/ 30 September 2011

Feminists slut their stuff

Feminists Slut Their Stuff

A tall woman in six-inch heels, a leopard-print miniskirt and torn fishnet stockings stands on the lawn and has a laugh with a man dressed in a neon-pink 1950s bathing costume and a T-shirt that says: "Proud Slut".

Drop-dead gorgeous young women prance around in raunchy dresses, shorts and sexy underwear, their bare midriffs, arms and thighs sporting lipsticked messages that claim their own bodies. Middle-aged women shimmy in fun, slinky outfits alongside young men in jeans and miniskirts.

Couples push prams with activist babies wearing T-shirts that state: "I was born out of love — not force." A basset hound wears a T-shirt saying "I ain't nobody's bitch" and sniffs the derriere of a dog wearing a slut sign. There are oodles of pink, green and blue hair, many made-up faces, lashings of red lipstick, false eyelashes, sequined bras, bright cerise tutus, sexy suspenders, rubber underwear, red garters, feathers, whips and glitter.

Speeches are given to an explosion of joyous festivity and there is a sense of libertarianism in the air. The 2000-strong crowd takes to the streets and women and men, boys and girls giggle, guffaw, whoop and primal scream as they carry posters sporting bright hand-painted messages basically saying "up yours" to the patriarchy — that horrible construction that has for centuries squelched out the life and joy and revelry that is the human race's natural heritage. Here, in this space, there are no rule-makers, no sexuality police, no disapproving phallocrats, no physical threats. Instead, there is laughter, festivity, merrymaking.

I join the throng in my blue mini and tackies, whooping and ululating. I am in my element. I feel primal, rebellious and joyful. The atmosphere is electric as we dance, prance, hobble and stride the 3.4 kilometres around Rosebank, where our laughter and shouts echo off the buildings. Cars hoot, people wave and whistle. Some don't. "Fuck 'em!" shouts a man in lipstick. "Wooo woooo!" scream the SlutWalkers.

This is SlutWalk Johannesburg on September 24, one of many such walks that have taken place around the world this year. It is a feminist uprising against the rape and abuse of women, as well as the patriarchal policing of feminine sexuality. The phenomon began in Canada, when a policeman said that if women wanted to avoid being victimised, they shouldn't dress like sluts. His comment irked a few feminists enough for them to cause an uproar. In March this year, the first SlutWalk was held in Toronto. Since then, it has spread across the globe, attracting the exuberant participation of women and nonpatriarchal men everywhere.

Its call is basic: "Don't tell us what to wear. Tell men not to rape." Women are rebelling against the shaming and blaming of rape victims. SlutWalk is also a subversion of the patriarchal notion that it is what women wear that causes men to rape.

SlutWalkers seize the right to dress any way they please. They have reclaimed the word "slut" and march proudly under its banner. Few could have guessed how much power this previously derogatory word contains. It has fast proved its muscle, acting as a dynamic catalyst in the foregrounding of rape and abuse.

SlutWalk has brought more attention to these issues than any other movement, but it is still pooh-poohed by hardcore critics, who claim that the use of the word "slut" and the so-called slutty attire that accompanies these carnivalesque protests simply plays into the hands of the patriarchy. The ideas of joy, social protest and carnival simply do not fit in with this mindset.

I would argue that SlutWalk is similar to feudal-era social protest, in which the carnival offered glimpses of the world turned upside down. It celebrated a temporary liberation from the established order. Carnivals suspended rank, privilege, norms and prohibitions.

Which is just what SlutWalk does. It is a protest that takes on the subversive nature of carnivalesque mimesis, becoming a form of grotesque resistance in which women imitate the slut stereotype created for them by men so they can erode the stereotype from within.

It is, at its core, a transgressive act of ventriloquism, with women speaking the language of the oppressor with the aim of stripping a phallocratic lexis of its power. This mimetic rebellion can be charged with all sorts of essentialist representations of gender (but not the perpetuation of normativity), a point those who decry SlutWalk have not grasped.

Perhaps it is time for dissenters to consider what carnival and contemporary protest have in common, to wonder what such ritualised display of dissent may be able to do in a dynamic process of social change.

This is not about women playing at make-up, it's about revolution.