When Toronto policeman Michael Sanguinetti offered advice to students on how to avoid sexual assault he could not have imagined that he would spark an international movement that is about to manifest itself in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
“Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised,” Sanguinetti told a crime safety forum meeting at a Toronto university in January this year.
His throwaway comment inspired Slutwalk, a protest movement against linking rape to what women wear.
This weekend Capetonians will take to the streets in a version of Slutwalk and on September 24 Johannesburg will host a similar event at Zoo Lake.
It is a pertinent issue in South Africa. In 2008 taxi drivers stripped and assaulted a women at the Noord Street taxi rank in Johannesburg because she was wearing a miniskirt, while in the Eastern Cape there have been reports of women targeted in taxis because they wear pants instead of long skirts.
Two friends, Heather Jarvis and Sonya Barnett, initiated the movement in Canada, to display their outrage about the attitude of police to what women wear.
About 3Â 000 people joined the first Slutwalk in Toronto, wearing colourful outfits including miniskirts, ball gowns, tracksuits, tuxedoes and pyjamas. In some of the demonstrations that have followed protesters have gone bare-breasted.
Six months later hundreds of similar marches have been held around the world, including in Mexico City, London, Orlando, Delhi and Melbourne. Commentators describe Slutwalk as the most successful feminist protest action in 20 years.
The central purpose of Slutwalk is to remove shame from the term “slut” and reclaim women’s space and right to sexual self-assertion.
Mbuyiselo Botha, of the Sonke Gender Justice Organisation, said that the campaign aimed to give a voice to the voiceless.
“You’re aware of the horrible rape statistics in South Africa. This is why it’s important to shout about this issue from the rooftops.
“We have to change the view that women’s clothing is responsible for them getting raped,” he said, pointing out that space had to be created for women to walk the streets free of fear. Though Slutwalk is an important statement it is part of a range of campaigns intended to change South African attitudes to sexual violence, he said.
But the protests have hit opposition as well. Reacting to the London Slutwalk, columnist Rob Liddle wrote in the Spectator: “Just as I have a perfect right to leave my windows open when I nip to the shops for some fags without being burgled. It doesn’t lessen the guilt of the burglar that I’ve left my window open, or even remotely suggest that I was deserving of being burgled. Just that it was more likely to happen. Why is this difficult to understand?”
Liddle’s argument drew significant support.
South Africa’s Slutwalk organisers say whether you are “a fellow slut or simply an ally, you don’t have to wear your sexual proclivities on your sleeve. We just ask that you come. Come walk or roll or strut or holler or stomp with us.”