No matter where you work
No matter how you identify
No matter how you flirt
No matter what you wear
No matter whom you choose to love
No matter what you said before:
NO ONE has the right to touch you without your consent. SlutWalk NYC is part of a worldwide grassroots movement challenging rape culture, victim-blaming and slut-shaming, and working to end sexual and domestic violence.
We are back after a long, introspective hiatus! Help us rebuild the coalition with a new name and most definitely improved identity. Join us at "Push Back Against Anti-Choice Assaults On Our Reproductive Freedom" on January 19, 2012.
Contact: slutwalknyc@gmail.com
Everyone is welcome.
Please come.
Hello Beautiful, New Yorkers!
Are they done saying that this generation doesn’t organize? That young people are complacent?
Are the police, the juries, the judges and the media—done saying that victims of rape, molestation, assault, and harassment are making it up?
All of you standing here right now prove that—NO we are NOT making it up!
We gather here peacefully today to say:
We are not exaggerating
We are not “misremembering”
We are not making a big deal out of nothing
We do not take it as a compliment, we don’t owe anyone anything and we don’t deserve it.
We know that 1 in 4 little girls are sexually abused in their homes.
We march for them.
We know that over 20% of incarcerated men are raped in prison, sometimes by their guards.
We march for them.
We know that victims assaulted by the powerful, like members of the NYPD, and the former head of the IMF do not get justice.
We march for them.
My name is Nancy Schwartzman, I’m a filmmaker, an activist and a surivovr. I was raped almost ten years ago in Jerusalem. That night I followed the dress code, and wore something that covered my elbows and my knees. I was still raped. I kept quiet when I was raped.
Because I was in his bed.
Because I was not a “perfect victim”.
Because even when I faced him, he told me I liked it, he told me it was consensual, he told me I remembered it wrong.
We expect better. The students that I come in contact with when I talk about the line of consent —expect and demand better.
The Line Campaign is a sex-positive, interactive approach to preventing gender-based violence. Thousands of people have shared with us how they define their own boundaries—where do they draw their line? Here’s what they say:
My line changes. Please ask, please listen.
I am a sexual being, not a sexual object.
My line is boldly drawn and loudly expressed.
I am not a fuck doll. I am a fucking human being.
My body is my gift, my voice is my weapon—I’m not afraid to use either.
My pussy has nothing to do with your masculinity.
My beautiful body is not an invitation. ASK.
So I say:
Embrace each other.
Stand together.
Never be silent.
Use your voice.
We are community.
—Nancy Schwartzman’s Speech for SlutWalk NYC
Amber Stewart’s (of Radical Women) Speech
This is an individual response.
One of our march’s participants last Saturday held up and promulgated a racist, offensive sign. She was asked to take it down by one of our organizers as soon as it came to our attention. This sign symbolizes many of the critiques about SlutWalk not being a safe space for people of color, in particular Black women. We are taking it seriously and we absolutely condemn it and are horrified by it. This sign opposes the mission of SlutWalk NYC and its message is in direct conflict with the beliefs of its organizers.
We are sorry that it ever even made it to Union Square. Our collective has been discussing our individual reactions to it over our listserv as soon as we found out about the sign. Most of us feel that we are culpable for not creating a safe space and now working to solidify our goals as a coalition. Our security point person took it as a personal failing on her part. In one of the many listserv threads that address the sign, one organizer claimed, “At one time I would have found nothing wrong with such a statement either, but its through working with a group like this that I’ve become more and more aware of my own preconceived notions and I’ve found greater empathy and understanding for how others are and have been treated.”
Like the awareness that we have been working to cultivate amongst our organizers, I think we can definitely use this sign and the reaction to it as an opportunity to educate some folks and to work towards creating a larger safe space. However, we must note that no space is truly safe, especially as we strive to be as inclusive as possible. The more identities that are present, the more opportunities there are to seriously offend someone. But that’s what we want. We want to know where we can become better. Where we can build understanding. And often, this relies on some very serious mistakes. It’s how we address them that is key. And we are addressing them and will continue to address them.
Take a comment that one of our organizers made about ableist language during our meeting last week, for example. I am guilty of using the word “lame” in my everyday speech. While it made me uncomfortable to hear that the words I use can be hurtful to someone, I would have gone making the same mistake over and over…hurting someone in our group or in this world, over and over. While I am not perfect and this word has come out of my mouth since last Thursday, I have not done so without thinking twice about the impact of my words. This would not have been possible had she not stepped forward and said something.
THIS is what I love about our group and about this space that we are currently cultivating. It is a space where mistakes can be made and addressed…not just ignored, vilified, or scoffed at. This does not mean that we are catching and addressing mistakes every single time. Yes, there are certain discussions that fall to the wayside and yes, the burden of representation falls heavy on organizers whose identities belong to historically marginalized populations, but it is becoming more and more clear to me that this is the point. This is our work. With my identities at the forefront of my consciousness during our meetings, I can still say that I feel supported and not resentful…and I can’t stress how healing and powerful that has been for me. I can’t say that about very many spaces I have participated in.
No space is ever safe but that cannot stop us from imagining what it would look like and it certainly should not stop us from working to create it. That’s the point…we are working. We are all engaging in this tough ass work for the greater goal of creating a cultural shift and it begins with the development of our own critical consciousness and heightened respect and sensitivity to other identities. While we do not bear the responsibility of changing every single person’s mind, we do have a great responsibility to attempt to educate the people who align themselves with our political message (our attendees in this particular case). This person made a grave mistake and I, along with all the other individuals in our organizing, am deeply hurt and enraged by her mistake. We are sorry that it happened. Yes, it stung. Yes, it’s triggering and disappointing and upsetting. But it is also an opportunity to show her, as well as other people who may be in a position to commit the same mistake one day, that this is simply unacceptable.
We are meeting with many of the groups which have critiqued SlutWalk NYC directly. We are meeting with Black Women’s Blueprint. We are attending an open meeting with Sister Song. We are holding a completely open meeting on October 13th at Walker Stage from 6-8 p.m. in order to discuss how to build a fighting movement. Further, we encourage everyone to take a look at the transcripts and videos of the speeches we have posted on our website and facebook. We know we need to grow. We have been working on growth from the beginning. There were powerful, diverse, and engaging speeches at the rally, many of which directly hit upon critiques of SlutWalk. THESE are the seeds of growth in our organization. We want to start a movement that passionately wants include the voices of all people, of all survivors, of all individuals who see merit in what it is that we are choosing to combat.
We hope you will join us.
—Kimberlynn Acevedo, SlutWalk NYC Organizer. SlutWalk NYC will be meeting tonight at 295 Lafayette Street from 7:00-9:00 p.m. to discuss this officially as a collective.
A portion of Lourdes Hunter’s speech from SlutWalk NYC
Like many people who lay claim to the word feminist, I am a white cisgender woman. I am also a sexual assault survivor, and I am a former sex worker, and so I want to complicate a few things for you.
I stand here with a great degree of ambivalence, because the work that needs to be done to make feminism do good is huge and complex, because I’m glad that we are getting together and having these conversations, but also because I know that these conversations have only come to a head bc a cop used the word slut and white cisgender women were pissed off about it. I want to charge women like me with the task of being better activists and allies - and that means listening, and sometimes it means shutting up, or responding to criticism by rerouting projects completely.
I exist at the nexus of several different kinds of privilege, but as a sex worker I quickly became aware that many institutions I previously thought existed to help me - like public health care providers and the police- were actually quite terrifying and had a lot of power to make my life harder and more miserable.
Now I know that it is important to speak up, to get loud and resist the many oppressions that face us. But I also know it is as important to listen and make way for many voices. Claiming solidarity means not just showing up and showing outrage when people like you are negatively affected, but showing up when people who are not like you need solidarity.
It means showing up for the October 22 Coalition against police brutality, it means showing up at the Trans Day of Remembrance on November 20, it means showing up at the Intl Day to end violence against sex workers on Dec 17, and it means closely examining and resisting public policies that may make your life better at the expense of others.
I am a slut. And I have always been a slut. Some of you may find this tongue-in-cheek, or even annoying coming from a male-identified person, right? Because when men call themselves sluts or ho’s, or players or whatever, it doesn’t carry the same social stigmas that it carries for women, particularly women of color. I understand that.
But I am not here to make fun of sexual violence, street harassment or any other form of nonconsensual behavior, often visited on the bodies of women. Nor am I here to try to displace the impact of gendered forms of violence against women, including transgender women, have to face, by doing what people with whatever relative form of privilege try to do when they want to justify being in spaces not deemed for them―to claim that they too, suffer forms of oppression. And then proceed to take over and displace the most impacted voices
Everyone wants to have the privilege of being heard. But you have to know that some of us are meant to count more than others. Those of us who are privileged enough to have a space to talk need to be listening to those who don’t, or can’t.
It’s no easy feat for everyone to be heard, especially within an economic and political system that tells us there’s simply not enough for everyone to go around. We have to promote the idea that there is always room for another story to be told and that everyone’s voice is worth hearing. And we need a response with thousands of people behind it. Millions, even. We need that because we cannot say enough, over and over again, that a society that does not treat its most vulnerable members with the respect doesn’t treat anyone with respect.
![slutwalknyc:
[image: A teenaged boy at Slutwalk NYC. He has short pink hair and is wearing jeans and baggy grey tshirt. His jeans are ripped at the knee, but are otherwise unremarkable, and his tshirt has some sort of maroon logo. He is looking directly at the camera, and holding a large white sign. His sign reads: THIS IS WHAT I WAS WEARING. TELL ME I ASKED FOR IT. I DARE YOU.]
Reblogging this again, because it is such a powerful image.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lshpnwUMXO1r35bavo1_500.jpg)
[image: A teenaged boy at Slutwalk NYC. He has short pink hair and is wearing jeans and baggy grey tshirt. His jeans are ripped at the knee, but are otherwise unremarkable, and his tshirt has some sort of maroon logo. He is looking directly at the camera, and holding a large white sign. His sign reads: THIS IS WHAT I WAS WEARING. TELL ME I ASKED FOR IT. I DARE YOU.]
Reblogging this again, because it is such a powerful image.
