Toronto march to redefine ‘slut’

Hufsa Tahir
Contributor
TAHIR: Why the name “SlutWalk”? Wouldn’t people find it offensive?
TEEKAH: If folks were to try and bury this story and shove it under the carpet, all that does is replicate and increase the power words like “slut” have. We want to confront this power and change it. By calling it SlutWalk, we are acknowledging his comment – and want to open up dialogue. We can take concepts “slut” points to – women having sex, who should have sex and what kind of women there should be – and completely rework these concepts in the interest of an actual gender-equal world.
TA: What’s the aim of this event?
TE: One of our main aims is to reappropriate the word “slut.” We are also looking for increased transparency, accountability and greater anti-oppression training for police. We are coming to this with a politic that can mean different things for different people who attend the march.
TA: Some might call it an overreaction to blame the entire police force for a reckless comment made by one officer.
TE: When a police officer puts on the uniform of the police force, he is not a lone person. For York and the Toronto police to select this officer to come and speak for “campus safety awareness” events, they are sending him as a rep of the Toronto police. Police officers are the result of police culture and training. Either the culture indirectly supports his point of view, or the training does not do a good enough job to train out of them this ignorance.
TA: How important is SlutWalk Toronto?
TE: We are not doing this event to say, “Fuck the police.” We are looking to have a dialogue with them, to open up real interaction between them and the community they serve. We want to improve their approaches toward minority groups, and make change for the better. This march is one of the steps in that process. We’ve had enough of these cases. It’s time to do something real and tangible about them.
TA: What kind of changes to attitude are you looking for?
TE: It’s easier to blame the victim than to look at the larger picture. Why are we telling women to police their bodies, to stay indoors, to dress in certain ways while men have absolutely none of this “policing” on them? Victim blaming actually works to support the rapist. How can you say that a rapist is ever “justified” in raping? We need to start looking at the larger picture – sexism in different places – and how these sources that spawn things like rape are not being addressed.