‘Slutwalk’ protest organised in response to police comment

Summary of story from the Toronto Star March 30, 2011

Women have organised a protest entitled ‘Slutwalk‘ in response to a Toronto police constable’s controversial comments on rape and how women should dress to avoid being raped.

Constable Michael Sanguinetti voiced his comments on rape to a class at Osgoode Hall Law School at Toronto’s York University in January.

Women, he said, should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized – and then he apologised.

SlutWalk will take place on April 3, 2011, at central Queen’s Park at 1:30 this Sunday. It finishes at Toronto Police Headquarters at 40 College Street.Protesters are invited to wear anything they like. Dress for the office, for clubbing, yoga, walking the dog, whatever it is that people wear as they go about their lives not asking to be raped.

Toronto Star columist Heather Mallik doesn’t know what slut clothes are.

Women, she points out, have been raped when wearing overalls, or cardigans and bedsocks, and pillaged for wearing joke underwear.

Because it isn’t what you’re wearing that matters, it’s that cops, and indeed rapists, will assess you whatever you wear. Their assessment will invariably be different from yours.

WVoN comment: And because, as Hadley Freeman points out in this Guardian article, sexual attacks have nothing to do with looks, clothes or desire, “but are about the abuse of power, sadism and mental illness.”