The Silly Theology of SlutWalks
Miss K. was the coolest teacher in our high school. She had the reputation of being an unreconstructed Sixties free spirit, which was accurate even though our small town was so conservative it wasn't hard to be tagged an Ur-hippie.
Once, 15-year-old me made the mistake of describing in her presence a certain girl as a "slut." Miss K. jumped my case, pointing out the hypocrisy of the slur ("Do you have a degrading name for boys who sleep with a so-called slut?"), adding that we have no business degrading anyone who wishes to exercise sexual freedom.
And yet, Miss K. later read the riot act to some high school girls who complained about unwanted sexual attention from boys. Miss K. told the girls that the boys were wrong, but that they -- the girls -- should take responsibility for their own choices. She told them that they couldn't dress as provocatively as they did, and carry on so flirtatiously, and be surprised by the sexual response from the boys -- especially given that teenaged males, struggling to master their hormonal surges, aren't exactly paragons of self-control.
Thirty years on, it seems clear to me that for all her libertine sexual views, Miss K. was far more realistic about human nature than the young feminists taking to the streets today in SlutWalk protests. In cities around the world, female demonstrators have been coming together dressed in tawdry clothing to make a statement about rape. Responding to a Toronto cop's telling women they "should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized," protesters insist that female victims of sexual assault should not be blamed for their attack.
They're right. Nothing, and I mean nothing, justifies sexual assault. Not even a little bit. If that were the only message of this movement, it would be impossible for decent people to disagree.
But the SlutWalk protests are stunningly naïve, and come off as a prime example of white middle-class female anxiety. The idea that women can go wherever they like, at whatever time they like, dressed to convey sexual availability, and yet enjoy complete freedom from male sexual aggression, defies common sense.
You can't dress like a prostitute, which is by definition a woman who wishes to advertise her sexual potential to males, then be shocked when men react to you as if you were, golly, a prostitute. To lay claim to the edgy, transgressive allure of the slut, but deny that the slut exists, is to live with a fragile cognitive dissonance that can only exist in a hothouse culture far removed from the real world.
"If middle-class feminists think they conduct their love lives perfectly rationally, without any instinctual influences from biology, they are imbeciles," Camille Paglia once wrote. She added: "Suburban girls don't realize that they were raised in an artificially pacified zone and that the world at large, including the college campus, is a far riskier place."
It's a place that I will have to educate my sons and my daughter to navigate successfully, at a time in which there are few clear rules -- which increases the risk to them. Frankly, I don't know who will have a more difficult time making it through this bewildering postmodern maze with their faith, morals, and sense of dignity intact: my daughter or my sons.
This world has always been a jungle when it comes to sex and sexuality, and always will be. The prime task of civilization has been yoking the sexual instinct to a higher ethic, so it can be constructive of human community, not destructive. Religion historically plays the central role in establishing and enforcing norms of sexual behavior. Sometimes this can go much too far, as we see in the anti-woman cruelty of fundamentalist Muslims. But in general, religious prohibitions on wanton sexuality serve as a stabilizing social force.
Today's young Americans come of age in a culture that views the old Christian standards as antique at best, repressive at worst. Pornography is now ubiquitous and mainstream. Rap music routinely celebrates a view of sex that sees women as whores, and valorizes the men who use them. Tween couture now trafficks in fashion tropes associated with prostitution. The most popular TV show among teenagers and young adults is "Jersey Shore," a reality show about low-class nitwits who get drunk and have sex.
And yet, these young women expect to present themselves in this hypereroticized sexual milieu in clothing designed to telegraph sexual availability, yet not face any threat of aggressive male sexual behavior? To call this bizarre and stupid is not to stand up for would-be rapists, but rather to recognize the world for what it is -- and, given nature, what it always will be, though we can discourage the worst behavior through law and custom.
Anyone who suggested that a person ought to be able to walk through a slum wearing designer clothing and sporting a fat wallet without being set upon by thieves would be correct in theory -- mugging is a repugnant crime of violence -- but a fool in practice. No streetwise person would put his or her convictions about the sanctity of property to that kind of test, risking martyrdom to idealism.
Is it so different when it comes to sex and the visual codes we use to signal sexual interest or vulnerability? If my daughter, when older, doesn't have the self-respect to dress modestly, she should at least have the good sense to do so.
The problem, I think, is that the educated middle class cannot bring itself to accept an inconvenient truth about human sexual behavior. "[I]f sex is removed from religious and social institutions, then it must be considered in the context of nature," Paglia once wrote.
The testimony of human sexual conduct in the state of nature does not augur well for the SlutWalkers' finicky moral constructs. When it comes to the mysteries and power of sex, you can't overthrow the God of the Bible to become a devotee of Eros, then be shocked when he turns out not to be a liberal Presbyterian.
