming or sex-shaming is “hating” or “bashing” men. As I think another audience member pointed out that night, feminists work on anti-violence education because we believe in men’s humanity and intelligence – we believe in their ability to change if they are violent, and to demand that other men change, even if they themselves are not violent.  If we didn’t believe in this, there wouldn’t be any point in organizing against male violence. I can definitely see how men might feel uncomfortable hearing women talk about men’s violence against women, but it’s imperative that men face up to the challenge if we’re going to see any social change.  We at SlutWalk realize that sexual assault sometimes occurs between members of the same sex or gender, and that sometimes women are the perpetrators. However, we know as well that the overwhelming majority of sexual violence involves perpetrators who are men and victims/survivors who are women.  If we constantly dance around that fact, we won’t be able to effectively strategize against the rape culture.

As someone who did a brief stint as a rape crisis counsellor-in-training, I know that de-gendering the act of rape can be dangerous and impossible for the women working the rape crisis lines, who receive call after call from women who have been raped by men.  After hundreds of such calls, it’s hard not to address men as a group, to just say, “Just stop.” Even if every individual man is not a rapist, most men don’t seem to be doing anything to stop these rapes.

It’s funny hearing that we’re placing too much responsibility on men when some SlutWalks, such as the original SlutWalk in Toronto, have actually been criticized by some for not holding men accountable enough. At the Women, Action and the Media conference in Vancouver last March, Angela Marie MacDougall (executive director of Battered Women’s Support Services, and a speaker for SlutWalk last year), said that she didn’t see SlutWalk as a feminist movement, albeit an anti-sexual-assault one. To me, this indicates that maybe we weren’t as effective as we could have been in linking rape to gender inequality, which again demands male accountability.

I think if a man feels uncomfortable by discussions about rape, he should ask himself where exactly that discomfort comes from. Does he feel guilty because of his role in rape culture? If so, he should find out how to change his role and help the cause.  Guilt isn’t that productive.  Action is.  Does he feel like he’s being blamed for the actions of other men? If so, he should explore the privilege he has as a male in a sexist world. Even if he doesn’t himself rape women, he probably feels more safe than a woman does in his everyday life.  Men aren’t told to stick to well-lit areas, to walk in groups, to watch their drinks, to be careful about every flirtation on a date in case the other person gets the “wrong idea” about what he wants out of it.  Many men do not rape but laugh at rape jokes, use pornography that promotes rape, and don’t call their male peers out on their pro-rape behaviour. Whether an individual man is or is not a rapist, he has a responsibility as a part of a group that has been extremely harmful to women to do something, even if it makes him uncomfortable to listen to women talk about rape for two hours.

In the discussion at Clip-Hop, I used the analogy of racism. I as a white person might not like to hear people of colour talk about the damages white people have inflicted on their people. I consider myself an anti-racist person, and I don’t want to be blamed for the actions of other white people. However, whether I like it or not, I am part of an oppressive group, and my whiteness has made me extremely privileged in this racist world. As a carrier of that privilege, and as someone who has probably been racist without even realizing it at times due to that privilege, I feel a strong responsibility to listen to people of colour, and to follow their lead in anti-racist activism. All I ask is for men to do the same in the fight against violence against women.

That being said, the question of how to recruit men in to the anti-rape movement is an important one, with no easy answers.  SlutWalk Vancouver would like to see more men involved with our movement and with other feminist efforts as well.  It is true that men are the ones who desperately need to attend events like ours, and it’s true that men are still a minority in most anti-rape organizations and in attendance at most anti-rape events.  Although men should shoulder most of this responsibility, feminists should indeed be working on strategies for getting men involved. We do need to address the question of how to engage men in the struggle for women's respect and safety, in a way that doesn't repel them but also doesn't rid them of responsibility. I hope some productive discussion on this matter will take place at our public (un)conference tomorrow, from 1:00 to 4:00pm at the WISE Hall.