Deconstructing SlutWalk

San Francisco hosted its first SlutWalk on Saturday, August 6, and I — along with two fellow sluts — simply had to go check out this latest protest fad.

For those not familiar with the concept of a “SlutWalk,” this sign pretty much sums it up: Unwanted Exposure to Scrotum Is Never OK! At SlutWalks, feminist desmoiselles trying to look both sexy and intimidating gather in public for a communal howl against rape and victimhood. Sometimes — as in this example (one hopes) — they have a great sense of humor; other times, not so much.

The crowd assembled in San Francisco’s Dolores Park for a march through town. In case you’re wondering what’s so controversial about rape that it needs to be protested against — well, you accidentally just hit the nail on the head. Because, in truth, basically everybody on all sides of all political spectrums already thinks that rape is among the most evil of crimes. So: why a protest? For that answer, we must plumb deep.

The SlutWalk concept started earlier this year at a crime prevention conference in Canada (yes, Canada) where a clueless Toronto policeman, invited to instruct assembled students how to not become the victims of rape, concluded his talk with one extra bit of advice: “Women should avoid dressing like sluts.”

Result: Outrage. Implicit in his statement, the Canadian students felt, was the insinuation that rape victims who dressed provocatively are partly to blame for what happens to them. This Toronto constable opened a Pandora’s Box! A few months later, Canadian feminists organized the first “SlutWalk” to protest against the very principle of this “don’t dress like a slut” attitude, and from that day forward SlutWalks have erupted in cities all over the globe. The only surprising part is that it took four months to reach San Francisco. We’re not used to being this far behind the curve!

Dressing for a SlutWalk is a delicate balance. The goal is to be as enticing and as repulsive as possible — simultaneously. Sometimes this is accomplished by exposing as much flesh as you dare, while sporting angry man-hating political diatribes, often inked directly onto your body, as we see here.

Early SlutWalks had more semi-nudity, but over the months they seem to have mellowed, and now most participants settle for looking pretty or sexy while holding off-putting, accusatory signs.

As a result, SlutWalks simmer with a jittery yet unnerving erotic tension. Look at me, I’m sexy and gorgeous! is inextricably meshed with If you even DARE to glance in my direction, I will disembowel you. For those marinated in academic feminism, this posture makes total sense; everyone else cringes nervously and expects someone to jump out and say “Ha ha! You’ve been punked!”
(Side note: In the photo above, notice the juxtaposition of Sid Vicious on the left and Mickey Mouse on the right. The cultural dysphoria somehow seemed fitting.)

Still confused? Don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most people are confused when they first hear about SlutWalk — and they generally remain confused even after it’s explained to them. In fact, by my reckoning, even the participants are confused. They may not know they’re confused, but imagine the dizzying psycho-sexual gymnastics one must perform to convince oneself that it’s clever to walk around in public with a sign that says “I ♥ My Cunt.”

I’ll try to unravel the mysteries of SlutWalk for you here. But there is simply too much to say, too much to deconstruct. Entire books could be written on the subject; PhD theses; symposia. (Trust me, people are working on them as we speak). One mere photo essay can hardly do the whole Slutwalk phenomenon justice. But at least we’ll have fun trying!

The First Thing You Need to Know: SlutWalk is a protest against something that doesn’t exist. We’re all supposed to be ANGRY! that society blames the victim for being raped.

But hang on just a minute. Seriously, does that even happen any more? Not really. It hasn’t happened for a long time. In Western culture, we blame the rapist. When challenged on this detail, SlutWalkers will usually point out that in rape trials, the victim is sometimes humiliated, as the rapist’s lawyer will try to slander the victim’s reputation as a way of exculpating his client.

Well, sure, that happens. That’s because lawyers are douchebags. Step outside the confines of the courtroom, and everybody despises the sleazy lawyers who resort to this tactic. Underhanded trial maneuvers are not the same thing as societal consensus.

C’mon, it’s the 21st century. The kind of “blame-the-victim” mentality against which SlutWalk rages has not been an acceptable attitude for many decades — at least in Western culture. (In the Middle East, it’s a different story — we’ll get back to this point later.) So, one Canadian policeman made one thoughtless offhand remark. For this, all of society must make reparations?

Look at the sign above as an example of SlutWalk’s strawman arguments. It lists the purported real causes of rape. Rape is caused by rapists? Sure — I agree with that. Who could argue? Rape is caused by misogyny? Yeah, OK, I think that’s true, in about half the cases at least. But then things start going off the rails. Rape is caused by…racism? How, exactly? It’s not that I disagree with this argument: I don’t even understand the claim. And lastly, rape is caused by…institutional violence? Wha…???

But that leads me to The Second Thing You Need to Know: This tilting at imaginary windmills is intentional. The goal is to protest an evil that is universally hated. That way, if anybody dares to disagree with you or even raise a minor quibble, you can shoot back, “What? Are you FOR rape? Do you think we SHOULD blame victims? You’re part of the problem!” As a result of this stance, your cause becomes above reproach, immune from criticism.

THEN… (did you really think the strategy stopped there? Tsk tsk tsk) once you’ve assumed this mantle of moral perfection, you can start heaping all sorts of ancillary ultimatums and issues onto your list of demands, and no one is allowed to resist or complain, lest you once again neutralize them with “Blaming the victim again, are we? Pig!”

This video that one of we sluts took of a speaker at SlutWalk reveals exactly this point about ancillary ultimatums: She sprinkles in a few self-evidently true statements at the beginning to lure you in, then starts making increasingly bizarre claims that stray further and further from reality, and then arrives at her actual destination: To politicize rape and turn into a wedge issue for all sorts of progressive/feminist/leftist demands:

SlutWalk speaker: You realize that you’re a little girl, you’re told a number of things, right?

You’re told, ‘You’ve gotta be, you gotta look a certain way, you gotta be a certain kind of pretty.’ Right? You also are told that ‘This world is violent and that you need to watch your back every second.’

You’re also told that ‘Anything that happens to you on the streets — you’re responsible for. It’s your responsibility.’

Also you’re also told that ‘Hey, you don’t have a choice to control your body. You don’t have a choice to — if you get pregnant? Hey, that’s your fault. If you get raped? Hey, that’s your fault.’

Well I’m here to today to say that this shit isn’t my fault! This shit…this isn’t Jane Doe’s fault. We need to stop the victim-blaming. We need to flip the script. We need to start rapist-shaming. OK? That’s what we need on the streets.

We need, we need to be in solidarity with each other. We need to have that confidence to say, to say to people that harass us on the street, that ‘Hey! You know what? Wanna try and say something to me? I’ve got my sisters and my brothers at my back.’

And that’s what we’re organizing for today. We’e gonna flip the script. But you know what? And, I’m all for, I’m really, I’m so happy to see everybody out here, the sex-positivity that we’ve got going on right now. But you know what? We’ve gotta take it further than that.

‘Cause all the sex-positivity in the world is not gonna, we’re not gonna be able to have the sexual lives that we really want unless we have the time to enjoy those sexual lives. Unless we have the time on our side so that we’re not exploited for hours and hours a day at a job that we hate. So we’re not in relationships with other people who are exploited who can’t satisfy our needs.

We need a movement to actually fight to end violence, not just violence against men, but violence against the cops, violence on the cops against people in the streets. Violence that the cops do, not only against women, blaming them for their own victimization, but also blaming people like Kenneth Harding, who gets shot, executed. People like Oscar Grant who get executed, every day.

We need solidarity. All across the board. So today, I’m marching, and we’re all marching for solidarity, for all people, for all working people to have control over their lives. To have control over their own sexuality, and to have control for a better life that’s liberated in all aspects. So, that’s what I’m marching for today. And I’m so glad to see all of you out here.

(She then went on to list even more far-left fantasy demands, like free abortions for everybody, people’s revolution, and so on; unfortunately, we had stopped filming by that point.)

By now you may be thinking: “I still don’t get it! The message of SlutWalk seems so muddled.”

Bingo! You just hit on the final and most important point:

The Third Thing You Need to Know: SlutWalk is a set of mutually contradictory statements and attitudes that all cancel each other out and make no logical sense.

Let’s look at some of these contradictions — with illustrations, of course!

• Contradiction #1: I’m a slut / Don’t call me a slut!

When SlutWalk first started, one of the goals was to reclaim the word “slut,” and by so doing defuse it as an insult. (Sort of like how the gay community reclaimed “queer,” which in the space of just a few years went from being an insult to being a compliment.) But not everybody got the memo, so now at SlutWalks, half the messages are “I’m a slut and I’m proud!”, and the other half are “I’m no slut, you male chauvinist pig!” This sign exemplifies the second attitude: I am a woman, not any of these other demeaning labels.

Another protester held up this sign; it’s a pretty funny joke, but the underlying point is that being called a “slut” is bad.

And then there is the opposite. All sorts of people at the walk self-identified as “sluts” — like this retired slut.

In fact, the very name of the event — “SlutWalk” — implies we all embrace the slut label.

And it’s not just limited to women. This young man, by his own description, is a “Slut — really massive one.” (You have to imagine the accent yourself.)

When these two young women (and their, uh, friend) first showed up, they were messageless and looking like that “certain kind of pretty” so reviled by the speaker quoted above. But after several minutes of soaking up the atmosphere and internalizing the political message, they realized that just standing there looking pretty goes against the whole SlutWalk ethos — remember, you have be be enticing and repulsive simultaneously.

To rectify their error, they took out their lipsticks and…

…wrote “SLUT” on each other’s chests. Whew! Now we fit in!

Even the “friend” consented to a forehead “SLUT.”

• Contradiction #2: Look at me / Don’t you dare look at me!

The kind of people who participate in things like SlutWalks are inherently attention-seekers. Show-offs. Hams. You know the type. They want to be the center of attention. On the other hand, part of the message of SlutWalk is that women don’t always appreciate being the objects of men’s desire. The end result is a very disorienting attitudinal whiplash among many of the participants.

This sign encapsulates the whole internal self-contradiction with breathtaking brevity: “I’m a SEXY woman. So what?”

Clear enough for you? I thought not.

And then there were the “Foxes 4 Sexual Freedom,” a small group of SlutWalkers who both did and did not want attention.

One of the Foxes 4 Sexual Freedom wore a furry fox outfit, which she purposely left open, partly exposing her breasts. She obviously did this so people would look at her. And naturally the photographers sought her out.

But whenever anyone tried to take a photo of her, she got mad and said, “Hey — no pictures!”

So: You go to a public protest, wear a crazy costume, and expose yourself — and then demand that no one look at you?!?

• Contradiction #3: Looksism is unfair and patriarchal / See how gorgeous we are?

One of the underlying messages of SlutWalk is inclusiveness, and sisterhood: We reject the male value system in which one’s appearance is the basis of one’s worth. All women are equally valued, and you don’t have to be “a certain kind of pretty.” But on the other hand, many of the women there…tried to look their best.

Wait — are we trying to reject the judgmental looks-based culture, or are we are still competing with each other to see who can turn more heads?

Even the SlutWalk organizers violated their own principles:

Remember the banner at the front of the march? The organizers had to choose someone from the crowd to hold up the banner.

Did they choose…

…this person? No.

Did they choose…

…this person? No.

Instead, they chose…

…this person. Hmmmm, do I detect a little bias?

Now, it is common practice at parades and marches to choose the best-looking people and put them right at the front, to make the whole thing more photogenic. Happens all the time. But this event is supposed to be a protest against the objectification of women. And yet even so, they fell into the same old pattern.

The only person at SlutWalk who really seemed fully committed to the principle of anti-looksism was this Planned Parenthood canvasser, who had the genetic raw material to be a runway model if she wanted — tall, slender, perfectly symmetrical face, etc. — but chose to reject all that and instead purposely uglified herself by shaving off all her hair and joining an abrasive political group. Kudos for true dedication! If you got it, don’t flaunt it. To do otherwise would be unfair to all the other wymyn.

• Contradiction #4: Let’s stop rape / Cops are the enemy

Of all the contradictions, for some reason I find this one the most annoying.

“I’d rather be a slut than a cop,” announces this protester. And her attitude was not unique: As the video above revealed, many of the speakers and participants viewed police officers as the “opposition” in the fight against rape.

Partly this is because the person who unwittingly ignited the SlutWalk phenomenon was a policeman (well-intentioned though he may have been), but it’s also partly because a generalized far-left political clique controls the SlutWalk narrative, and part of that narrative is to vilify the police as agents of oppression.

In the SlutWalk view, policemen not only invariably blame rape victims for their plight, but also oppress all sorts of righteous transgressive heroes. As can be often heard at left-leaning rallies, “Fuck the po-lice! Fuck the po-lice!”

But once again — wait just one doggone minute.

First of all, its a myth that all police side with the rapist and blame the victim. That’s absurd. The sign above says, “It’s not one bad apple — it’s police culture.” Yeah, in your dreams. What evidence is there for the claim that police side with rapists? There are nearly 200,000 reported rapes each year in the U.S. (an admittedly horrifying statistic), but how many reported incidents are there of heartless policemen blaming the victim? Very, very, very few. Statistically, and even anecdotally, it would seem that it is just a few bad apples, and that almost all policemen despise rapists and take great satisfaction in arresting them.

But the idiocy of the contradiction goes deeper than that.

If we classify cops as villains, and take them out of the rape-prevention picture, then who, pray tell, is going to stop those 200,000 rapes from happening?

According to SlutWalk principles, this can be achieved in three ways:

a. Uprooting Western society’s patriarchal culture, of which rape is just one manifestation.
b. “Public shaming” of rapists, which will prevent any future potential rapists from committing their crimes, out of fear.
c. Increasing women’s self-esteem and hand-to-hand self-defense skills, which will stop rape in its tracks.

All of this is, of course, absurd.

a. Ain’t gonna happen. Men are men: some are violent, some are frustrated, some hate women, and some are psychotic, and it doesn’t matter how society is organized — some small percentage of these assholes will commit rape. Horrible, but true.

b. Please. Don’t make me laugh. Do you really think that rapists fear “public shaming” more than they fear 30 years in state prison? And besides, society already publicly shames rapists. They are among the most loathed class of criminal. What more do you want us to do — parade them through town and throw rotten tomatoes at them? I’ve also got some news for you all: Actual rapists don’t attend SlutWalks. So they’ll never learn of your “public shaming” plans in the first place.

c. One of the speakers at SlutWalk was from a group that teaches anti-rape self-defense to women. After seeing their demonstration, I almost cried, it was so pathetic and useless:

As you can see, the “self-defense” instruction was more about boosting women’s feeling of self-esteem than it was about actually stopping a rapist. Seriously, a real rape doesn’t go according to a script and your attacker won’t just stand still and allow you to stick your “bird beak” fingers in his eyes. My only question is: Do these people know their anti-rape techniques are totally ineffective, or do they really think a rapist will run away just because you yell “No!” and try to hit him in the face?

But all is not lost! Because there is a self-defense technique not mentioned by the speakers, and there was one — just one! — SlutWalker who knows how to stop a rapist:

Now we’re talkin’!

But of course the same people who promote all these left-wing causes at SlutWalks are also generally the kind of people who advocate gun control, and think “gun rights” and the Second Amendment are some crazy right-wing cause.

Which brings me around to a side issue. Implicit in much of the SlutWalk verbiage is that cops and “men” and “conservatives” and “Christians” and “right-wingers” are all pro-rape to some degree, and that only STRONG! FEMINIST! WOMEN! truly oppose rape.

But you see, they’ve got it all wrong.

ALL decent men, regardless of political persuasion, despise rape. And I would argue that we “conservatives” (as you characterize people like me) actually hate rape more than the feminists do.

SlutWalk organizers want to “publicly shame” rapists. Really? That’s all?

I want to execute rapists.

SlutWalk organizers want victims to jab rapists in the eye. Is that so?

I want victims to shoot rapists in the eye.

Am I making myself clear?

• Contradiction #5: Casual consensual sex is fun / Men are evil

The word “consent” plays a central role at SlutWalk, and in much of modern feminism as well. SlutWalk is not just about protesting rape; it’s also about promoting casual sex. Consequently, many of the signs at SlutWalks (like the one seen here) prominently feature the word “consent”: “Enthusiastic consent is SEXY.”

Did we even need to be told this? Remember “The First Thing You Need to Know” mention above? (“SlutWalk is a protest against something that doesn’t exist.”) Well, similarly, it’s also a rally for something that is so self-evident that there’s no purpose in saying it.

“Enthusiastic consent is SEXY.” Really? I hadn’t known that. When a man says “How about a snuggle?” and a woman replies “YES! YES! YES! Let’s make love right now!”, I had always thought men regarded that as a turn-off, especially the part where the woman tears off her clothes and jumps on him.

Everywhere you turned at SlutWalk, you saw another version of “Consent is sexy.”

Either that, or “I ♥ consent.”

But at the same time, there is a not-so-subtle anti-man attitude permeating the event, a sort of accusatory angry feminism that makes make most men flee for the nearest exit:

Who would want to even suggest enthusiastic consensual casual sex to someone brimming with rage and resentment? Again, SlutWalk as a concept walks this impossible tightrope between promiscuous hyper-sexuality and testicle-shriveling gender wars.

And for some of the participants, it goes even further than that:

“It’s a man’s world — let’s fuck it up,” announced the largest banner at the march. The angry feminism is not merely directed at individual men and their hound-dogging ways, but even more broadly at our overall patriarchal society. We don’t just want to feminize you men, one by one — we want a total revolution. We want to get rid of masculinity itself.

• Contradiction #6: Sexual exploitation of women is bad / Let’s glorify prostitution

This is far and away the most blatant and absurd logical contradiction in the SlutWalk worldview. You haven’t seen any references to prostitution in the pictures above because I saved them all for this section.

Several of the SlutWalk speakers decried the horrors of human trafficking — international rings of kidnappers who steal underage girls and sell them into sexual slavery, where abusive pimps and crime lords exploit and degrade the girls for profit, prositituting them to perverts and sleazeballs.

In fact, some SlutWalks in other countries have focused primarily on the human trafficking and prostitution issue.

Now, if the SlutWalk organizers had stopped there, I’d be in full agreement. Who is in favor of human trafficking and sexual slavery? Certainly not me.

Furthermore, it could very easily be argued that most prostitutes, even those who entered the trade “voluntarily,” only did so because they are addicted to drugs and need money to feed their habits. And if we focus on SlutWalk’s favorite word, “consent,” are most prostitutes having joyous consensual sex with the partners of their choice? Of course not. The whole reason they demand money for sex is that they don’t really want to have sex with these sweaty lonely losers, and only “consent” to do so out of desperation, because they can think of no other way to get enough money to buy drugs. Without the exchange of cash, they would never consent. So they are having sex against their wishes, which means involuntarily which means that prostitution is in a sense a form of rape.

So we at SlutWalk are against prostitution. Right?

Right?

Wrong.

Quite the opposite, in fact. The organizers of San Francisco SlutWalk are fervently in favor of the practice of prostitution. At least half the speakers at the pre-march rally were either prostitutes or members of prostitution unions.

Even the event’s MC, Ginger Murray (seen here on the right side of the photo), publishes a magazine called “Whore!” The other MC, Sister T’aint a Virgin (of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, seen on the left) handed out prayer sheets and led us all in an invocation to “Our Lady of Sex Positive Culture”:

The prayer read, in part, “When caught between desire and actions of economy / May she bless me with clarity and personal autonomy.” In case it’s not clear, “actions of economy” refers to prostitution, which in this version of reality is an act of personal fulfillment and pleasure.

Here’s a video of one of the next speakers, “Erica,” from the euphemistically named “Erotic Service Providers Union,” one of several prostitutes’ unions in the city. I dare you to try to follow the logic of her “argument,” such as it is:

SlutWalk speaker: My name is Erica, I’m with ESPU, the Erotic Service Providers Union.

In building a movement against sexism, the Erotic Service Providers Union would like to do our part and stop the enforcement of the anti-prostitution laws which are at the core of the most extreme institutionalized government-sponsored exploitation of human sexuality we have today here in America.

The recent case of sexual assault of a unionized housekeeper on her job in a high-end hotel in New York by the head of one of the most powerful financial institutions on the planet is a clear example of how even in the face of physical evidence the victim is being subjected to slanderous public statements meant to discredit her by intimidating (sic) that she’s a prostitute.

Locally, the San Francisco Vice Department is the same unit that investigated sexual assault on the erotic service providers, means conflicting objectives are designed to put the workers in a demoralized position to choose between salvaging our economic security against our bodily integrity.

I’m really nervous, guys. Thanks for being here.

The strength of retaliation against erotic service providers or those who are perceived to be erotic service providers can only be curtailed by stopping enforcement of prostitution laws and gaining equal protection under the law.

In 2008 we justified the local ballot measure, Proposition K, before the San Francisco voters to do just that. Though the effort didn’t pass, a 41% amount of voters agreed with us.

Now in 2011 we’re bringing a court action against the State of California in Federal Court, to demand that they vacate the enforcement of prostitution laws because they violate among other things our constitutional right to free speech.

We hold our expression of our sexuality to be of the most valuable asset for which we have complete access, control and respect.

Got that? It’s not the practice of prostitution that exploits women. No. It’s laws against prostitution that are “the most extreme institutionalized government-sponsored exploitation of human sexuality.”

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you uptight square!

Another woman carried a sign that read “Poderosas Unidas Todas Andando en Solidaridad (“Walking together powerfully united in solidarity,”) spelling out the acronym “PUTAS” — “whores” in Spanish.

She and her friends also posed with smaller signs that read…

“La Marcha de las PUTAS, SF 2011” — I guess in the Spanish-speaking community, SlutWalk was being referred to as “The March of the Whores.” (The top part of the sign translates as “Up until the last moment, NO means NO.”)

On and on it went. Here’s another prostitute representing a different sex-workers’ union, speaking earlier in the rally.

How did we get from defending the honor of rape victims, to glamorizing prostitution?

This is a perfect example of pushing the envelope too far, too fast. Slutwalks have only been around for four months, and they’ve already gone off the rails. This could be an all-time speed record for a political movement self-imploding.

And then what about people like this guy, too ugly to prostitute themselves? Where do they fit in the equation, hunh?
(OK, OK, I spotted him on the sidewalk, and he probably wasn’t part of the march itself. But he was too funny to resist!)

Exhausted with all the contradictions? Tired of following the tortuous twists and turns of self-negating feminist logic? Had your fill of deconstruction? Me too. We’ve broken this SlutWalk thing down into a million little pieces, and I don’t think there’s any way to put it back together again.

So…the rest of the photos don’t follow any particular narrative — just interesting snapshots of a baffling day.

SlutWalk’s second favorite word, after “consent,” also starts with a “c” and ends with an “nt”: Cunt. We saw the “I ♥ My Cunt” sign above, and even the rally’s sign language interpreter, whose shirt read “Start a revolution in your bed,” had under closer inspection a button that said…

“Cunt.”

Why display the word “Cunt” with no further explanation? Because “Slut” just isn’t shocking enough any more! We’ve got to turn the shock value up to 11!

As usual, the socialists and the communists glommed on to the protest venue, since they take every opportunity to parasitically leech off every single political event. The Marxists displayed their wares right behind the speakers’ microphone. And the SlutWalk organizers gave them permission to do this. A perfect fit.

Activists roamed through the crowd hawking issues of “The Socialist Worker” and other revolutionary publications.

The Maoist cult World Can’t Wait showed up as expected, trying their damnedest to push everybody’s buttons. (They usually succeed.)

I mentioned above that we’ll get back to the topic of the Middle East. Now, read the sign above. Replace “Christian Fascists” with “Arab culture” and we’re starting to get somewhere. You know what would really be brave? Holding a SlutWalk in, say, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. You know what’s a waste of time? Holding a SlutWalk in San Francisco. Because nobody blames victims here, but in other parts of the world, they actually do. It goes even far beyond that: Much of repressive Islamic culture revolves around and is based on suppressing and punishing women’s sexuality. They don’t just “blame the victim” in the Middle East; they kill the victim.

Ah, but no, it’s the “Christian Fascists” who are perpetuating an anti-woman culture. Silly me for thinking otherwise!

A World Can’t Wait lady tried to drain all fun from the event by sporting an “Abortion on Demand Without Apologies” t-shirt.

At the milder end of the scale, an Hispanic women’s labor union showed up to demand…uh, something or other.

Only two people seemed to cross the line into mockery of SlutWalk. The first was this guy, who showed up in a gorilla suit and underwear. (Mockery? Or just apolitical outrageousness for its own sake?)

And the other was this little-noticed wag (or buffoon), visible on the left wearing, of all things, a Playboy logo t-shirt. Trying to be funny, or just too clueless to even realize he’s clueless?

Remember me? I’m a slut. (Not really. But social pressures make me pretend to be a slut. Oh what a tangled web our culture weaves!)

This photo shows in miniature a range of possible SlutWalk uniforms. You can either dress in a revealing skin-tight tank top (woman in yellow), or if you don’t have the assets, you can try to pass as a man (middle), or keep your feminine appearance but simply wear men’s fashions. It’s all good — at SlutWalk!

If you’re a man and think that SlutWalk is possibly the worst imaginable venue to cruise for dates — think again! All you have to do if you want to score at SlutWalk is wear — a dress! I’m not talking about going in full drag regalia — no, if you do that, the ladies will rightfully think you’re gay. Instead, just give a perfunctory nod to transvestitism: wear a dress, slip or skirt, but otherwise keep acting like a dude. This way you advertise yourself as unthreatening, but possible dates know you’re still available. A keen eye (such as mine) at SlutWalk would have noticed several hookups in progress, all of them involving men in women’s clothing! This guy in the red slip, for example, quickly made friends with Ms. Yellow Tank-top.

Elsewhere in the march, a guy in a short skirt found possible romance with Ms. Faux-Slut #1.

Love is in the air!

This guy tried to charm the ladies with his “Slut Power” sign, but I didn’t see any takers. Maybe next time!

The only person who went the full monty, and also who brought up the issue of race, was this SlutWalker who (having obviously spent too much time absorbing academic identity politics) announced, “My skin colour is is not code for my sexuality.” (For those who still need some clarification: In modern universities, students are taught that African-Americans are stigmatized by the dominant culture as overly sexual beings. The schools don’t teach them how to spell “color,” but they do teach them advanced racial political theory. Go figure.)

Behind the sign, nothing but bathing trunks.

Possibly the most misguided message of the day: Amidst all the “Keep your hands of me!” signage, this participant wore a “Hug Me” t-shirt. If any man had taken her up on the offer, would he have been beaten to a pulp by the crowd?

“Hug Me”‘s only competition for “worst t-shirt” came from this SlutWalker who thought it wise to wear her “Itty Bitty Titty Committee” shirt to the march.

…

And then we all went home and stopped being sluts. Oh well — it was fun while it lasted.