Sluts Walk, Haters Scream by Mo Daviau
“being proud of one’s sexuality doesn’t mean one deserves sexual assault”
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[Portland’s SlutWalk took place September 20, 2015]
Portland’s SlutWalk was to be a joyous gathering of the healthily slutty, taking to the streets, demanding an end to sexual violence and objectification. If you think that being a slut can’t be healthy, well…you’re wrong. We’re so used to strength of female sexuality being a taboo, a disgrace, something women have spent centuries being maimed and killed over, that it’s natural for our minds to stumble over those two words together. Healthy. Slut. That a woman can have a lot of sex, consensually, proudly, and happily, remains a morally dodgy thing in a lot of minds, something that needs to be hidden or shamed out of view. The happily slutty marching down the street tits-out (tits belonging to people of all genders), with signs proclaiming that being proud of one’s sexuality doesn’t mean one deserves sexual assault or coercion is something that bothered a tiny group of counterprotesters, whose oversized fury frightened me, not into submission, but into my own anger.
The counterprotest consisted of three white men, each of them outfitted with a sandwich board bearing some sort of quasi-Christian REPENT BURN IN HELL brimstone-type message. Only three men, which is a pathetic showing for any counterprotest.
The level of rage and malevolence these three men displayed was chilling by any measure. SlutWalk’s organizers discouraged the crowd from engaging with these men. I was standing far enough away from them that I couldn’t hear exactly what they were yelling. Yet, I did notice that every time a woman took the microphone to speak, these three men went absolutely batshit crazy with rage. They did not have the sound system they would have needed to drown out these women, but even from across the park, I heard their angry voices rise with maniacal fervor. A woman! Speaking! How they tried to shut that down!
In case anyone doesn’t believe that there are men in this country, in liberal Portland, Oregon, even, who hate women, their bodies, their right to physical safety and freedom of expression, with a passion so malevolent that their faces turn red, then I direct you to this triad of angry men. The sound of women’s voices saying no to them made them fly into an astonishing rage.
I had to wonder about the women in their lives. Certainly, men who latch onto the most toxic forms of Christianity, those that cling to parts of the Bible with the stoning of non-virgin brides and the subservience of wives, have women at home that they feel entitled to control, likely using the nuclear level of anger they were manifesting from behind their sandwich boards.
But in these men I saw the rage and fear that their wives or girlfriends must feel in the seconds before they punch their fists into their face, or remind them again that they are worthless and nothing. Their fear lives within their sense of powerlessness. Like a child having a meltdown in the aisle of a grocery store, these men have nothing to offer the world but the loudness of their voice, their ability to control through fear, absolute in their belief that they deserve power and control. They need their sick misinterpretation of the Bible to get through life. And they hate. They hate so good. They hate women. They hate the black, the brown. They hate anyone who comes along and tells them no, you have no power, you are small, you cannot control others.
And is there an easier, more accepted place to show power than on a women’s body? I wanted to ask them: are you here to protest because you are in favor of rape? Have you raped a woman yourself? How many women have you raped? Do you abuse your wife or girlfriend in other ways besides physical violence? Is there a woman on this planet that you love? Like, really love, with all your heart, and not because you think of her as “yours,” as something that legitimizes your claim to family, to heterosexuality, to a house in which you are head? Do you really love a woman, a woman who is flawed, who is free? When you have sex with your wife or girlfriend, do you make her come? Do you put your fingers and mouth to her clitoris and bring her to ecstasy? Do you think of that as a privilege? Or do you lie on top of a woman and take and take? Every thrust in her cunt an entitlement? Do you feel her warmth? Do you hear her cries? Is she holy to you, your companion on your journey to the divine? Does this woman hold you to her breast after you fuck, warming and nourishing you? Do you nourish her with your love and support? Is she your equal? Is she your friend?
Three men protesting SlutWalk: Do you rape? Have you raped? Did you rape anyone after SlutWalk? When you rape, do you think of what you’re doing as wrong? Do you really believe a woman “asks for it?” Do you really not hear the word no? Do you have daughters that you went home and raged at, shaming them for their bodies? Are the women in your lives afraid of you? Does that fear make you feel powerful or ashamed?
If you are scaring a woman, you should feel ashamed.
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When I was married, I felt safe as a woman. I was safe because there was a man who claimed me, who’s job it was to protect me. Our monogamy meant that any man who looked at me sexually, who tried to touch me, who made a dirty remark to me, was wrong, in violation of the dominant ideal of morality. I was not a woman alone. A woman alone is not safe, and for the first time in my life, I felt safe. Safe from harm and judgment, from violation or the sting of rejection.
I came to being a slut late in life, after I left my marriage, which was a loving, sexless friendship with a good man. I was unreasonable for wanting more. I was a bad person for wanting an erotic life. I let go of my protector, my safe, warm blanket, so that I could have that erotic life on my own terms.
There have been times that I have scolded myself for leaving the safety of my marriage. My ex-husband and I are still friends, but he no longer presents me to the world as respectable, as adored, as his. I’m on my own.
In 2015, I still feel it, how close to garbage I must be to some, being unclaimed by a man.
How dare I?
How dare I choose my own pleasure, my own body, my own self?
How dare I say no, then. Right?
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You have to think about the amount of energy it takes to hate. It takes a toll on the body, on the soul. These men’s faces were scrunched tight like crying babies, red with fury. How they reacted to a perceived threat—the threat of having their worldview challenged—was astonishing in how primordial it was. Small children, rife with fear, yelling and screaming because that was the only weapon they had.
How can you take a body like that to a woman and say, “make love to me”? How do you take a body like that to a woman and ask for that without fear, and coercion, without the idea of “you owe me”?
SlutWalk’s simple mission of bringing an end to sexual assault and to the assumption that women “ask for it” by wearing a certain dress or behaving a certain way, also invites men to consider that having sex with a woman that’s not fully onboard with having sex with them is disgusting, immoral, and unconscionable.
You shouldn’t take that which isn’t freely offered.
I’m astonished that a mind can file other human beings into a mental category of barely-human—women, and especially women of color and their excruciatingly fraught history of having their bodies colonized for the pleasure or profit of white men—and claim to do this out of a sense of morality.
“Sluts burn in hell?” Who are you even talking to? Who is a “slut?”
More questions, three men who protested SlutWalk: When you rape a woman, do you enjoy it? Does it make you feel powerful? Do you come?
If you answer yes, then who is your God?
If you answer no, do you feel shame? Loss of control? Will your God judge you? Do you think you’ll burn in hell?
Where is your conscience? Where is your soul?
A moral life includes the joyous union of hot skin, a beckoning hand, and a mouth that sings “yes.” The bodies of the people who gathered downtown to walk in favor of sluttiness and its attendant freedoms and joys know that better than anyone who would endeavor to destroy this essential aspect of humanity.
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Mo Daviau is the author of the novel Every Anxious Wave, forthcoming in February 2016 from St. Martin's Press. Her essay, "You Are Not Special," which was published in The Offing last June, is often quoted on other people's Tumblrs. Mo lives in Portland, Oregon, where she belongs to the august, drama-free writing group, The Guttery.
