I know what you’re thinking: “What on earth is Randal talking about today?”
It all started back in January of this year when a police officer delivering a speech at York University on campus safety made the observation that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”
That politically incorrect advice apparently was the match that lit the powder keg and within a matter of weeks the first “Slut Walk” was held in Toronto calling for an end to victimizing the victimized. In other words, women should be able to dress any way they want (fish net stockings, check; spiked heels, check; halter top, check), act any way they want (pelvic thrust on the dance floor, check), and drink as much as they want (margarita, check; margarita, check; margarisha, check; margaasha, chick; margashwa…, sheck… hiccup). Women’s power is here to stay. And if that means the slut walk then so be it. Back off Mister. I am woman, hear me roar. (With numbers too big to ignore… Oh never mind.)
And now the next big slut walk is coming to my own home town of Edmonton on June 4. “Load the picnic basket in the station wagon and call the kids. The Slut Walk is coming to town!”
Look, I don’t get it. I mean I certainly get double standards. Calling a promiscuous woman a “slut” and a promiscuous man a “stud” is deeply offensive. But that hardly means women should aspire to be the “studdess” (or, as in this case, to “queer the word slut”).
Here is the bottom line. That cop may not have expressed himself with all the political correctness that Gloria Steinem might have wished, but he said what he said because he wanted to protect women. That doesn’t mean you say that women who do opt for the mini and fishnets somehow were “asking” for it. It just means that not dressing like that is, statistically speaking, less likely to get you assaulted. Don’t believe me? Take the Doublemint twins, dress one up like a Hutterite and dress the other like Christina Aguwhatever. Then have them walk in front of a busy construction site and let them draw their own conclusions on which felt more threatened. (And no, I’m not suggesting women ought to dress as Hutterites.)
Maybe this illustration will help. You’re in South Central LA in Blood territory. The color of the Bloods gang is red while their arch rivals the Crips identify themselves with blue. Then a police officer delivers a talk in your neighborhood and says “young men should avoid dressing like Crips in order not to be victimized.”
Now on the one hand you can challenge the whole system that divides cities into one region for Bloods and another for Crips. But are you’re working on that noble long term goal you can also follow the cop’s advice and make it less likely that you’ll be victimized by not dressing like a Crip.
Or you can exercise your constitutional right to wear blue from head to toe. Your choice.
