out.
“Another fat and ugly feminist who thinks we should all wear Birkenstocks!”
“Yeah, get with the program, sister! The new feminism is sex-positive!”
Spike reeled. Jane didn’t think she’d ever seen her reel. She was also speechless. Call 9-1-1.
Where to begin, Spike was thinking. Not with the obvious fact that she wasn’t fat. Or ugly. Or that she was wearing her Doc Martens.
“WE ARE NOT SLUTS!” Jane jumped into the silence, leaning toward Spike’s bullhorn and raising her fist to punctuate her shouts. “WE ARE NOT SLUTS!”
“But we are”—Spike had put her hand over the mouthpiece of her bullhorn—“At least, we were. Didn’t you have sex with people you weren’t married to?”
“Well yeah.” Jane hadn’t ever been married, hadn’t ever intended to be married. And certainly hadn’t intended to remain a virgin all her life. Ergo. “That doesn’t make me a slut.”
“People who weren’t even your boyfriend slash girlfriend?”
“Well yeah, but—”
“People you just met.”
She considered that.
“WE ARE SLUTS! WE ARE SLUTS!”
“Wait a minute.” She stopped suddenly and turned to Spike. “I wasn’t completely indiscriminate. The guy had to use a condom, he couldn’t have any STDs, and he had to be my type. I mean, I didn’t have sex with just anyone.”
It took just a moment.
“MEN ARE SLUTS! MEN ARE SLUTS!”
That caught on.
Until a young woman close by grabbed Spike’s bullhorn. “What are you doing? We’ve reclaimed the word ‘slut’!”
“Are you sure?” She nodded at a man standing at the perimeter. He was grinning at the young woman and making vigorous jerking off motions with his hand.
“Have we also reclaimed ‘skank’, ‘ho’, ‘beaver’, ‘cow’, and ‘cunt’?” Jane asked. Innocently.
“Bitch!”
“Apparently we haven’t reclaimed that one yet,” Spike noted dryly as the woman strutted off.
They’d reached the stage. Bereft of her bullhorn, Spike leapt up and stood at one of the two microphones. “Part of you smiles to think of yourself as a slut. You’re a bad girl, a wild girl, you’re dangerous, you’re taking risks. But that’s exactly what they want. Sexual access. No-strings-attached sex. We fell for that too. In the 60s. In the 70s. Free love, we’re not prudes, we’re okay with our bodies, we’re okay with sex. We’re ‘with it’.
“But they never took us seriously. They never considered us part of the movement. Behind our backs, they’d snicker and say the best position for a woman is prone.”
“Stokely Carmichael,” Jane shouted out the source. For anyone who wanted to know.
“It’s either/or for men,” Spike continued. “If you’re sexually attractive and/or available, you can’t possibly be anything else. Intelligent, competent—”
“Actually,” Jane interjected, “even if you’re not sexually attractive and/or available—maybe especially if you’re not sexually attractive and/or available—” she broke off. So sexuality did give women power? Attention, at least? But … No, they still didn’t take you seriously. As Spike had said.
“And okay,” Spike continued, “you’re accusing me of being anti-sex. But you know what? I am. I am anti-sex. As it typically occurs. As it is expected to occur. Which is primarily for men’s pleasure, often via women’s pain. Sex for women’s pleasure wouldn’t even involve the penis!”
“SlutWalk isn’t about dressing like sluts—” Another woman had taken the stage, and the other microphone.
“Then why call it SlutWalk?” Jane muttered, truly perplexed.
“It’s about victim-blaming,” the woman continued, to scattered applause. “Women shouldn’t be blamed for sexual assault. They’re the victims. We need to hold men responsible. For their actions.”
“But there are conventions, symbols, uniforms,” Spike responded. “You’d be an idiot to wear gang colours—your gang’s colours—into some other gang’s territory. And then whine when they beat you up.”
A sharp intake of breath hissed through the crowd.
“Dressing like a hooker indicates that you’re available for sexual service,” Jane tried to help. “ ‘Hooker’ by definition …”
“If you look like bait and act like bait …”
“But it’s not about dressing like a hooker,” someone called out.
Spike looked around. Pointedly.
“And anyway, what’s wrong with being a hooker?” This from a transvestite, wearing shiny black hotpants, shiny black boots, and several fuchsia feather boas.
“Yeah, the new feminism is inclusive!”
Jane and Spike exchanged looks. Confused looks. Inclusive of what, exactly?
“So are you saying that if we wear a short skirt, we should expect to be raped?” a woman shouted out to Spike from across the crowd.
“A couple years ago”—another woman had gotten up onto the stage and taken the second microphone—“when I was waiting for my boyfriend outside a record store, a guy came up to me, just a boy-next-door kind of guy, not a drunk perv or anything, and he asked how much I charged for a blow job. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, a jean jacket, and a knapsack.” She paused. “It didn’t quite sink in at the time. That, as a woman, I would always be considered available for sexual service.”
The crowd had the good sense to applaud that.
“And dressing like hookers reinforces that!” Spike added.
But then, “We have the right to dress however we want!” someone in the crowd insisted.
Yes! Jane thought. Even if you’re an office temp. Because god knows, she was sick of not getting assignments because she wore sensible shoes.
“But you also have the responsibility to consider the message you’re sending,” Spike replied. “If dressing like a hooker isn’t an invitation, what is?”
“The word ‘YES’.” The other woman on the stage still had the mic. “Clearly spoken, voluntarily. Anything else is just a ‘maybe’.”
“Oh, I like that,” Jane said.
“Except that it ignores the communicative value of non-verbal signals,” Spike muttered.
“And anyway what’s wrong with having sex with more than one person?” Jane asked as they walked back to their car, bookless. She’d obviously leap-frogged backwards a bit. Spike didn’t mind. She’d kind of collapsed in the middle of a cartwheel.
“Men are willing to support only their own biological offspring, so if a woman has sex with anyone other than him, he’ll never know which of her kids are his.”
“Oh, right. I forgot for a moment that men define everything.”
“No, wait a minute,” she said a moment later, “we have paternity tests.”
“Emasculating. To have to have one done.”
“Ah. Better to shame the woman for perfectly acceptable behaviour.”
They got into their car.
“Did