SlutWalks + Pics (or it didn't happen)

WARNING – Contains excessive use of parenthesis which some readers might find offensive. Readers who suffer seizures triggered by the maverick use of the word “heirloom” as an adjective please look away now.

 

Q.) What to blog about next. I'm watching Newsnight tonight, so I'm guessing this issue I'm hearing about must be topical – the Sexualisation of Society and variously how this should be kept away from our television/internets/children. While we're at it, how about women? What are they supposed to do in the face of all this? Who knows what a SlutWalk is? Discuss.

[15 marks]

That's a typically ham fisted way of kicking off a topic; but that's how I roll.

If I've learned nothing about gender politics (in all my years of wading in without thinking and alienating people for no reason) it's that it's complex. Sometimes it's best left at that. Except that for me, and this is one of many incurable diseases which addle my poor psyche, I think that politics is everywhere. Politics, for me, is everything and can't be ignored. It oozes out of every pore. Politics/philosophy: it's a little of both I suppose. So if I want to ever again know the love of a woman this is something that I and/or she/they will have to get to grips with.

First, for all you haters out there, here are my credentials. I've been a man all my life and have been observing women for most of that time with various levels of interest and success. I've seen my fair share of pornography, though I admit I've never owned a pornograph, and I'd say I'm a fairly open minded guy. At the same time I'm pretty old fashioned. I think “the love that dare not speak its name” is, more accurately, the love for celebrated Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. I may marry someone one day, or at least officiate in such a ceremony. Approximately 50% of my DNA once belonged to a woman. (That's just a guesstimate. I'm definitely no geneticist). With all that in mind I'd say I'm eminently qualified, wouldn't you?

In answer to your question a “SlutWalk” is a bunch of women who walk through a populated area, en masse, in various states of undress.

Ladies. Doing the SlutWalk, SlutWalk!

For further insight I take down from the shelf a dusty, leather-bound volume of my heirloom Wikipedias, (specifically volume XXI: Saboteur – Submarine), and read aloud...

"They are a protest against the belief that any aspect of a woman's appearance might explain or excuse rape."

I put the book down flat on the table and back away diplomatically.

...Having reconsidered I'm going to persist. Obviously women who, in this country at least, are willing to risk hypothermia to bring this issue to the public consciousness want me to be part of the conversation.

First I need to be serious for a paragraph. Let me get this out there before we go any further. This isn't a bold statement by any means, and I hope none of you find it controversial. A woman never, ever deserves to be raped. And furthermore, despite what certain comfortably shod Justice Secretaries might say, all kinds of rape is heinous, if indeed distinctions can be drawn at all. Yes, I concede that certain rapes may have aggravating circumstances – and if you don't know the legal definition of “aggravation” then don't be ignorant: look it up – which makes the crime even more heinous and warrants longer sentences. But I really don't see how any of this can become confused no matter how fucked up society may become. We are, every one of us, responsible for our actions. Surely everyone knows this already?

A photographer captures the instant, in August 1992, when Ken Clarke's soul finally egressed his body. Note the thousand yard stare.

I hope that's unambiguous. Lets get back to business.

I don't have any strong feelings about SlutWalks. The merits seem pretty clear: they set out to get media attention and raise the issue in the public consciousness. They're attention grabbing. In that respect they must be successful. Good on them!

I'd like to re-frame the question though, and talk about feminists for a while. (I'm not saying feminists are the first group I think of in the “we think rape is bad” category). I think there aren't many feminists left. Maybe they just keep it to themselves. Maybe there never were many feminists in the first place. But if we're talking about women that care that they're women, who care about women and want to live as a woman in a certain woman-centric way then yes: there are lots of those about. I think that women are just expressing their liberation in different ways. One way, you might say, though “traditional” feminists might not be too happy about it, is to flaunt their sexuality. Women might do this by dressing a certain way on a night out. Or speaking very candidly about their sexuality. Or having sex with loads of men like a ho.

A “traditional” feminist might have some criticisms of these brilliant empowerment stratagems. (For the benefit of the tape if your idea of a traditional feminist is still Germaine Greer then I'd urge you to think again. Every time I see her on Question Time I feel that her ever more exotic and hyperbolic outbursts are a plaintive cry for help. I just want to hold her and tell her everything is going to be all right). They might say that dressing in a way which men, as the homogeneously sexually-preferenced group they of course are, find attractive is not empowering because it reinforces a male definition of what a woman should look like. Think long and carefully about the logic of that. You'd be surprised how much of my bookshelf (/wank bank) isn't taken up with back issues of Nuts, Maxim and Zoo as well.

We love you, Germaine. We just want you to get better.

I'd like to re-frame the question to “is it a good idea to dress provocatively on a night out?” Is it a good idea? Well, ladies, for what it's worth if you want to draw attention to yourself then yes, I'd say it is. What type of attention you draw and what kind of person it's coming from I'll leave for you to think about. A woman's right to dress how she wishes is something I'd stand up for, however. Women shouldn't have to fear getting raped if the way they dress attracts rapists, of course not. (We're also saying rapists have homogeneous taste in victims aren't we? Or perhaps we're thinking of “opportunist” rapists? i.e. “I didn't plan to rape her, Your Honour.”) Crime of any kind is something I'd like us all to be free of one day, and along with it the fear of crime. But all people, to some degree, must feel responsible for their own safety. I say feel responsible, not be afraid. That's an important distinction. It's about mitigating certain risks so far as you're able. If not for your own sake then for the sake of the people who care about you.

Women don't want to get raped. I get that. I intensely don't want to be raped either. But in respect to that I wouldn't put on a pair of assless chaps and go mincing through the cell blocks in San Quentin. I'm not to blame for what happens but I could have avoided that situation in a number of ways without suffering any dreadful compromise of my lifestyle choices.

I'd say there are other factors which are far more crucial if we're talking about women mitigating risks to their safety. More important decisions than how to dress I mean. If I had a daughter I'd probably tell her that if she is out on the town she should stay with her friends as much as possible. Look out for each other. Exercise judgement. Not drinking excessively would also be a plus if she wanted to retain some reasonable level of judgement to exercise. I, for one, find it increasingly difficult to make sound judgements when I'm lying prone in a bus shelter gargling with my own sick. Here's a controversial one - Don't go home with some dude you don't know and trust. Isn't that just common sense? Would you give you car keys to someone who's surname you didn't know? Would you leave your kid for a passing stranger to look after? You wouldn't be to blame if a crime were to happen, but you would have put your self, your property or your family in unnecessary danger.

Dignity

That's all common sense. Again I don't think I'm saying anything very controversial and I'm certainly not making excuses for rapists. And of course I realise I'm making a certain number of assumptions about the circumstances of this hypothetical and potentially quite rare rape scenario: nominally that it is happening to a drunk girl who is separated from her friends and has chosen to somewhere private with an ultimately untrustworthy stranger.

That last one though: “Don't go home with some dude you don't know and trust”. Isn't that shooting myself in the foot? Wouldn't that leave me in a situation where I'm never again to get lucky while I'm out on the lash (...so to speak. Don't read anything into that)? Well you'd be surprised how uncommon/unlikely that is, was and will remain for me. But the older I get the less and less that bothers me. I don't feel it's immoral for a woman to have a one night stand. I suppose I just think it's distasteful. Maybe a little ridiculous. Maybe also a little sad. It depends on the circumstances I suppose. But there's a woman in my head, and maybe she's a male abstraction too, but when she gets dressed she seldom stops half way. She's comfortable with her sexuality but you'd be surprised how infrequently she break's out the Sex and the City box set for reference. Even over the din, in a club or a bar, maybe not always but sometimes, she's still more noticeable than the girls in the meat shop window. To me at least.

There are lots of guys like me out there, and lots of women like her. Why can't we hold hands and walk through the streets?

Who Is Silent Tape?

rev·e·nant/ˈrevəˌnäN/
Noun: A person who has returned, esp. supposedly from the dead.

 

There are a a few things you should know about me. I frown across the table, as I take off my glasses and clean them. The words are worn out.

Yes, I'm afraid this Web Log is going to be anonymous, in the great internet tradition. But people find it very, very difficult to relate to anyone without knowing where they're coming from. People like to see a face, ideally. I know I do. It mitigates a great deal of discomfort. The formlessness of a voice, alone, can be disorienting. For me it can be haunting. A human figure also makes it easier to cast the voice adrift if you need to. To disconnect it from plausibility, discarding it as a candidate for truth. We all have our unique prejudices; most of which are impossible to put into words.

That being said what if you decided that you and I were just about as similar as two individuals could be, at least on everything which matters. What then if I said something you didn't agree with, something distasteful, even distressing? Am I then a different person? Are you?

I'm in my mid twenties and I live in a city in England. I'm male, unmarried. I have no special dietary preferences. Truthfully I would have left out some or potentially all of those facts if I didn't think they'd come out sooner rather than later.

That's enough drama for now. I've got a tone in mind for the rest of this blog and this is not it.

Why did I decide to write a blog? We're different people to different people. None of my friends and family will (likely) read this. It seemed to me that talking to strangers was a good way forward. More therapeutic perhaps. It seemed like a good way to get back on my feet.

Who should read this? Anyone with a sense of humour. I'd prefer it if you were the kind of person who takes what he/she reads away with them. By that I mean if I do or say something which you couldn't do or say yourself: use it. Talk about things. Mention the unmentionable.

The realist in me expects that if I get any traffic at all it'll come from an arbitrary key word connection in one, unremarkable post, which by some freak accident is unserviced by the machine. The vast majority of surfers will find my blog, like most blogs, to be obscure and entirely irrelevant to what they were looking for and will scroll on. But some will be hooked by some detail of what they're reading and will read more, tangential to whatever path they were previously on. Caught in the gravity of my baron little world they'll read on and wonder how all this began, wonder what was the source of all this madness? So I've put this sign up, very carefully and deliberately (though not as carefully or deliberately as I probably should have) to look like the beginning. I'll be lucky if it's all spelled and punctuated properly.

What's really going to bake my noodle is that if this is true – if almost no one will be reading this from the beginning – then I'm talking to people who are here because of something I haven't even said yet. Talking to people from the future? Yikes.