FemSoc has failed to be ratified by YUSU, the status and purpose of the Women's Committee has been thrown into doubt, and now a proposed all-inclusive "Walk A Mile in Her Shoes" event at one of the colleges has been met with a mix of support, frustration and dissent.
I'm not here to talk about the first two - I have never had any contact with either group, largely because I a) don't have time because b) I'm a postgrad, not an undergrad and as such c) it's unclear whether YUSU really has much to do with me at all, whether it proclaims to or not.
Anyway. The third point is the interesting one, or at least the one which can be more easily broken down. Vanbrugh College, it seems, want to hold an event to campaign against sexual harassment. A march, to be precise. There are two famous types of march which have captured popular imagination; firstly the Toronto-born SlutWalk, and secondly the Walk A Mile in Her Shoes from just south of that North American border. The former was instigated and participated in by women; the latter inspired by the SlutWalk but participated in by men. Although the Vanbrugh event is open to everyone, regardless of gender identity, they have chosen the "Walk A Mile" label over "SlutWalk" as they perceived the latter to be potentially offensive for some.
Cue the (double) crux of the disagreement. There are those who feel that it isn't right that the male-oriented version of the event should be assumed instead of the female-oriented version, particularly as the male-oriented version often comes with men dressing as women, and people are worried about the effect of trans students, for example. This is certainly an important point, but not the one I want to focus on here.
The whole debate made me wonder about the language which feminists use, as this is the source of the trouble - if SlutWalk wasn't deemed potentially offensive, I'm quite sure that the Vanbrugh welfare team would have gone with that title in a heartbeat.
So let's think about bit about where the name came from and why it was chosen.
The name SlutWalk derives from the comments of a police constable in Toronto, who advised a group of young people to 'avoid dressing like a slut' if they wanted to stay safe. Apart from being a very vague and unsubstantiated piece of advice, it implies that victims, specifically females ones, are in some way to blame for anything which may befall them. As a response, 3,000 women marched on the streets of Toronto, not only to protest against the implications made by the police constable, but also to reclaim the word 'slut'.
The idea of 'reclaiming' or 'reappropriating' words is just a linguistic version of bringing elements of subcultures into the mainstream, or taking on formerly offensive words within the group that word was once used to oppress. It is a process which has no real 'beginning' - to name just one, the term 'Jesuit' was used derogatorily to denounce a certain form of practising Christianity which is now used to refer to members of the Society of Jesus, of whom current Pope Francis is one - though the most successful reappropriation of a term in recent times must be that of 'gay', which is now used (largely) non-offensively to refer to the homosexual community, both by members and non-members of that group.
The big issue here is that whilst feminism (as I understand it) is about promoting the cause of an oppressed group, this group is HUGE and heterogeneous and - what is more - modern feminism in particular aims to engage all people in a move to support women and to achieve gender equality.
All people. Around 7 billion of us. That is a bloomin' big audience by anyone's standards, with an awful lot of different and differing cultural and social traditions to take into account.
And this is where, I feel, the reappropriation of the word 'slut' falls down. There are a huge amount of other connotations attached to this word aside from the sexist ones, specificaly racist and slavery-related overtones, which might make certain groups of women extra-uneasy about adopting this deeply complex term. For a particularly eloquent and much fuller explanation of this, see this open letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk organisers.
That's not the only problem. Take 'gay', for example - the word originally meant 'joyful and happy', and was used as such until well into the 20th Century, as demonstrated in the Sondheim song 'I Feel Pretty' from West Side Story:
I feel pretty, oh so pretty
I feel pretty, and witty, and gay,
And I pity any girl who isn't me today!
In contrast, the four phonemes used in such an order as to be pronounced as the word 'slut' have only been used in a derogatory manner* continually since its earliest attestation as denoting loose morals and promiscuity in 1402. This word has centuries of abuse and offence attached to it and is still being used as a strong insult today - why should we attempt to salvage it, instead of slapping it with a dagger symbol to show that it is obsolete, much like the ideas it denotes?
In fact, I am of the opinion that, in the pursuit of such a global cause, language which is generally classed as 'offensive' has no place. I do not own the cleanest mouth in the world, but there are contexts in which I refrain from swearing. Because crucially, if you want to appeal to groups outside of Western White women between the ages of 16 and 35, in which swearing may be considered offensive and unnecessary, then I strongly suggest giving it a go. And if you are convinced that swearing is the only way to show just how angry you are at injustice, take some lessons from this lady:
Now, to be clear: I in no way advocate any kind of language policing; I believe that differences should be discussed, and that banning any kind of term can stymie discussion and therefore understanding. I do not believe that any person should assume what another person will be offended by, though it is obviously important to take into account any information you have about what your addressee may find offensive. I even believe that 'some -ist' jokes can have their place - for example, jokes about disability, pronounced within close friendship groups, have been shown to normalise disability in groups in which a member has found themselves dealing with the loss of a limb, or paralysis, or another form of disability. I know this personally from my friendship groups, and I know this from other anecdotes, for example in the video below:
I in no way advocate language policing but, especially when you are claiming to represent half the population, if not the whole population of our planet, your language choice must be made carefully, and always with reference to two things: CONTENT and CONTEXT, namely what you say and who you're saying it to.
To get a bit linguistic about it, the philosopher and semanticist Robert Stalnaker said, in reference to the act of speaking:
Presuppositions [essentially, assumptions - RW] are what is taken by the speaker to be the COMMON GROUND of the participants in the conversation, what is treated as their COMMON KNOWLEDGE or MUTUAL KNOWLEDGE. [...The speaker] may presuppose any proposition that he finds convenient to assume for the purpose of the conversation, provided he is prepared to assume that his audience will assume it along with him.In short - if you assume something about a term or a piece of information you use, you must be aware that your audience may not share the same assumptions. He goes on to note that if the audience rejects the speaker's proposition, their shared understanding will not change in the way intended by the speaker. It may stay the same...or the speaker and the audience might diverge. This is where Stalnaker leaves it - the consequences of this weren't his concern in his paper. But in our context, this could just drive yet another wedge in an increasingly unhappy and divided concept of modern feminism.
(Stalnaker, 1979, p.323; original emphasis)**
In fact, this is exactly where I think modern feminism is struggling. It's not an easy case to fix - there are a whole raft of issues included within feminism, before even considering the other concerns which intersect with it. However, if the largely white Western brand of feminism, which seems to have the largest voice at the moment, wants to claim to speak for all women (cf. Caitlin Moran's two-step test for being a feminist***), it's going to have to start listening much harder than it is doing at the moment.
P.S. Psst, Vanbrugh Welfare? Look to your imaginations and come up with your own name for your own inclusive event. Just sayin'.
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*The OED suggests that 'slut' can be used as a playful term, but as this usage (their examples show) are only ever used in the context of very close relationships, usually parent to child, this usage is not relevant here.
** Stalnaker, Robert (1979). 'Assertion'. In: P. Cole, ed.,Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics (pp.315-332). New York: Academic Press.
*** "So here is the quick way of working out if you're a feminist. Put your hand in your pants.
a) Do you have a vagina? and
b) Do you want to be in charge of it?
If you said 'yes' to both, then congratulations! You're a feminist."
Taken from Caitlin Moran (2011). How to Be A Woman. London: Ebury Press.
