Does SlutWalk Speak to Women of Color?

SlutWalk protests have been critiqued for their focus on white women. One woman of color explains how she came around to the cause.

A sign at the Boston Slutwalk

Photo Credit: facebook.com-- Mitch Lewis

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By Andrea Plaid

You could have colored me unsupportive of SlutWalk.

Even though I have jokingly called myself a slut (as in “I’m a handbag slut”), as an African American woman I was rather uncomfortable with the protest’s racial dynamics, at least how it was shaping up in the US and Canada. I felt the word “slut” didn’t speak to me; I found the word “ho” more damaging. Of course, I also thought this word broke down in the black/white binary. in my experience, if a black woman was in a mostly white or all-white setting, the word “slut” as a perjorative would be used. In mostly black or all-black settings, the words “ho” and “fass” (meaning sexually “fast”) would be flung to sexually shame us.

What didn’t help my ambivalence regarding SlutWalk was, when watching some white organizers and speakers talk about the problems of race in organizing the protests, it was the usual “well, ‘slut’ is universal,” or they'd point to the speaker roster or the people in the audience (though the photos show, again, white women). It came off as another word-reclamation project that seemed to recenter white cisgender women’s sexual agency and bodies. (Sort of the way “feminist issues” tends to reincarnate a little too often as “white (cis) women’s issues.”) And, increasingly in the discussions, there is a disturbing new attribute of the “relatable rape victim” as a woman who is “young and sexy” or at least “precocious and body-conscious.”