PointingDevice kills

Reblogging for great justice.

rljd:

Note: since it was originally posted as “Slut walk anger misplaced,” this article has been re-titled, “SlutWalk messages unclear,” and now “The problem with SlutWalk.”

They are terrible at The Sun, but at least they are cowards.

Backgrounder: A Toronto cop speaking in public gave his personal/professional opinion that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”

This mobilized feminist activists in cities across Canada to organize “SlutWalks” in protest of pervasive attitudes including that one, and in defense of women’s bodily autonomy and how nothing may abrogate it.  Some people saw it as an opportunity to reclaim the word “slut” as positive and empowering, and some think the word is beyond rescue and essentially conveys dehumanizing and debasing misogynist sentiment, and feeling the former way almost kept me away from the event in Ottawa.

Ideas kicked loose by my friend Peach, weighing aloud whether to bring her 13-year-old daughter to the event, helped me to realize that of COURSE I needed to be there.  That’s my community, those are my issues, these are my values.  I went and was blown away by what a moving, mobilizing, and invigorating experience it was.  Every speech was excellent, although some were made of facts that are difficult to face; my favourite was the final one, given by members of SASC (Sexual Assault Support Centre), where they gently and respectfully suggested that the word “slut” may not have much to offer us, in a reclaimed form, and that asserting that no such thing exists will help to combat confusion.

It was wonderful.  It gave me hope even as much as it reminded me of so many things that we’re up against.

So then yeah: some twerp writes a condescending, belittling article about it for The Sun.  I do appreciate that it is the first thing I have read in that paper in years that did not call everyone “hookers,” so I guess I should think it’s great.

But. It isn’t.

The article is offensive in form as well as content, but that’s par for this course.  A few token low-hangers are set out to frame the writer as reasonable, such as allowing that obviously the officer shouldn’t have said what he did (but gee he apologized which means it’ll never come up later in the execution of his job, right?), but the rest is just a jumbled mess, tripping all over itself to discredit a slate of stances that the writer hasn’t even tried to comprehend.

It’s not really worth honing in on his questionable use of “flippantly,” which a good editor would have repaired in the years when newspapers employed such persons, but a real butterknife of rhetoric clubs down when he says,

“In taking one man’s actions and extrapolating it into a systemic problem, the protesters are guilty of exactly the same fallacy the Toronto officer conducted. They are using one instance to vilify an entire sector.”

It’s not only inaccurate, it contradicts his own elsewhere-stated views.  It is inaccurate to interpret latching onto a recent instance of a frequently observed phenomenon as “extrapolation.” Even if that were what protesters were doing, however, it still wouldn’t be anything like what the officer did - to blame victims for the crimes committed against them isn’t a matter of stereotyping, but of devaluing.  It just isn’t even close.

Then it devolves into the usual false binary stuff (like what do women in Canada have to complain about compared to women in Saudi Arabia); that if a condition is unacceptable elsewhere, people who find a condition unacceptable here are focusing their efforts incorrectly.  Because it’s one or the other.  And they have anything to do with one another.  Right.

The last shining moment of the article is where Furey totally undermines his premise that there is nothing wrong with how the criminal justice system addresses survivors of sexual crimes.  He says,

“Those of us who know victims of sexual assault understand the last people you want to alienate are the ones tasked with protecting you.”

AND WHY IS THAT?  Why should a complainant be EXTRA SCARED that she (or he) might lose the favour of the law’s representative?  What happens in the wake of that alienation?

Something totally acceptable, I guess, and unworthy of protest.

What rot.

Other note: A fella named Greg over at linchpin.ca has already written some good critical stuff about this article in this blog entry, and Emily Griffiths who organized SlutWalk Ottawa wrote her response on the event’s facebook wall.  So this post of mine is only part of a chorus, but what it has to distinguish itself is that I am the only part of the chorus that will say STAB THE SUN IN ITS STUPID FACE.  Out loud.