I will eventually stop writing about SlutWalk, but not just yet.
Not long before I got up to speak at SlutWalk on Saturday, Melissa Maynarich, a reporter from L.A.’s CBS affiliate, walked up to me. I was standing with the other organizers behind the stage. Melissa and I had chatted earlier, but this time she didn’t have a microphone in her hand or her camera operator trailing behind. She asked for a quick word, then pointed over my shoulder to the space just beyond the lawn where the throng of SlutWalkers was assembled. “Did you think about the fact that this is going on right next to a play area?”
I was surprised no one had asked that earlier.
When we first were given the West Hollywood Park location, I’d seen that a large sandpit with slides and swings was immediately adjacent to our assembly area. When I was meeting with city officials on Thursday, I’d briefly brought it up, and was told it would be “no problem.” As one remarked, “parents in West Hollywood are not going to have a problem with SlutWalk.” (The city has a very progressive reputation and is the heart of the Southern California LGBT community.)
While we were setting up, kids and their parents played in the sandbox. As our speakers began to speak, and as the space began to be jammed with people, small children swang and slid and dug under their parents’ watchful eyes. As our speakers told painful personal stories of rape and slut-shaming, and as at least a few scantily-clad speakers took the stage, the kids kept playing. I kept glancing over at the little ones, many of whom were my daughter’s age. And even before the reporter asked me, I’d been watching the eyes of the parents, locking friendly gazes with a few of them.
(Heloise and her mother weren’t at SlutWalk. As someone who for better or worse was so publicly identified with this, I didn’t want to make my daughter the focal point of attention. I’m reluctant, personally, to politicize very young children. It’s one thing for me to say “I’m here as a father”, it’s another thing to display my daughter as evidence. When she’s old enough to understand the work I do, and if she chooses, she’ll be welcome to come and participate. Other parents do feel differently, and I respect their decisions regarding their little ones.)
I told Melissa that I thought most of the very little ones were completely oblivious to the rally taking place just feet from their play area. Others, I suggested, might ask their moms or dads about what was going on. And speaking as a father and a long-time youth leader, I said there were many developmentally appropriate things one could say to a child who asked “What’s slutwalk?”
With small kids, the easiest thing to tell them is that SlutWalk is a group of people getting together to remind everyone that no matter what you wear, you deserve to be safe. I’d say, off the top of my head, something like:
“No one ever gets to touch you if you don’t want them to. Some people think that if a girl or a woman wears certain clothes, she deserves to be hurt. The grown-ups at this rally don’t believe that. That’s why you see so many people who look like they aren’t wearing very much. It’s kind of unusual, isn’t it? It’s okay to look and it’s even okay to laugh! It’s just not okay to think that any of these men and women deserve to be hurt because of what they’re wearing.”
Melissa cocked her head, looked up at me, smiled her best on-camera journalist smile, and thanked me. Her eyes seemed to suggest that many parents might not share my views or my desire for such a discussion.
More to come.
I experienced a very family-friendly safe atmosphere there. I can’t imagine how any parent could be offended by it, or how it could be harmful to any children. Of course, any child present would need some adult help to understand what it was, depending on the child’s degree of curiosity, but that kind goes for everything else in life.
I also wonder if some of this might have to do with age. You mention in your post an “epidemic of middle-aged, married, men” taking and posting these photos. Given that the men in question are predominantly over a certain age, maybe what they are trying to do is convince themselves that they are, not just “hot”, but “still hot”. It seems they are more afraid of what they perceive they are “losing”, not what they currently have.
Ok, that comment was meant for the Weiner-gate post. Not sure why it ended up on this post.
I’ll delete it, try again.
I think I’d not tell the kids it’s okay to laugh, unless they could keep it entirely inside themselves. Nobody likes to be laughed at when they aren’t trying to be funny, and it seems to me that this forbearance is an integral part of the respect you and I want for these women.
I do appreciate your leaving it up to your kid whether she wants to be there or not. My parents dragged me to some quite inappropriate (mainly incomprehensible and tedious, sometimes upsetting) adult plays, etc. when I was 10. Just because someone can read at an adult level doesn’t mean that the subject matter will do them any good.
I’ll admit I was a bit worried, myself, about what I said after I realized the playground was right there. When I looked, I only saw a few children there and all were under 3, I’m guessing, and not at all interested in the huge gathering beside them. Their parents smiled at me after I spoke. I chose not to bring my children, ages 8 and 10. I don’t think we took away that same choice from any of the parents. The message was immediately clear, just from looking at the gathering, and there was a pet adoption going on on the other side of the park, at the library, where you couldn’t hear a thing from the SlutWalk rally. Of course, next time, it would be ideal to have a spot away from places where children are. However, I don’t think it was unnecessarily forced on any child or parent.
I did show my son a video of the march. He saw the SlutWalk banner and asked, “Why does that sign have that bad word on it?” That actually led he and I into a conversation that I think was positive and not unlike other conversations I have with him about respecting people. As sad as it is, he’s in 4th grade and has already heard the word “slut” around school. I told him that’s a word people use to make women feel bad about themselves, and sometimes even to make them feel like they deserve to get hurt. I used my same analogy I used in my speech about “nerds” and bullying. I’ve told him many times that it doesn’t matter what label his friends or classmates impose on any person. He should never make anyone feel ousted, and even when other people do make a classmate feel ousted, it doesn’t mean it’s EVER ok to hurt them. That same logic applies to the message of SlutWalk. I explained it to him in a way that avoided the adult sexual nature of the problem. It ended up being pretty much a conversation about how he will be a man soon enough, and a man respects women and their rights, just as everyone should respect him and his rights. I don’t think he’s old enough to have gotten that message at the rally, with all the visuals of SlutWalk.
So, in sum, I think this issue is definitely one that a parent should, at some point before they become an adult, discuss with their child, but, at the same time, each parent has the right to decide how and when to do so. And, I really don’t think the rally stripped any parents of that freedom.
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