They say boys are easier to raise than girls. I can believe it. Boys generally do not wake up their father’s from their after-dinner nap to ask if they can go on a SlutWalk.
Nor do fathers of teenage boys ever have to say: “Of course you can’t go on a SlutWalk! What’s a SlutWalk?”
In the interest of clarity, a SlutWalk — the latest gambit in the increasingly raunchy women’s movement — is when college gals dress up like tramps in order to protest something no one believes anyway (at least no one who isn’t a complete Neanderthal), i.e., that suggestively dressed women deserve to be sexually harassed.
Not surprisingly, SlutWalks are quite popular on college campuses. Especially with frat boys who get to ogle scantily clad young women sashaying round the quadrangle. But cheap exhibitionism is not its only purpose. SlutWalks are also about “raising awareness.” And what better way to raise awareness than to enlist a group of 19-year-old co-eds to prance around half-naked?
Legend has it the idea of the SlutWalk was hatched after a male Canadian police officer told a group of female students that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” Naturally, the co-eds’ next step was to don the tattered clothing of White Trash America. Small pieces of it, anyway.
The story sounds apocryphal, especially in light of our northern neighbor’s notorious enmity toward free speech. The poor idiot would have been charged with hate speech and summarily emasculated. American cops, I am told, are taught that rapists look for victims they perceive as vulnerable, not women who dress a particular way. I suspect this particular Dudley Do-Wrong, if he indeed exists, spent too much time chasing Snidley Whiplash through the Canadian Rockies and hence developed a chronic case of brain freeze.
TODAY’S APATHETIC COLLEGE students have little taste for social issues unless they can use them as an excuse to strip down to their altogether. During the early days of the Iraq War there were any number of protests, and they all seemed to involve girls getting butt-naked. Mind you, I’m not complaining, although if my recollection is correct the good-looking girls must have had dates on those nights.
Female au natural protesting has been around since Lady Godiva rode bareback through the streets of Coventry circa 1050 A.D. But female protesters scribbling “Slut” and “Slut Pride” across their bare midriffs gives TMI a whole new meaning.
“We are going to take back the word slut!” cry the SlutWalk organizers. They are welcome to it. Of course, what they really want to do is redefine the epithet, cleansing it and its associated behavior of any tint of immorality. The real message here is that it is wrong to judge people for their wanton sexual behavior. It’s the same old moral relativism with its knickers showing. There is no right or wrong. There are no good girls or bad girls. In my day, some girls made bad decisions which they later regretted when they got a certain letter from the health department. Good news, girls. Today there are no bad decisions. No more regrets. No worries.
To coin a phrase, we are all sluts now.
Imagine being the proud parent of a 13-year-old girl who comes across all these supposedly smart and successful college women wearing Daisy Duke cut-offs and “Proud Slut” tops.
“Daddy, can I have one of those T-shirts?”
“No.”
“But those college women are wearing them.”
“They are making an ironic political statement…or something. The whole thing is kind of muddled and confusing. Someday you’ll understand. Then you can explain it to me.”
I might also tell my daughter that, despite what the SlutWalkers preach, we are judged by what we wear (and how we talk, and how we behave, even how we chew gum) and no number of skanky protests is going to change that. Just try showing up for a job interview dressed like Amy Winehouse or Courtney Love and see how far that gets you. I’m willing to bet my last dollar that these same SlutWalkers, when they interview job seekers or size up potential dates, judge people by what they wear. “Did you see her shoes? Oh…my…God!”
Feminists for years have been squawking about misogynistic rap lyrics that refer to women as “bitches and whores,” then turn around and proudly embrace the derogatory appellation “slut.” Just so we’re clear, that’s apparently okay. But don’t you dare call them girls.
