“SlutWalk” Movement Gains Momentum Around the World

Last January, Toronto police officer Michael Sanguinetti unwittingly gave birth to a new movement that is spreading around the world. While addressing a group of law school students, when asked how women might better protect themselves against rape and molestation, he uttered the words, "avoid dressing like sluts," instantly angering some in the audience and eventually many others the world over. The Huffington Post reported last April on the starting of the movement, as a form of backlash, first in Toronto, then in several cities in the United States. Since that time SlutWalk marches have been held in many cities in Europe and Asia. Now, the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that a SlutWalk is in the works for Perth this next week.

The whole point of the SlutWalk movement, and the protest marches is to help dissuade people from holding faith in what the Toronto policeman had to say, i.e. the very idea that how a woman dresses should somehow make it okay for someone to assault her, or at the very least, make the crime less heinous.

To make their point, many women who participate in the marches dress provocatively, which apparently serves to make their point, while also attracting the attention of media ever eager to boost ratings with salacious imagery.

In many cultures the world over, there has been a growing debate about the role of dress in crimes committed against women. On the one hand, most countries where such debates take place are democracies, which for the most part mean, women should be allowed to dress however they please. One the other hand, law enforcement and several religious organizations have pointed out statistics showing that women are more likely to be assaulted if they dress provocatively; which they say, doesn't necessarily mean the women are asking for the crimes that are committed against them, but they are also not doing their utmost to prevent it from happening to them either.

MSNBC ran a story on the new movement recently, noting that in the United States, protest marches have taken place in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Reno, and Austin, and that many more are planned for the spring, once warm weather returns.

As with many protest movements, it's difficult to say whether women, and men for that matter, marching, carrying signs and chanting is likely to have any effect on public perception, or more importantly, on law enforcement. But as Siobhan Connors, participant in a Boston march said to an AP reporter, "It's better than sitting back and doing nothing."