Natalie Wright honouring the memory of Desiree Gallagher.

Four days later, a majority of women joined again in solidarity, to march in Toronto’s Downtown East neighbourhood. Reclaim the Streets was about remembering victims of gender-based violence, like Carolyn Connolly, whose 2008 murder inspired the march. It was also a celebration: last year’s march organizers, like the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, won their demand for 24-hour women and trans drop-in centres.

SlutWalk Toronto also walked as a contingent in the Dyke March. This reminded me of last year’s march when I was surprised by the barrage of questions asking me why I participated. They asked me: How does a march accomplish anything?

The Toronto IWW’s Women’s Committee providing daycare at Maggie’s rally.

“The problem is what happens after the march. Sometimes it ends in violent confrontation with the police, and more often than not it simply fizzles out,” Moises Naim writes in an April 2014 article Why Street Protests Don’t Work. Naim argues that using social media in the organizing process may skip the more tedious steps, but it also skips the solidarity built in a movement’s infrastructure: “Social media can both facilitate and undermine.”

Yet, the aforementioned example regarding OCAP’s gain of drop-in centres is proof that things don’t always just “fizzle out.” There is also the argument that these rallies, marches, and demonstrations bring awareness to a cause. Still, I’ve struggled—is this enough? Shouldn’t energies be spent on direct actions? That feeling, though—that feeling experienced at the march—is so worth it. When I was marching at Reclaim the Streets, what I was experiencing was not feel-goodism, but community. How refreshing it is to hear, as a survivor of domestic violence, that despite what social and legal places may have said: “You are not crazy. What has happened to you and what is happening to others is wrong.”

My daughter and I after the march.

Building community is very important, and so is taking care of one’s self. Feel-goodism is a superficial, shallow thing; something that requires no sincere effort. Feeling good is different. Sharing joy and taking care of yourself is critical, as the old saying goes, “you can’t take care of others without taking care of yourself.” In a world full of issues and systems that need to be dismantled, it is easy to get tired and down. If something is uplifting and connects like minds, it is just as important as the gritty hard work.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her second year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

“This isn’t a protest, where we are being aggressive and pushing our views onto people,” explains Jazmine Carr, half of the performing duo. “This is performance art, to make people stop and ask why we are doing this.”

Women’s bodies have long been cause awareness tools; FEMEN’s “sextremism” is a recent example, as is Toronto’s SlutWalk. Whether one is in the camp that these methods show that women are reclaiming their bodies, or are of the belief that the message is lost through women flaunting their bods, it is known that the woman’s body is a guaranteed attention-grabber.

Lace 4 the Race! Was organized by the self-identified Nerdy Stripper, a.k.a. Twiggy. “I wanted to continue the conversation on what is happening to our brothers and sisters in Russia,” Twiggy says, referencing what the Facebook event page describes as, “Putin’s anti-gay, anti-speech, anti-lace panties atrocity to human rights.” The message was, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

A handful of photographers joined the event, while many a passerby stopped to snap their own shots or ask the gals what they were up to, including a pair of Toronto police officers who seemed to be genuinely concerned for the ladies’ well-being—the temperature outdoors being below zero degrees and all. “I personally think the event went well,” says Twiggy. “I was asking a lot [people to show up in underwear], it was -8 C out.”

After a few whisky shots, and some dancing to lady-vocal tunes such as The Distillers, both performers were warm as they braved through the early afternoon.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna writes Gender Block every week and maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

Photo by Vikram K Mulligan

Good-day, tired and slightly ragey cubicle dwellers (and those of you still eating Pillsbury Cookies at home in your PJs.) It’s Monday. I was hoping to write this a few hours ago, but I wasn’t expecting this weekend to be so slut-tastic.

Slutwalk Toronto took the streets yet again Friday evening for a 2012 encore of their previous protest. The march originally became a worldwide phenomenon in 2011 after a police officer at York University said “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” Some brave women came together and organized a counter-march against slut shaming and police victim-blaming. It was fast, it was angry, it was awesome. The next thing you know, people were having Slutwalks all over the world.

Slutwalk 2011 had its share of critics. Criticism from social conservatives was to be expected, of course. But feminists were concerned, too: people wrote about their issues with the way marginalized people, particularly racialized women didn’t see their experiences represented at the event.

I was not involved with the planning of either Slutwalk, and wasn’t in town for the first. So I’m only speaking on what I hear and see. But what I saw was a Take 2 of Slutwalk that took last year’s discussions into account. Instead of getting defensive, co-organizer Colleen Westendorf actually gave props to certain critics, saying in an interview with Xtra! that one particular letter—in response to the racial privilege of the opportunity to take back the word slut—“made some very good points and it sparked a huge dialogue.”

On Friday, as we stood in Queen’s Park under the still-blazing sun, Westendorf was not afraid to say that “we are still angry at the police.”

Trans activist and sex-worker advocate Morgan Page gave a gripping critique of feminist and queer circles. Page bravely described her own experiences dealing with assault and with (what she called) cisgender “radical feminists” who’ve brushed aside those experiences and described her very identity as an act of rape.

And Planned Parenthood Toronto’s Michele Chai spoke about the need to offer up new options for how to perform masculinity—giving guys and masculine folks a space to talk about their feelings, process their own experiences with assault, and become feminist warriors instead of perpetrators.

I left Queen’s Park feeling excited about the next generation of feminists in this city. Slutwalk 2012 made me realize that a movement’s capacity for self-criticism is a barometer of its strength. Good on you, Slutwalk organizers, for having the confidence to keep pushing back against victim-blaming, as well as the integrity to build a movement that learns from its mistakes.

In other news, Catholic school boards say they will fight back if the Ontario government legislates that gay kids in schools are entitled to name their own gay-straight alliances. Woe, the injustice! You keep speaking truth to power, Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association.

Less depressing:a stray dog ran across China in a race!

More depressing: U.S. congressmen are still arguing over whether pizza is a vegetable.

Katie Toth is a journalist, writer and and social media addict, usually typing about about reproductive politics and LGBT issues. You can find her at Religion Dispatches, Xtra! Canada, or her own friendly lil’ blog, No Pomo. She’ll be blogging weekly with news roundups from the forefront of LGBT/lady-business to soothe your Monday soul….well, if you find political antagonism soothing.

The SlutWalks are challenging that vocabulary of oppression. On April 3, hundreds of women took pride in their pleasure and walked through the streets of Toronto (note that they walked for all kinds of different reasons). Inspired by them, a march followed in Boston on May 7. Now self-proclaimed “sluts” and their allies are taking to the streets all over the world in response to the falsehood that sexual assault is linked with promiscuous attire.

It’s an old idea, and one we should be long rid of. There may be other definitions involving a woman’s barely-there clothing or willingness to cheat, but “slut” in its most powerful and oppressive form is inextricably linked with rape.

Patricia Douglas

Patricia Douglas made headlines after she was raped by an MGM director.

Who exactly is Patricia Douglas?

In 1937, she was a 19-year-old dancer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – you know, the film company with the iconic roaring lion. On May 5 of that year, she answered a call to a “film set” at an isolated ranch outside of Los Angeles. She and 119 other girls were required to wear cowgirl outfits. Patricia didn’t notice there were no movie cameras at the ranch. Present at what turned out to be an MGM sales convention party were nearly 300 salesmen, directors and producers. Throughout the night a film director pursued her, as they often did, asking her to teach him a popular dance. The director, David Ross, offered her champagne and whiskey, but Patricia had never tasted liquor so she refused. He and another patron forced the alcohol down her throat. When she ran outside to vomit, Ross followed her. He then violently raped her in a field near the barn.

Today we would hope such an act would be condemned and such a man would be brought to justice. But the 1930s were different. The word “rape” was rarely used. Instead the newspapers printed the word “ravished.” Women who were sexually assaulted didn’t often press charges. If they did, it was likely they would be publicly shamed. Only “sluts” had sex before marriage, whether or not they willed it.

As former MGM extra Peggy Montgomery said in a documentary I just watched about Patricia:

“I remember two words that I learned — one was ‘rape,’ which was an extreme disaster, and the other one that usually was in the same conversation was ‘tart’ – ‘well she’s a tart.’ … The whole vocabulary of ‘ bad woman’ – slut, tart, tramp – came up immediately if anybody mentioned, ‘she was raped.’”

It’s still a pervasive idea. If a girl sleeps around, she must have wanted it. If a girl is wearing suggestive clothes or makeup, as a Manitoba judge recently said, she must be asking for it. If on the other hand she doesn’t dress like a slut, as a Toronto police officer recently recommended, then she will prevent rape.

Patricia pressed charges against Ross. It was a brave move. Even today, attacking the credibility of a rape survivor is a valid means of undermining his or her testimony. Patricia was up against a financially powerful spin-machine. If MGM could show she had questionable morals – if she had casual sex, for example – the movie giant stood a better chance of winning the case. The movie studio circulated a form asking about the girl’s morals and whether she had been drinking on the night of the party. It aimed to establish that Patricia was a slut. If she was a slut, she couldn’t have been raped. But Douglas had been a virgin at the time, so MGM used another defense. “Look at her,” the prosecutor commanded: “who would want her?”

Rape was and still is linked with desire according to folk psychology. But this is an oppressive idea. Rape is all about power. Rapists perceive their “victims” as weak, which is why many sexual assault centres have shifted to calling them “survivors.” In a linguistic sense, this new word takes some semantic power away from rapists.

And what would happen if the word “slut” lost its power too? What if it bestowed strength rather than shame upon its subjects? Thanks in part to the SlutWalks and the debate they have launched, we may at last find out.