Chris Port Blog #268. Slut Walks

© Chris Port, June 2011

I posted the following comments in response to a BBC World News item on Sunday 5th June 2011: 

"And we'll talk about 'slutwalks': Can women wear what they want or do some outfits increase the chances of assault? What do you think?"

https://www.facebook.com/bbcworldservice/posts/222049781147489

I also posted the BBC item together with my response on Sam Harris' facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=193131317401397&id=22457171014

Dropping my inhibitions is no more a licence for somebody to sexually assault me than dropping my wallet is permission for somebody to empty my bank account. However, if I was to deliberately walk down dark streets waving wads of money, it should be no great surprise if I attract the attention of a mugger.

Sexual clothing and flirtatious behaviour is, at most, a woman advertizing that she is in a sexually playful mood. It is an invitation to sexual attention, not sexual assault. If a woman dressed as a ‘tart’ complained that a man had wolf-whistled at her, this would be hypocrisy on her part.

However, there is a world of difference between sexual attention and sexual assault. Nobody ‘asks’ to be raped because rape is taking without consent. Asking doesn’t come into it. The concept of ‘contributory negligence’ in sexual assault cases is wholly inappropriate. In some cases, it may be appropriate to question the wisdom of a victim’s actions as a public safety issue - but not as one of personal culpability.

Wisdom is context-specific so I would refrain from making a blanket judgment. However, here are two different ends of the spectrum:

1) A woman goes out on a hen night dressed as a tarty school girl and gets drunk. At the end of the evening she unwisely gets into an unlicensed taxi cab and is sexually assaulted by the itinerant driver. The imprudence here is in being drunk, alone and vulnerable in a stranger’s car, but such errors of judgment are all too easily made in a moment and regretted for a lifetime. The clothing is immaterial.

2) As part of an ‘affirmative action programme’, a school suggests that female students should wear sexual clothing and walk around known red-light districts late at night in an attempt to ‘reclaim the streets’. Parental consent is obtained. Unfortunately a student is abducted and assaulted. The public would rightly be in uproar at the crass stupidity of the school and the parents, and legal actions would probably fly.

The first example is miserably plausible. The second is thankfully implausible. Wisdom lies somewhere in between the two.