I am going to do my damnest to keep this from becoming another Gail Dines fisking this time.

Not because I tire of debunking her bullshit, and pissing off the antis and sex fascists….but because I want to give a much more broad and personal message about why I support and endorse this growing Slutwalk movement.

The inspiration was Hugo Schwyzer’s brilliant post where he eloquently explains why he’s helping to organize the Los Angeles version of Slutwalk, which will be held this Saturday (June 4th).

Now Schwyzer’s motivation as a male feminist sympathizer and recovering alcoholic/drug abuser who admitted to using his former position as a teacher to take advantage of some of his young adult students by sleeping with them, before he was able to check himself and save his life, is a bit different from my own. His perspective is of a male who uses his own experiences as a means of educating other men about how they can overcome their own abusive and destructive behavior and respect women as human beings. His conversion is pretty much similar to other male feminists such as Robert Jensen and Michael Kimmel, who are also known for their analysis and critique of male sexual behavior. (Jensen, of course, is far more into the antiporn radicalfeminist cloak than Schwyzer is; of course; Bob the Guilt Tripper would never be caught anywhere near defending a movement like Slutwalk, since he is more into the Dines  “abolitionist” school of thought.)

My perspective, though, is a bit different..as a non-drinking, non-smoking, single working class Black man whom respects women’s right of free choice and who rejects wholeheartedly the idea that somehow women should be held responsible for their own abuse. Thankfully, I’ve never had to face down drug or alcohol abuse or have never had the power or the will to abuse other people….and my personal morality of respecting women as full human beings enables me to temper my own urges and feelings. Plus, my current position as a supervisor puts me in a position of overseeing and being overseen by women who can more than defend themselves.

But, mostly, my defense of Slutwalk’s basic principles that women do NOT deserve to be raped AND that women should be free to wear whatever they damn well please without fear of being blamed for the acts of rapists and abusers, is fundamentally based on the belief that a woman has a right to determine for herself her sexuality, and that she — not the State, not organized religion, not self-styled “feminists”, and most definitely NOT self-appointed commisars of judgment — is best able to say for herself how to defend herself.

It also goes into the basic principle that the majority of men are indeed capable of treating women as full human beings worthy of respect and dignity, even as they follow the natural urges and desires of seeing women as openly sexual beings worthy of desire and lust.

And that may be the fundamental difference between those of us who are “sex-positive” and those who follow the sex-hating, male-bashing, erotophobic, restrictive, and reactionary ideology that reinforces “slut-shaming” and suggests that women who dress skimpily deserve to be abused and raped.

I’ve followed the vocal criticisms lobbed toward the global Slutwalk movement; some are more thoughtful and concise than others. There is a legitimate debate over whether or not it is useful to rehabilitate the old “slut” term as a badge of resistance, or whether or not it remains too contaminated by its use as a broad slur against women not conforming to conservative sexual identity standards. There is just as legitimate a debate over whether women of color or women without economic privilege are adequetely represented in the global Slutwalk protests, and how best to confront issues of sexual harrassment while maintaining as wide a popular front as possible. All of this needs to be hashed out and discussed in an open forum of discussion, and I have absolutely no problem with that.

Problem is, though, some particular elements of “radical feminism” — especially the antiporn/anti-sexwork wing — are more interested with their usual silencing and shaming and smearing and intimidating of Slutwalk proponents, using all the usual libels and slanders.

One example: a post by long time antiporn radfem Aura Bogado, who went to the trouble of even calling Slutwalk a “White supremacist” group that cared not a whit about how people lof color were being abused by the “patriarchial” system. Bogado is not new to the politics of smear and intimidation; back in 2005, she successfully intimidated the antiwar group Not In Our Name to return an attempted financial contribution from HUSTLER CEO Larry Flynt, and she was one of the founding lights of the HustlingTheLeft.com site that precluded all of Gail Dines’ “antiporn Left” positions and activism today.

In this recent essay, Bogado attempts to smear Slutwalk with the old and tired “elitist” slur by attempting to prove their supposed lack of concern with efforts of people of color. Here, she uses the recent attempt of sex workers in New Orleans to challenge Lousisana’s “Crimes Against Nature” statute criminalizing some adult sexual behavior, which was charged with being used disproportionally against poor women of color.

As Trymaine Lee has reported, black, poor and transgender women are being disproportionately and systematically branded as criminal “sex offenders” on an online database for engaging in “survival sex” in New Orleans. Under the cover of an obscure, slave-era legal term called “crimes against nature,” police officers target those who engage in oral or anal sex-for-money. Those targeted for a second time are charged as felons (vaginal sex-for-money, meanwhile, is considered misdemeanor prostitution). 40 percent of those who appear on the sexual predator database are there because they were accused of committing a “crime against nature;” more than 80 percent of those are black women.

If SlutWalk truly wanted to bring attention to the systematic ways in which women are harmed by regressive and misogynistic thinking, they could have done the heavy lifting of reaching out and supporting black, poor and transgender women in New Orleans, for whom the word “slut” carries a criminal sex offender record. Instead, they force us to keep bearing the multiple burdens that come with not only being a woman, but also being a working class woman of color. Had SlutWalk organizers considered New Orleans – or perhaps any city in the Northern Hemisphere where undocumented women possess a very real fear that a call to the police for any reason will result in her own deportation – they might have thought twice about sinking so much time and energy into their event. They might have had to listen to women of color, and actually involve them in visioning for what an equitable future would look like. Instead, they decided to celebrate a term not everyone is comfortable even saying. While I will not pretend to speak for women targeted in New Orleans, I doubt that the mere idea of naming themselves “sluts” would be welcomed. SlutWalk has proven itself to be a maddening distraction from the systematic and interpersonal violence that women of color face daily.

Problem is, though, no one organizer at Slutwalk has ever even inferred as Bogado charges that they speak for anyone other than themselves; or that the concerns of poor women or women of color are any less legitimate; their focus has been keyed on resisting and repudiating the notion that women’s clothing is responsible for women being raped.

Bogado also ignores the essential fact that the “crimes against nature” statute has also fundamentally served as the main base for criminalizing other kinds of sexual behavior, including heterosexual sex outside of reproductive marriage and homosexual sex (and that would include gay men as well as lesbians and the transgendered). Indeed, prior to the US Supreme Court’s landmark Lawrence vs. Texas ruling declaring laws against consensual gay sex unconstitutional, the CAN statute was Louisiana’s primary means of criminalizing gay sex as well. That it remains on the books today is more the aftereffect of the power of the fundamentalist Christian Tea Party/Republican majority power structure in Louisiana imposing their morality through fiat.

Note also the inferrence by Bogado that because the Slutwalks don’t openly address the issues of “undocumented” and poor women, they are prima facie “White supremacist” due to nothing more than her belief that anything other than her brand of antiporn/anti-sexwork brand of Swedish Model radicalfeminism amounts to “White privileging” against ALL women of color. Never mind that many supporters of Slutwalk have indeed been open to addressing those issues through other channels. And, never mind that even activist sex worker groups like the founders of the blog Bound, Not Gagged, have reported favorably on Trymaine Lee’s article and given broad support to their efforts. Many more need to do so, of course….but to use that as a wedge to slander Slutwalk merely as a “White supemacist” organization is a massive distortion.

Of course, Bogado’s real problem with Slutwalk has less to do with their composition, and much more to do with their core ideology. She concludes her essay with this:

Whether white supremacist hegemony was SlutWalk’s intent or not is beyond my concern – because it has certainly been so in effect. This event will not stop the criminalization of black women in New Orleans, nor will it stop one woman from being potentially deported after she calls the police subsequent to being raped. SlutWalk completely ignores the way institutional violence is leveled against women of color. The event highlights its origins from a privileged position of relative power, replete with an entitlement of assumed safety that women of color would never even dream of. We do not come from communities in which it feels at all harmless to call ourselves “sluts.” Aside from that, our skin color, not our style of dress, often signifies slut-hood to the white gaze.

If SlutWalk has proven anything, it is that liberal white women are perfectly comfortable parading their privilege, absorbing every speck of airtime celebrating their audacity, and ignoring women of color. Despite decades of work from women of color on the margins to assert an equitable space, SlutWalk has grown into an international movement that has effectively silenced the voices of women of color and re-centered the conversation to consist of a topic by, of, and for white women only. More than 30 years ago, Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “I write to record what others erase when I speak.” Unfortunately, SlutWalk’s leadership obliterated Anzaldúa’s voice, and the marvelous work she produced theorizing what it means to be a queer woman of color. They might do us all a favor now and stop erasing the rest of us for once.

Right…..I’m betting if this was a movement closer to Bogado’s antiporn ideology, she would be beyond praising it as the next great Fourth Wave of feminism. But because the organizers and participants of Slutwalk don’t go all in on the antiporn radfem hivemind that only men using porn and having erections are responsible for all the rape and murder and oppression of women worldwide, it automatically becomes, in her mind, mere “White liberal privilege” attempting not only “silencing”, but sheer genocide of women of color.

I find it awfully funny how Bogado positions herself and the APRF anti-Slutwalk critics as the sole representatives of “women of color” (Bogado is Latina), and essentially promotes her brand of radicalfeminism as the universal truth of women of color. So, does that mean that activist sex workers of color like, say, Divinity33372, are chopped liver?? Or…are they just really paid agents of “the patriarchy”, “niggers/Cholas who side with the masters”, stupid “cumdumpsters” who slavishly serve The Penis??. Who exactly is silencing who, ma’am??

This is NOT to deny that institutional racism and capitalism and State power to enforce such should be ignored or that anyone worthy of being a progressive must challenge fully the abuse of power against all human beings, especially those without the economic or social privileges to fight back on their own. But, that’s a fundamentally different venue and fight than merely condemning women who want to reclaim the term “slut” as a resistance against rape and sexual assault as “privileged”.

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Granted, folk like Aura Bogado, while still blinded by their obsession with hating on women who don’t quite agree with her brand of sexual conservatism revamped as “radical feminism”, are still capable of actually making some attempt at reasonable debate. There is a special breed of APRF, though, who simply can’t help themselves into going straight into the personal gutter attacks more worthy of Andrew Breitbart.

Which brings us back to Hugo Schwyzer and his sponsorship of SlutwalkLA, which has generated plenty of controversy.

Remember that essay Schwyzer pinned where he reset his previous issues as an alcoholic and drug abuser, and how he used his power as a teacher to bed down his female students? The whole point of those revelations was for Schwyzer to point out how he was able to check himself and notice what harm he was doing, and make the necessary adjustments to get his life back on track…and how feminism was the key to getting him off the wagon.

And, do note that Hugo Schwyzer is no libertine feminist, either. He is pretty much a strong critic against porn, though unlike Bob Jensen, he does acknowledge the right of women and men to create and consume sexually explicit material. He is an unabashed monogamist, who believes and preaches strongly the blessings of personal intimacy and self-control. And he minces no words on his belief that men should take collective responsibility for the actions of the few who are unable to control their urges.

Problem is, for some, that isn’t quite enough…and his leading of SlutwalkLA has unleashed a furious campaign against both him personally and the entire Slutwalk movement in general, using the usual “just another excuse for men to degrade and abuse women” meme.

A particulaly virulent ad hominen attack can be found at the Radfem Hub Blog, where blogger Factcheckme (FCM) waylays Schwyzer and SlutwalkLA with all the usual vivid and lurid male baiting, sex-hating slanders you’ve come to expect from the “GenderBorg”* hivemind. Observe, if you dare, some snippage:

meanwhile, old hugo prefers to debate the “ethics” of the professor-student “relationship” as if the tangible harms to women that directly and significantly affect their performance as students, isnt a good enough reason for male educators to stop sticking their dicks into female students.  and for anyone who thinks that “just have an abortion!” is a reasonable solution to the problem that hugo and men like him are creating, by having PIV with female college students…well rest assured that hugo himself is pro-choice!  thats right, hugo schwyzer fully supports all womens right to become impregnated by him (and other men), and to not carry the pregnancy to term.  except when hes pro-life.  its a male womens-history professors perogative to serially fuck students, and then repeatedly change his mind as to what the consequences of his and all mens actions will be for the women they are fucking, afterall.

he also calls all women who eschew PIV entirely sex-negative “prudes” comparable to conservative christians and the ”enemies of eros” (bahahaha!) which i think rounds out the picture nicely.

so.  this is the background we are dealing with, and hugo makes no bones about any of it: i have provided links to his own words, on his own blog, and he is unapologetic (if allegedly ”repentant”) about all of it.  enter SlutWalk, and hugos involvement in it, as an organizer on the steering committee.

in his own words, hugo believes that he and the rest of the SlutWalkers are marching for womens rights to “dignity and respect,” whomever they sleep with.  hugo does not appear to be as supportive of womens right to not engage in PIV at all, or to criticise PIV or PIV-centric sexuality, or to criticize him or his behavior regarding PIV over the years.  or to believe that those women who are rightly PIV-critical are deserving of “dignity and respect” especially us nasty old radfems, who are old and experienced enough to know better, and to recall womens actual history, where mens sexual entitlement to womens bodies features prominently and has proven absolutely disastrous to all women, billions of us, across time and place.

who is marching for us, or for any womans right to not engage in PIV, and to not participate in our own destruction through trauma-bonding, medical events and pregnancy, which are objectively and demonstrably harmful to women, and where PIV is utilized deliberately as a weapon, by men, to cause female-specific harm?  not professor hugo schwyzer, thats for sure.  not the SlutWalkers either, although obviously i blame them less, and prefer to believe that somewhere deep inside, they recognize their own right not to be fucking vaginally-probed by some dood, and call it sex.  i hope! as it is, SlutWalk seems to be an unabashed PIV-pozzie-palooza, where women (and men!11!1) are standing together in solidarity to support womens unconditional right to let men fuck us, and for neither party to feel “guilt” or “shame” about it.  as if womens or mens subjective “feelings” about PIV is the real problem here, and not the objective, identifiable and demonstrable female-specific harms of PIV.  and PS.  men should feel fucking guilty, for subjecting women to PIV-centric sex.

Let’s simply flip aside for the moment that nowhere has Hugo Schwyzer ever accused critics of Slutwalk to be “prudes”, nor has he even remotely claimed to have impregnated any of his students. And let us bypass the stupidity of FCM channeling her inner Andrea Dworkin in claiming that ALL “PIV” (penis in vagina) sex is inherently evil and the essence of rape, or her lunacy in representing her brand of extremist Flat Earth, No Men Involved brand of “feminism” as representative of ALL women. (Or, to paraphrase Chaka Khan’s hit single: “I’m Every Woman, it’s all in me.” Really???)

Oh…and also choose to ignore the basic fact that college students are indeed ADULTS, and female professors have been known to have an affair or two or five with their students on occasion. Sometimes, even with their FEMALE students, too…though I probably wouldn’t think that that would fall under the hateful gaze of FCM since no male penises are involved.

And that was the least virulent of that stinkbomb. I didn’t repost the beginning, where FCM goes particularly Brietbarfian and all but calls Schwyzer a sexual predator and a rapist due to his admittance of sleeping with his students during his darkest days as a drug abuser.

Funny, but I don’t see these folk jumping on Bob Jensen for his past…but probably because Bob the Guilt Tripper is much more all in as their favorite antiporn male feminist??

It also led  yet another male APRF groupie, a lad named MaoistRebel, to post at his own blog an explictly lurid post explicily calling Schwyzer “a rapist” who only wants to organize SlutWalk as a means of getting more pussy…..errrrrr….more victims. That actual post has since been removed by MaoistRebel’s webhost due to threats of legal action by Schwyzer, but MR did manage to post a video at his YouTube channel resetting the whole libelous claim. (Divinity has a succcinct response to MR’s lunacy here.) He has since reposted an only slightly revised version merely singing Schwyzer as a “sexual predator”.

In addition, other radical feminists have taken to a Twitter campaign attempting to smear Schwyzer as a “sexual predator” who’s attempting as a man to give himself the right to “redefine feminism”. As if Slutwalk wasn’t about women at all. As if the organizers of the original Slutwalk in Toronto weren’t women. As if women aren’t capable of defining feminism for themselves. As if any man who marchs with women in solidarity with Slutwalk prinicples are simply their to gawk at skimpy clothing and get laid.

And of course, any attempt to respond to such criticism and slander is met with the timeless cry of “You’re trying to SILENCE and CENSOR women!!!!!!!!” Yeah, because no one has the right to point out the flaws or the hysterics of their arguments.

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Why is all of this important, you ask?? Because it goes to the heart of the issue of not only redefining the meaning of the term “slut” but also the fundamental issue of how we treat women who partake in sexual activity outside of the traditional realms of marriage and reproduction. Mostly, though, it’s an issue of plain old fashioned sex-hate.

I’ll expound on that in Part 2 of this post. Stay tuned….

* “GenderBorg” is a colloquialism of mine used to describe a particularly virulent strain of antiporn/anti-sexwork radical “feminism” that is most gifted in the art of smearing and intimidating its critics. It comes from the conflation of the notorious Borg Collective from Star Trek: The Next Generation with Samatha Berg’s online APRF forum The Genderberg Forums. Background on them can be found through this search.

[Addendum: Edited by me to add new information on Factcheckme, who isn't new to the art of shit-smearing (ask Renegade Evolution and Genderbitch)}.