Slutwalk

[a bloke]

I think sex with someone who doesn't want it is always a turn off, regardless of what type of sexual partners you have previously had.

[Huguenot]

"after being educated about my sexual needs and how to satisfy them"

Ha ha :)

Do you think if I suggested that the failing in women was that they were refusing to be educated about my sexual needs and how to satisfy them, it might be suuggested that I was oppressing females? ;-)

"We in the 'civilised' West practice a form of mental clitoridectomy on women"

I think in 'Happy Days' that would be decribed as 'jumping the shark'.

Clearly you have a sizeable, demanding and commanding sexual appetite LadyDelilah (on which I cast no judgement) - but please be assured that if others don't share it, it's not because of either inadequancy or persecution.

[LadyDeliah]

Huguenot, clearly not everyone is as accomodating or non-judgemental as you are!

This is not really about my sexual appetite though, (which is on the wane with age as it happens!), it's about my right to have one.

There is no judgement made by me or anyone else I can see, of anyone who lacks a sexual appetite or is happy with perfunctory sex.

I think Slutwalk, or at least the contributions on here to the debate, have been about not condemning women who do enjoy sex and who want to be treated as an equal participant.

[mockney piers]

I rather like Victoria Coren's take on it, it nicely crystallises how I felt about it

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/19/victoria-coren-slutwalks-feminism-fashion

[RosieH]

Well it might Mockney, if any fucker actually bothered to look at pictures of the fucking thing.

MOST PEOPLE WERE WEARING JEANS AND T SHIRTS.

Christ on a bike, how many times do I have to say that I was there and saw what people were wearing and it's not what Victoria Coren (who can frankly shove it up her, I'm-a-woman-me-and-I-play-poker-and-it's-just-so-liberating-and-men-find-it-sexy arse) thinks, so and her fucking stupid assumption that the Slutwalk was a load of riot grrls in their bras and pants was fucking stupid. And what's that, "fitted dress" you say Victoria, you great big slut you.

So Piers, lovely Piers, reader of history and fact and normally quite sensible Piers. GET YOUR FUCKING FACTS STRAIGHT.

ahem.

[mockney piers]

*steps gingerly away*

Are you looking at my bra?

*runs*

[RosieH]

yeah, you'd better run, girlie

[Jah Lush]

Arf! I love it when you're angry RosieH. Having just read this paragraph I'm sure you'd really like to punch her in the face. Stupid, vacuous cow that she is for writing such fatuous nonsense especially the last sentence.

"Mostly, I am sad that feminism is suddenly all about clothing. Maybe that's the answer to what I find rum, what makes me suspicious: it feels like just another way to chat about fashion. The only piece of clothing which is relevant for modern feminists to debate ? the only one with a complex argument, counter-argument and serious social implications either way ? is the burqa. Shorts, bras, bunny ears? Meh, leave that to Sex and the City. None of it matters. None of it means anything."

[mockney piers]

I think she may have stopped short of standing by her own argument by a bit of reductio ad absurdum in an attempt to let herself off the hook.

Thus giving food for detractors without the need to address the salient points.

A pattern of behaviour exploited by many of the loons on our own fair forum come to think of it.

[mockney piers]

That's not you Rosie, before you blow another fuse ;-P

[Moos]

Victoria Coren's idea of feminism is to sneer at women with children. She can fuck off, the divisive, arrogant wretch. And she needs to learn how to dress her boobs.

[????]

Parking the rights and wrongs aside - the media can't really be criticised for publishing photos of the girls at the front in their bras etc at a self named Slutwalk, but maybe that wasn't your point Rosie? just an observation. Anyway, it's got far more debate globally than if it had been "Women against violence walk" or something similar has worked in that sense and I think that's good.

PS Victoria Coren's poker column is ther only readable thing in the Guardian ;-) She is a very decent poker player too

[LadyDeliah]

I'm with RosieH and Moos on this. Ms Coran seems be the one who has muddled thinking and doesn't know what exactly she is objecting to. Her piece just screams, look, I am so cool and not like those silly women who think they can change things.

[Otta]

A quick google image search for "slutwalk london" doesn't exactly look like soft porn. There are one or two bikini tops, which you'd see in any park on a sunny day.

[Huguenot]

Fair play to LadyDelilah is she has inside knowledge on the aim of the walk, but the posters read 'Because we've had enough' rather than 'Because we're not getting enough'. ;-)

[RosieH]

Yeah Quids, I don't blame the media really - they lived down to my expectations - even where I'd expect better like in the Guardian.

The whole debate's pretty fractured, even within the feminist community. (Although I wouldn't include Victoria, however sharp her cardery). To reclaim or not reclaim the word "slut", to dress deliberately provocatively or not (and by that I don't meean sexually, just literally to provoke a reaction), and something I hadn't heard before the walk itself, only since, but does the walk somehow commodify feminism by packaging it up in a nice pretty brand like a burlesque tea party.

However for me, the Feminist Library summed it up nicely as "an energetic wave of feminist activism against rape, victim-blaming and police sexism". That makes me happy when I see so many interviews with D list celebs who litter the pages of our most popular magazines as role models for the intellectually stunted and morally bankrupt, and shun "feminism" as not for them.

[LadyDeliah]

Huguenot Wrote:

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> Fair play to LadyDelilah is she has inside

> knowledge on the aim of the walk, but the posters

> read 'Because we've had enough' rather than

> 'Because we're not getting enough'. ;-)

Ho Ho Ho

[LadyDeliah]

Here you are Hugo:

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/dynamic/00604/14-slutwalk_604880t.jpg

http://c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000NTmJpe9HTpg/s/500/500/SLUT-WALK-LONDON-WOMENS-CAMPAIGN-AGAINST-RAPE-ENGLAND-UK-YES-TO-SEX-NO-TO-ASSULT-BRITAIN-000.jpg

[LadyDeliah]

And:

http://observers.france24.com/files/obs_article_images/cropped520_slutwalk-4.jpg

[Huguenot]

Did you do the second one yourself? ;-)

http://c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000FM2Gf7qVdeo/s/750/600/110611-London-Slutwalk-010.jpg

Julie Bindel is making a speech to celebrate World Femininity Day.

I'd barely got a paragraph into it before she asserted that men invented the word 'slut'.

Now whilst I accept that many people think I am blind to the great injustices imposed upon women by men, I feel it's only right to highlight that I have very rarely heard a man disparagingly brand a woman a 'slut', and when they do it seems to spark global protest.

Conversely women seem to use it persistently and aggressively to establish internecine pecking orders.

So I could be forgiven for believing that men didn't invent the word slut at all - that in fact women did it to undermine sexual competition. In that context I can't even be bothered to read the rest of the speech if it's just going to be a volley of unsubstantiated allegations and 'blood libels'.

[LadyDeliah]

Julie Bindel is a mysoginist who hates women who love hetrosexual sex and she needs to be gagged, or ignored.

[ianr]

LadyDeliah Wrote:

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> Julie Bindel is a mysoginist who hates women who love hetrosexual sex and she needs to be gagged, or ignored.

It's her hot voice. Can she not do what she wants with it?

[Moos]

Farkin ell. I do wish feminism didn't have to be continually discussed in the context of whom we have sex with, and why.

[LadyDeliah]

ianr Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> LadyDeliah Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Julie Bindel is a mysoginist who hates women who

> love hetrosexual sex and she needs to be gagged,

> or ignored.

>

> It's her hot voice. Can she not do what she wants

> with it?

Lol, I guess so!

[RosieH]

Huguenot Wrote:

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> I'd barely got a paragraph into it before she

> asserted that men invented the word 'slut'.

Well to be pedantic, she doesn't say men invented the word. Dearest Huguenot, you do this on every single feminist argument and one of these days I'm going to come over there and slap you round the chops with a bloody tampon.

Don't get so caught up in a sense of your own indignance that you refuse to enagage sensibly with the argument, it's beneath you and a little toddler / toys / prams. She said a mean thing about some boys and I'm a boy so therefore she's calling me Jack the Ripper.

The madonna / whore dichotomy is fairly widely accepted. Women come up against it regularly. I know I have, and I know it wasn't from women establishing a pecking order, it was men employing double standards. So stop being an idiot.