Taking a cue from ‘SlutWalks’ organised abroad - Radhika Shingwekar and Swati Singh Baghel from NLU Delhi and NLIU Bhopal respectively along with Ayush Dixit, Arunima Tiwari and Kshitij Mishra - decided to launch a day-long walk called ‘Besharmi Morcha’ or The PrideStride in Bhopal.
“We thought that a lot of people don’t understand the whole concept of SlutWalk and there’s this taboo about the word slut. It was important to give it an Indian flavour and draw people from various segments,” commented Bhagel on rechristening to ‘Besharmi Morcha’.
The walk was attended by approximately 80 people who came forward to show support towards women related causes having little to do with clothes alone, said Baghel.
Started following outrage in Toronto to protest against ‘blaming and shaming’ of sexually harassed women, SlutWalk has been branded as a social movement attaining global reach with protests having been held in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Sweden and Denmark.
Baghel explained: “Basically what happened was that in Canada there was this police officer who said that women should not dress like sluts if they don’t want to be victimised, so it started as a protest.”
“There it started just as a protest against blaming and shaming of victims. However, when we decided to start this SlutWalk here we took into account the local conditions and broadened it a bit and decided to focus on sexual harassment on the whole. The second aspect is there’s this whole stigma attached and women don’t want to come forward and feel scared of the police, so the idea was to create awareness about it and bridge the gap between the victim and law enforcement officials.”
She said that the turnout for the walk was good, but a large number of people could not make it due to bad weather. An open forum, which was held later to discuss the issues at hand, attracted a greater number of people compared to the walk itself, according to Baghel.
“The people behind it [the walk] are from different backgrounds – there is an IT professional Ayush Dixit, Prateek from IIT Rajasthan who made the posters, etc. We created a Facebook event through which we reached out and started getting good response.”
She added that their endeavour would not be limited to organising such walks and as law students they would try to garner institutional support from their respective law colleges in the time to come.
The walk first conceptualised to first take place in Delhi on 25 June is now expected to happen on 31 July, with other NLU Delhi students too involved.
Comments
This is where feminism has arrived?
After years of trying to stop stigma against women they want to organise 'slutwalks'?
No wonder guys have suppressed girls for thousands of years.
This is so F-ing stupid.:D
for commenter 1, please don't parade your ignorance. the slutwalks are partly aimed at putting a real human face (or several such faces) on that amorphous group referred to as 'sluts'. the idea is to show people that they are exactly the same as you or i.
additionally, 'slut' means prostitute, which is not a pejorative. what do you call men who visit prostitutes? is there a derogatory term for those? no? that's what i thought.
[Note, the censorship of the word 'slu-t' in the comments was not manual but an automatic comment censorship filter we had set up that blocks certain usually offensive words... We will disable this filter for this story. -Ed]
#4 - Since when in the world does 'slut' mean prostitute? How dumb and sexist are you, to equate an already offensive word like slut with prostitution? Check some dictionaries.
#3 - What's wrong with sponsorship? If a lounge or whatever wants to support the cause, let them. And who are you to decide who is worthy to protest a cause? India is sexist and most men are shovenist pigs. Anything that highlights and shows up such prevalent attitudes (as exhibited in both your comments), deserves praise.
shovenist huh... nice :D
As for comment #3, get a life.
The truth is, most of the sufferers of sexual violence and sexual abuse are not exactly the same as you and I. The privilege we parade in these slutwalks do little or nothing to change the mindset of the multitudes of perpetrators of such activities. Similar to the pink chaddi campaign which took all of India by a storm. Even if it did no harm, it was lame and didn't deserve the kind of coverage or attention it got.
In countries like Canada, Australia and the UK where these slutwalks were previously held, they too were looked on skeptically by many spectators, simply because trying to raise "awareness" about something like sexual abuse and violence is not easily accomplished by calling yourself a slut and taking to the streets. It can't be taken seriously enough because there isn't enough serious thought behind it.
i consider it enough for the moment that there was as much debate as there was on the slutwalk. all revolutions begin inside the head.
as for there not being enough 'thought' behind this event, what would you recommend? research papers? candlelight vigils? conferences? committees and institutes? newspaper articles? civil protest for social change? do any of these sound viable to you?
as far as i am concerned, the slutwalk is a rational response. do you think women who wear few clothes in public are sluts? do you think sluts deserve what happens to them? well here i am in public, being a slut. i challenge you to raise a finger.
falling back on the vernacular - as we eventually must, for colour and accuracy - naani yaad dila doongi.
Revolutions begin inside the head, true enough. But my point was that it does not really reach the intended audience. A bunch of women walking together in daylight is not much of an accomplishment - in terms of challenging the prevailing treatment of sluts. You challenging the world to raise a finger will be met with contempt or indifference as the message you're sending out is ambiguous and not addressing any real issue. Sexual abuse doesn't take place *because* women are dressed skimpily or are "being sluts" (by the way - a slut is someone who has loose sexual morals, I don't see how exactly you're being a slut by taking to the streets and merely calling yourself one)
The debate you're talking about happens amongst people who actually want to consider a fresh viewpoint and are willing to open up and accept that 'sluts' are being treated badly - generally not the demographic that actually perpetrate the sexual crimes I referred to in my comment.
In fact, I don't even understand what you mean by "sluts deserve what happens to them" - are you referring to women in general? or prostitutes, who no.5 clarified are not sluts?
Good to know you're empowered enough to remind people of their maternal grandmothers etc. but tell me how this rids the community-at-large - the people on the streets - of their prejudice against "sluts".
Women in Iraq don't think wearing the Burkha is bad. Who are we to tell them otherwise?
Who are we, the rich upper middle class, to impose our 'superior' ideas on the majority of this country?
There are pseudo beliefs, and this.