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The new name for what was formerly “Slutwalk Northampton”
I’m so glad that the other organizers were totally into accepting the various critiques of the movement and the use of the word “slut”, and that they’re serious about working to make our march as inclusive as we can. I wasn’t there at the meeting this Sunday when they decided this, but I was super awesomely surprised when I found out :)
we’ve still got a lot of work to do, but I’m excited for Oct 22!
7 notes
Thank you, SlutWalk, for posting the piece I wrote for Crunk Feminist Collective this past week. The willful ignorance of so many commenters in this thread, who want the right to use the n-word, for I know not what reason, disgusts me and offends me. I say that as both an African American person, who has in fact been called the n-word by white folks, multiple times. And I’m only 30, which means that those slurs happened long after the Civil Rights movement was over. By contrast, I’ve never been called slut. Even still, I stand in solidarity with the SlutWalk movement.
But I stand in disgust at the racism that keeps rearing its ugly head. The sign in question is only the most obvious instance. I also say with certainty, based on my expertise as a Ph.D. in American Studies, with a concentration in African American and Women’s Studies, that white use of this word is offensive and should not occur. (As if one really needed a Ph.D. to say that. :-/)
I also know that that expertise doesn’t matter at all to those folks invested in defending this privilege based on the 1st amendment. I mean, I defend your right to engage in ignorant hateful speech all you want, but I call into question your commitment to social justice if you do so.
To suggest that sexism and rape matter more than racism is to fundamentally not understand the positionality of women of color who deal with racism and sexism at exactly the same time. To ask us to put aside racism for the larger cause of sexism is an act of white privilege that bespeaks the utter ignorance that many white folks still have about Black people generally and Black women in particular. For the record, I will not excuse racism in the feminist movement in order to stand in solidarity with anti- rape activism. I will not do it, because rape is no more a threat to my daily existence than racism is. I will not do it because I shouldn’t have to.
I don’t put up with racist knuckleheads anymore than I put up with sexist knuckleheads, and I certainly wouldn’t show up to a march that claims to care about making the world safer for me, when their are women who show up there with the privilege of not thinking about how their careless uses of language make the space less safe and invoke a history of raping Black women that was done to us because we are both Black and women. To not acknowledge this is to forget the very ways in which rape has been experienced by Black women historically.
I certainly don’t expect white men to get that, and I do hope the white men in this thread who are vehemently (and subtly) asking for and defending the right to use the n-word see the historical irony of that position. But since white women claim to care about the universal woman struggle (whatever the hell that is), then I expect y’all to get a specific clue about the ways in which your racism is divisive and my/our outrage and disengagement completely warranted…” ~ Brittney Cooper ~
”CLICK HERE TO READ THE SLUTWALK THREAD (on Facebook)
(Source: afrolez)
234 notes (via strugglingtobeheard & afrolez)
Sister/Comrade Stephanie Gilmore, who spoke at SlutWalk Philadelphia, is, to the best of my knowledge, one of the ONLY anti-racist White Feminists who has PUBLICLY SUPPORTED the IDEA/PREMISE of SlutWalk while PUBLICLY CHALLENGING its CURRENT RACIST REALITY.
With her FULL PERMISSION, I have re-posted the text of her essay so that people who are not on facebook will be able to read it in its entirety.
“Am I Troy Davis? A Slut?; or, What’s Troubling Me about the Absence of Reflexivity in Movements that Proclaim Solidarity” by Stephanie Gilmore
1.
On September 21, 2011, I joined hundreds of my friends and millions of people around the world to watch, through tears and in abject horror, as Troy Anthony Davis was executed by the State of Georgia. In the twenty years between Davis’ trial for the murder of police officer Mark McPhail and his execution, Davis maintained his innocence while witnesses recanted the testimony that sent Davis to death row. Despite conflicting testimonies and inadequate evidence, the state put aside lingering and longstanding doubt and instead, put Troy Anthony Davis to death.
On Facebook, Twitter, and other media outlets, I saw virtual and real friends declare that “I am Troy Davis.” They changed their profile pictures to a picture or image of Davis, or a black box, all in an attempt to articulate a sense of solidarity, a stand against the injustice of the prison industrial complex and a state thoroughly entrenched in the murder of a man who may not have committed the crime of murder. I agree wholeheartedly that the state was wrong in executing Mr. Davis and I grieve for his death as well as that of Officer McPhail. But in the weeks since Davis’s execution, I have been wondering if people really understand how and why Davis came to be murdered at the hands of the state. People insist that “I am Troy Davis,” but what does that mean?
In many ways, I am not Troy Davis. I am a middle-class, 40-something-year-old white woman. According to a 2008 Pew Center on the States report, one in 36 Hispanic adults is in prison in the United States. One in 15 Black adults is too, a statistic that includes one in 100 Black women and one in nine Black men, age 20-34. Although one of my parents spent time in prison, and through incarceration joined the swelling ranks of 2.3 million imprisoned people and many more in the system of probation, halfway houses, and parole, I and my white peers do not face systemic racial injustice in the structures of imprisonment. And it does not begin or end with the prison system. Black children are suspended and expelled from school at 3 times the rate of white children. Racial discrimination in funding for education also affects children’s success in school, as cash-poor school districts are also overwhelmingly Black and Latino neighborhoods. Schools have been and remain a pipeline to prison for many Black and Latino children, and generations of families, prison is a reality. One in 15 Black children currently has a parent in jail. People say that the system is broken, but I (along with others in the prison abolition movement) admit that the system is working exactly as it was set up to do. Can I really say, “I am Troy Davis” without giving serious consideration to the realities of racism in the prison industrial complex? Does that just become little more than the adoption of a slogan and a picture, without a real awareness of the racist realities of the prison industrial complex?
2.
On August 6, 2011, I joined Slut Walk Philadelphia. It was a beautiful day and hundreds of people moved through Center City to end up at City Hall, where even more gathered to speak out against sexual violence. I had been following Slut Walks with great delight because I see the people power in the sheer numbers of women and men who are fighting back against sexual violence. So when I was asked to participate, and to stand with queer people of Color in a more racially inclusive Slut Walk than I had seen to date, I said “yes” because the fight to end sexual violence is my fight. And fighting against a culture that perpetuates and promotes rape; cheers on rapists; and diminishes, humiliates, and silences victims through law, education, and entertainment will demands knowledge that the system, again, is not broken. It is doing the very work it was constructed to do – sexual violence is a tool of ensuring white status quo. And if we are to end sexual violence, we must acknowledge how it operates.
I have struggled to accept a movement that does not acknowledge the very problematic word “slut” and how historically many women have not been able to shake the label of “slut.” I participated in the struggle – the movement as well as my own internal struggle – because I wanted to engage in, create, and sustain dialogue. Indeed, many criticize the apparent move to claim “slut” – how can you pick up something you’ve never been able to put down? Black women have been most vocal about the longer legacy of sexual violence done onto their bodies – often against the backdrop of slavery and colonialism — simply for being Black. But I continued to push into these bigger conversations and analyses. I listened and engaged when Crunk Feminist Collective challenged Slut Walks, when BlackWomen’s Blueprint issued their “Open Letter from Black Women to Slut Walk Organizers,” and when individual women of Color (and only women of Color) spoke publicly about racist actions within individual marches as well as racism within the larger movement. White women I know made private comments about different expressions of racism, but never spoke up to challenge individual actions or larger frameworks of analysis, leaving me to wonder “why?”
And then I saw the sign from Slut Walk NYC bearing the words “Women are the N*gger of the World.” I don’t care that the quotation is from John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I don’t care that the woman was asked to take down the sign – although I certainly do care that a woman of Color had to ask her to do so while white women moved around her, seemingly oblivious. I am angry when I continue to see so many white women defending it expressly or remaining complicit in silence, suggesting that “we” (what “we”?) need to focus on sexual violence first, as if it is unrelated to racism. And I wonder, can I really claim to be a part of the nascent Slut Walk movement without giving serious consideration to the realities of racism within very publicly identified facets of it? Can I be a part of it when so many women – my very allies and sisters in antiracist struggle – are set apart from it, or worse, set in perpetual opposition to it?
3.
My question is, how can we be in solidarity when we are not willing to be reflexive and to check ourselves, check each other, and be checked? Bernice Johnson Reagon acknowledged that coalition building is hard work, made even harder by people who come to coalition seeking to find a home. My sense, or perhaps one sense I have, is that many people came to the “I Am Troy Davis” momentum or the Slut Walk marches looking for a home, a place where they can sit back and feel comfortable in their hard (very hard!) work, and comforted by others who pat them on the head and tell them “good job.” This is not to dismiss genuine concern for the state of our world. Perhaps we’re all lonely, as the realities of social justice work have taken on different and palatable forms since WTO and 9/11. So many people are down for the immediate issue – the indefensible execution of Troy Davis, the indefensible perpetuation of sexual violence — and that matters. But I worry that many white people aren’t paying attention to the larger structures in place. They are not being reflexive about the realities of racism that undergird prison incarceration, death penalty, and sexual violence.
I am not Troy Davis; I never will be. A system built on the foundation of racism ensures that I will not confront the realities of prison incarceration in the same ways as Black and Latino people. I am a strong advocate against sexual violence, but I cannot fight in and for a movement that is not interested in the realities of racism and the ways that racism undergirds sexual violence, and instead so blindly employs racist language. (The “Occupy Wall Street” actions call for me again the realities of racism and its necessity within the existing structure of capitalism – and the insistence among white people that people of Color indulge a luxury of time and money to sit in with them is untenable and racist. Many others have pointed out that the language of “occupation” is inherently problematic because bodies and lands have been historically occupied, often through sexual violence and criminalization. The movement itself needs to be decolonized.) Even as I support openly the prison abolition movement, the end to sexual violence, and the uprooting of a socioeconomic system that ignores the 99%, I cannot do so without deep awareness of racism that is operating within and among these movements. It is my work as a white activist to speak to and be aware of these legacies and histories of racism. Women and men of Color need not be alone in the front lines of identifying racist action and reaction within the movement. Insisting that people of Color have a voice only when it comes to identifying racism perpetuates, rather than alleviates racism. As I look at the actions of some people within these movements, I am reminded again that the racism of the supposed left is even more damaging and hurtful than the naked racism of the right.
If we are to work together in solidarity, we must do so reflexively, conscious of our actions and the potential outcomes before we act. This is not a call to focus on criticism and self-reflection to the point that we are inactive. That is unproductive, to be sure. But it is a call to be mindful and vigilant about racist action and reaction, to come to terms with the fact that we must do the work of understanding racist underpinnings of prison incarceration, the death penalty, and sexual violence if we are to make significant progress. Undoing racism must be at the core of our collective work across movements. To echo Dr. Reagon’s statement, we need to be honest and ask if we really want people of Color or if we’re just looking for ourselves with a little color to it. So much of the movement work, as it stands, seems to be looking for a little color, when we need to be exploring the realities of racism as part of the problem, not an additive to the “real” issue. In the absence of reflexivity about the structural forces that are keeping us apart, we will never be able to engage in real coalition work that will be required if we are to take seriously our goals of ending sexual violence and the death penalty. These movements as they are going now may continue, but they will not do so in my name and certainly not without my consent.
So no, I am not Troy Davis. I am not a slut. I am not an occupier of Wall Street or any street. The fights are my fights, but the current methods and analyses are not mine. I cannot sit by and listen to people debate the efficacy of the death penalty without understanding that it is the larger complex of incarceration and the “elementary-to-penitentiary” path that tracks and traps Black and Latino youth by design. I am done with the handwringing and “white lady tears” of so many white women who keep defending racist approaches and actions and, at times, respond with violence when confronted and challenged. Such behavior only reinforces the fact that these movement spaces as they are currently defined are not safe. My friend, colleague, and sister-in-spirit Aishah Shahidah Simmons said it best when she commented, “It’s sobering to observe how White solidarity is taking precedence over principled responses…. ” Sobering, indeed. I will most assuredly fight to end the prison industrial complex, sexual violence, and unbridled capitalism, but I will do so from a space that centers the racist roots of incarceration, criminal “justice,” capitalism, and sexual violence. Thankfully, those spaces already exist – even if they remain peripheral in the mainstream media (and in much of what is left of the lefty media). But it is time to pivot the center. Without reflexive analysis of racism and coalition work grounded in antiracist movement, we miss the real root of the problem as well as real opportunities to create change.
___________________________
Stephanie Gilmore is a feminist activist and assistant professor of the women’s and gender studies department at Dickinson College. For the 2011-12 academic year, she is a postdoctoral fellow in women’s studies at Duke University. She is completing “Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America” (Routledge, 2012) and has started a new research project on how students negotiate sexual violence on residential college campuses in the United States.This is excellent.
being a progressive activist/ally: YOU’RE DOING IT RIGHT
411 notes (via youarenotyou-deactivated2012022 & afrolez)
http://afrolez.tumblr.com/post/11232563013/am-i-troy-davis-a-slut-or-whats-troubling-me
(via afrolez)
hell yeah this is awesome
156 notes (via poemsofthedead-deactivated20120 & afrolez)
I am an Afro-Latina who, along with another local feminist (who is white), set up and and established a Slutwalk for our town. I was aware of the criticisms. I of course personally know of “mainstream white straight cis feminism” and how inaccessible and straight-up uninviting it is to women of color. & I did what I could to mention how and why this related to me as a woman of color, how sexism and slut-shaming specifically targets women of color in a way that is very different from how it targets white women in that it’s worsened by racism.
Frankly, I was excited to use the event as a catalyst to outreach with other feminists, specifically ones of color, queer ones, working class ones, ones that weren’t the white college girls. But, closest to my heart was to build a place in the WOC community. I know that so many feminist issues are automatically shut down as “being a white thing” (both because they are, and also as a way to shut WOC up and stop us from revolutionizing or questioning our respective cultures without being barked down as “wanting to be white”) and I want to change that.
But unfortunately, with what happened at SWNYC, I don’t feel like I can defend it any long. While my sisters are sitting here saying that they can’t and won’t stand by it, and while the rampant racism and whiteness of the movement is suffocating and toxic to us, who am I to sit here and help a movement that excluded us and only started to tag on “women of color, trans folk” after they got criticized? Our walk ended up being really white, and I felt horrible about it, like I was just dancing for whitey instead of putting more effort to make a revolution as a WOC that includes WOC, and addresses them honestly, and includes them in organizing and creating their spaces as they see fit.
It was especially disheartening in the sense that it exposed the whiteness in Riot Grrrl, the spirit behind the movement, the only reason I was even interested in SlutWalk, the reason I became a feminist in the first place. Punk rock was my saving grace as a kid, and over the years it’s been a fucking heart-wrenching process to realize that your home is filled with a bunch of white people writing white songs about white problems and totally and completely ignoring you or gawking at you like you’re a fucking circus freak. Slutwalk exposed itself AND Riot Grrrl for what it is.
But, at the same time, I sort of want to run away with SlutWalk (and Riot Grrrl) and reclaim it in a different sense. To use it as a big “FUCK YOU” to the white feminists, and to give WOC our due and voice.
I have a big choice to make right now.
Ya’ll remember when I said that the WOC who put together the SlutWalk in my city did it RIGHT? THIS IS MY BOO!!!
I didn’t go because it was a super high pain day and also family needs wiped me out that morning before the walk (I had intended to be there). I did see lots of pictures after, and in those pictures I saw men and women of color and queer folks. We live in a predominantly white city. I’ll be blunt, it is a very conservative white city where the not-conservative white folks turn out to often be not-so-different from the conservatives when you really scratch their surface.
So for all of my critiques of SlutWalk in general, I always wanted to be really careful to respect the work that was being fearlessly done by my amazing friend here. I believe in what she did. I really do. And I think this is where we can talk about local, community-based, grassroots work that can be done, and can be done well. It can. There will be mistakes, disappointments, things not living up to the dream. But you can TELL when the work was put in to try to get things right, versus when things like SW-NYC where that work just does not appear to have really happened.I do think critiques can happen while also acknowledging things that were well done. B, I want to be clear, I have NO critique of what you did here and I’m really sorry that I wasn’t there to actively support you. But what happened in NYC is just… something else.
I’m involved in organizing Slutwalk Northampton right now, and OP is articulating my feelings almost exactly. The walk hasn’t yet happened though, so we’ll see….
43 notes (via poemsofthedead-deactivated20120 & lebanesepoppyseed)
[TW: USE OF “N” WORD]Woman is not the nigger of the world.
John Lennon is not the final authority on whether it’s ok to use the term nigger.
Quoting [B]lack men from the 60s is not a valid defense against critiques from [B]lack women, [B]lack feminists, and our allies today.
The term nigger is not “in the past.”
The term nigger has not, and has never been, a term that can be equally applied to everyone.
Arguing that [B]lack people don’t have a monopoly on the term nigger is just fucking disgusting. You want it that bad? Really?…” ~ Latoya Peterson, SlutWalk, Slurs, and Why Feminism Still Has Race Issues, RACIALICIOUS
”401 notes (via activistaabsentee & afrolez)
What NOT to bring to tomorrow’s SlutWalkNYC event:
- paint of any kind (markers are ok as long as they do not get on the ground and are NOT used to deface public property)
- Glitter or confetti, unless it’s stuck onto your board
- stickers
- bull horns
What you SHOULD bring:
- noisemakers, plus some to share
- water
- an umbrella or poncho
- all of your friends
Hope to see you tomorrow!
wish I could be there
solidarity!
47 notes (via slutwalknyc)
you know what i find interesting?
in an effort to be “inclusive” and to address their privilege, many white feminists (on tumblr) have reblogged, linked to, or referenced different articles concerning slutwalk’s exclusion of women of color. i’m not denying that slutwalk is problematic in a multitude of ways, but it’s just funny how lots of people are trying to recognize the concerns of WOC by lumping them together.
I don’t want to encourage any unnecessary in-fighting, but I feel like there needs to be some kind of recognition of the fact that not all WOC/black women feel the same about slutwalk because not all of us have the same experiences as women of color. Some women can identify with the movement and actually see it as a way to address the hypersexualization of non-white individuals. Some women see it as a further manifestation of the long-time blind spots of white, middle/upper class, heterosexual feminism.
I’ve participated in the Slutwalk in my area and probably will again, but there are still problems I find with it. I think it’s important to address both sides of the coin - why do some WOC participate, why don’t they? Why would an individual participate even if they find it problematic? Why would an individual choose not to participate even if they find some aspects agreeable?
Properly dealing with issues is not going to happen through homogenization though, I can tell you that.
(Source: puzzledpantherrr)
49 notes (via cuntygrrl-deactivated20111201-d & puzzledpantherrr)
We the undersigned women of African descent and anti-violence advocates, activists, scholars, organizational and spiritual leaders wish to address the SlutWalk. First, we commend the organizers on their bold and vast mobilization to end the shaming and blaming of sexual assault victims for violence committed against them by other members of society. We are proud to be living in this moment in time where girls and boys have the opportunity to witness the acts of extraordinary women resisting oppression and challenging the myths that feed rape culture everywhere.This is the best - most thorough- critique that I have read about the SlutWalk. It fully addresses the concerns that I have been struggling to verbalize. Should be read in its entirety.
The police officer’s comments in Toronto that ignited the organizing of the first SlutWalk and served to trivialize, omit and dismiss women’s continuous experiences of sexual exploitation, assault, and oppression are an attack upon our collective spirits. Whether the dismissal of rape and other violations of a woman’s body be driven by her mode of dress, line of work, level of intoxication, her class, and in cases of Black and brown bodies—her race, we are in full agreement that no one deserves to be raped.
The Issue At Hand
We are deeply concerned. As Black women and girls we find no space in SlutWalk, no space for participation and to unequivocally denounce rape and sexual assault as we have experienced it. We are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress. Much of this is tied to our particular history. In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the Black female immigrant struggle combine, “slut” has different associations for Black women. We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label. [READ MORE]
I’ve had extremely mixed feelings about SlutWalk, and this post articulates them perfectly.
I am planning on going to SlutWalk Northampton though, and I want to help make sure that this gets addressed.
will probably be a daunting task since, given the demographics of this area, I’ll probably be one of few POC there…
139 notes (via karnythia & jalwhite)
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