Abstract
Reviewed by: Kathy Davis, VU University, Amsterdam
SlutWalk is a form of grassroots feminist activism which began in 2011 when a police constable announced to a group of Toronto students in a lecture on campus safety that women should avoid dressing like sluts if they want to avoid being victimized. His statement sparked so much outrage that local women organized a “SlutWalk” to the Toronto police headquarters. Dressed in mini-skirts and sexy tops, they demanded that what women wear is never an invitation for sexual violence, thereby challenging the culture which blames the victims rather than the perpetrators for rape. Since then, SlutWalk has become a global movement, with marches being organized in cities all over the world. In contrast to early feminist activism (for example, Take Back the Night), which had been largely ignored by the mainstream media, SlutWalks have become a “hot topic.”
Kaitlynn Mendes compares the ways SlutWalk has been represented in both the mainstream news and the feminist media and asks what these representations have to say about women’s position in society today. To this end, she provides a comprehensive analysis of English language mainstream media and social media (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, blogging) in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the UK, and the US during the period of 2011–2014. She shows how the mainstream media took advantage of SlutWalk for sexy photo opportunities, yet, at the same time, legitimized the movement’s critical stance against “sexual violence, victim-blaming, and shut-shaming.” However, traditional “hard” news articles rarely went beyond a superficial coverage of the movement. They did not provide nuanced analyses of the rape culture, nor did they challenge the patriarchal discourses which sustain it. In contrast, the feminist social media and, in particular, the feminist blogosphere not only questioned entrenched views but were much more effective in developing counterhegemonic discourses and raising consciousness on the realities of rape and sexual assault (p. 87). Interestingly, it was the feminist media that was much more critical of SlutWalk than the mainstream media. For example, feminists avidly debated whether the right to wear “slutty” clothing simply played to the male gaze and promoted a postfeminist sensibility that empowerment is best achieved through the overt display of one’s sexuality. The feminist media was also an outlet for criticisms of women of color that “slut” was not a term used for women of color nor one they had the privilege or desire to reclaim (p. 75).
One of the most interesting features of the SlutWalk movement is that it has traveled. It has been taken up and adapted to resonate with issues, events, and needs of local cultures across the globe. While all of these local manifestations were aimed at challenging rape culture, they did not hesitate to change the way the SlutWalk as an event was organized and represented. For example, the marches were often renamed to deemphasize the word “slut.” In India, the march was called Besharmi Morcha (shameless woman). SlutWalk Bangalore refocused the march toward the local problem of “Eve teasing” – street harassment and the molestation of women in public spaces – which was a pressing concern for Indian women. In Singapore, participants were discouraged from wearing slutty clothing for fear the government would refuse permission to protest. In South Africa, activists rejected the notion that SlutWalk was “western” and culturally irrelevant by renaming their activism “My Short Skirt” marches in response to President Zuma’s defense at his rape trial that his accuser had been wearing a short skirt, thereby signaling her consent to have sex with him. The variations in the international SlutWalk movement are a perfect example of how the strategy “Think Globally, Act locally” works in actual practice (p. 68).
This book has many strengths. Mendes makes a convincing case for the importance of social media in understanding how contemporary social movements work. Her analysis is a powerful illustration of why the focus on “hard news,” as has sometimes been the case in social movement research, would fail to capture the importance of social media for challenging patriarchal discourses and creating opportunities for discursive activism (p. 15). In this sense, her book is an important wake-up call for anyone interested in contemporary oppositional movements. It demands that careful attention be paid to the role of social media in creating, mobilizing, and maintaining online oppositional communities – or, as she calls them, networked counter-publics. She shows how the SlutWalk movement was able to create a broad and effective platform for discussing sexual assault and rape culture as well as to provide space for the creation of feminist discourses and identities through its use of social media (p. 185).
The second major strength is that Mendes situates SlutWalk within other contemporary global social movements, comparing it to the Spanish Indignados, Occupy, and the Arab Spring. Her book illustrates a fundamental shift in social activism today: the increased reliance on new media technologies and the organization of virtual communities and collective identities. She uses the SlutWalk movement to make a strong argument for why we should take “discursive activism” more seriously. In other words, oppositional politics are not just about getting people out on the street; they are about drawing them into online discussions and debates.
Although Mendes takes a global perspective on social movements, she does not connect the SlutWalk movement to the various manifestations of transnational feminist body politics. She makes no mention of the ways feminists across the globe have not only organized protests around body issues (reproduction, violence, pornography, body image) but have used their own bodies as vehicles of protest. For example, a comparison with Ukrainian FEMEN activists who display their naked breasts with painted slogans against sexual exploitation and SlutWalk would have been helpful precisely because both movements have attracted media attention and are often viewed as the embodiment of the same sexualized heteronormativity which they are claiming to subvert. How do the transnational travels of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues resonate with the global popularity of SlutWalk and how would this help us to understand how feminist ideas get taken up and rearticulated in different settings? Or how do the actions of Nigerian women protesting the effects of colonial rule by taking off their clothes compare with the actions of SlutWalk participants? This kind of activism – activism which uses the female body to expose gender/power relations and empower women – is both popular and controversial, and it is precisely the ambiguity inherent in feminist body politics that I would have liked to see Mendes confront more directly. Nevertheless, her book remains a worthwhile and important contribution to the growing literature on the new forms social movements are taking and how they should be studied and understood.