Photo Gallery: SlutWalk Takes Steps to End Rape Culture

A large and well-voiced crowd converged on Boston Common on Saturday for SlutWalk Boston 2011, in which hundreds marched with signs and dignity to take back the word “slut.”

Yep. You read that right.

SlutWalks started in Toronto, after a police officer speaking to an audience at York University advised the women in the audience to stop “dressing like sluts” if they wanted to avoid being sexually assaulted.

Needless to say, this did not go unnoticed by men and women alike who think this is exemplary of an archaic stigma in a society that “slut-shames” by differentiating what is sexually appropriate by gender and promotes a “rape culture” by allowing the blame of sexual attacks to be placed on the victims.

And so, the SlutWalk was born in the fight to show that the way a woman is dressed or how many sexual partners she may have had has no bearing on the kind of person she is and does not excuse abuse, verbal or physical. As Siobhan Connors, one of the organizers of SlutWalk Boston, explained to the crowd, “We are here to get noticed. We won’t stand for slut-shaming, victim blaming, and this rape culture anymore.”

Supporters who gathered on Saturday sported a variety of attire – some scantily clad in fishnets and miniskirts, some in sports bras and shorts, and some in jeans and T-shirts. Signs proclaiming “Join the Slut (R)evolution,” “I Ask For It by Asking,” and “Slut Pride” were hoisted high overhead. As marchers trooped around the Common flanked by police escorts, cries of “Whatever We Wear, Wherever We Go, Yes Means Yes and No Means No” echoed through Beacon Hill.

SlutWalk certainly garnered attention on a beautiful weekend afternoon in a tourist-prime area. Onlookers displayed a mix of emotions – supportive, confused, shocked, amused, and – yes – judgmental. But what may have spoken loudest of all were the individuals in the crowd who joined the group as they marched past, picked up the chant, and grew the SlutWalk by one more voice, little by little.

More SlutWalks are planned for other cities around the world, bringing awareness to what is, at its core, an important civil rights issue. As surely as we have all been guilty of making an assumption about a person based on what they were wearing, we have each been judged in the same way. And for the organizers and supporters of SlutWalks everywhere, this behavior needs to end, and it starts by taking power away from the word itself and redefining what it means to society.

And so… I’m a slut; are you?