The story did not identify the woman pictured.
But Emilia Volz, a third-year gender and women's studies student at the University, said the photo was of her. Volz wrote to the student newspaper and said this: "This was quite a surprise for me as NO ONE had asked if it would be ok to publish this picture. I am not mad, at all, I just wanted to bring light to the fact that if anyone else had a photo like that in the paper without express permission they would be quite pissed off. I do not want an apology or anything of the type to be published."
Then Volz proceeded to complain about other aspects of the paper's coverage; specifically, it allegedly quoted someone who was not at the event. At no point in the letter did Volz request a retraction of the photo.
But the newspaper didn't print Volz's letter. Instead it ran an editorial explaining that it is "naive to expect journalists wouldn’t do their job" in covering the events. And it explained why the editors felt the paper had every right to show the photo."Our Slut Walk article made waves because we had the audacity to take a photograph of one of the protesters who was marching in only her bra."
The editorial continued: "Any event held on public property can be photographed. In a rented building, or a private building–that’s different. If you march down a main street in a bra, the media will take your photo. If you lead a march protesting violence against women, you will get reporters asking tough questions. It’s naive to expect otherwise. Welcome to public life."
Well, the editorial apparently didn't sit well with Volz. Volz took her case to the court of last resort, the Dalhousie Women’s Centre. The Women's Centre sent this over-the-top -- indeed, other-worldly -- notice to their members (FRS's commentary is interspersed):
"It has come to our attention that the Dalhousie Gazette published a photograph of a woman's body without her permission in print and on the Internet.When she objected . . ." [she "objected" by declaring that she wasn't mad about it and was not seeking an apology or anything else] ". . . they refused to take it down [they didn't "refuse" to do anything -- they weren't asked to do anything] and the Editor-in-Chief wrote a victim blaming editorial: ‘Smile you’re at a protest.’ [Read that again: it is "victim-blaming" to show a photograph of a woman who purposefully dressed in a sexualized manner in order to make the point that women should not be raped even when they dress in a sexualized manner? This characterization borders on the pathological] We believe it’s unethical to distribute pictures of individual’s bodies without consent, that this picture was taken without context and thus defeating the purpose of the event and that the Gazette's Editor-in-Chief is perpetuating the victim blaming culture that the protest was fighting against. [The picture was used in context, it was positioned next to a news report that explained the purposes of the Slut Walk] If you have as much of a beef with this as we do, come by tomorrow and write or sign a letter from 10am to 4pm at the Centre."
Volz also complained to a local news outlet. "Ok, she thinks. I did wear a bra to a protest. So maybe I was asking for this to happen... Wait! Isn’t that the problem that Slut Walk seeks to address? No matter what women wear, they aren’t asking to be objectified, raped, sexually harassed, or used by anybody else as a sexual object to draw attention to a story in a newspaper?"
Wait, wait, wait. I'm lost.
Didn't you purposefully dress in a sexualized manner -- in a very real sense, you objectified yourself -- in order to make the perfectly valid point that women should be permitted to present themselves as sexualized beings without being raped?
I mean, you, and likely others at the Slut Walk, dressed that way specifically to draw attention to the message you were trying to convey, right? And yet for some reason you are pissed that a newspaper ran a photograph of the body you purposefully sexualized to get your message across?
Come again?
News coverage of Slut Walks the world over has shown women with less covering their torsos than you wore, Ms. Volz.
The sex columnist at the Gazette, Hayley Gray, quit in protest of the paper's puported mistreatment of Volz: "[The] message of [Slut Walk] was that, no matter what someone wore, they deserved to be treated with respect and asked for their consent."
Right, their consent to engage in sexual relations. Ya know, it is not a crime for men and boys to look, or, heaven forbid, even to have an involuntary erection when they do. That doesn't mean they assume she's a piece of meat without a brain, and here's the important point: it doesn't give them license to rape or harass.
And photojournalists covering Slut Walks are going to show some of the things the participants did to get their message across. That's just how it goes.
Gray continues: "So 'If you march down a main street in a bra' I get to snap your photo and not try to ask for consent, doesn't cut it. It actually perpetuates the rape myths and victimizing culture that enraged individuals to create slut walks in the first place."
The misplaced rage in the previous sentence seems to have blinded the author to the fact that it makes no sense. "Rape myths"? A woman purposefully showed off her body and a newspaper ran a picture of it to make the very point the accompanying news story explained. That has as much to do with "rape myths" as does a ham sandwich. And "victimizing culture"? If the photographer had sneaked in her dorm room and snapped the picture, that would be a "victimizing culture." Not when she intentionally parades down a public thoroughfare exposing her body to make the very point the newspaper got across.
But let's not quibble about this. Let's just have the Women's Centre write the stories, and take the photos, for the newspaper. That way, they can control the message and make sure it's presented "exactly right" -- as they determine what's "exactly right." And above all else, they can make sure they don't run a photo of someone so attractive that it might actually elicit an involuntary erection in some misogynistic college boy.
The message of Slut Walk -- that women don't ask to be raped by the way they dress -- is one that no rational person can disagree with. But, once again, extremist gender warriors do the cause far more harm than good by coming off as asses.
Source: http://halifax.openfile.ca/blog/curator-blog/exclusive/2011/slutwalker-says-student-paper-screwed
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22 comments:
Yet another instance of modern society's privileged princesses who DEMAND the right to do anything they please -- without responsibility, accountability, or consequences.
For many of modern society's young men, the religion of Islam is probably looking better every day; heaven knows, I certainly couldn't blame them for embracing it.
As for me -- I'm happy just shunning these harpies (no matter what their age) and Going My Own Way.
"The message of Slut Walk -- that women don't ask to be raped by the way they dress -- is one that no rational person can disagree with."
Well, not exactly. If you remember, the Slut Walk phenomenon was actually in response to suggestions, particulary from police, that women make themselves more vulnerable to rape when they dress provocatively and roam the streets alone late at night.
It seems to me that Slut Walks are actually a demand that women not be raped, no matter how vulnerable to rape they make themselves.
To whom is this demand directed? Rapists? Society at large? All males? Their grandmothers? Who knows what actually goes through the minds of these crazed feminists? I'm sure I dont.
But perhaps victims of other types of crime should put on similar marches. Maybe we can just shame all criminals to cease and desist their nefarious deeds. Sounds good to me.
Bucky, my boy, good points. But as for your first one, read what I wrote.
If you "ask" to be raped, it's not rape, now is it? (I'll answer that: "No, Pierce, it is not. That means there is consent, and it isn't 'rape.'")
If you are even a casual reader of this blog you know that we are all for women and men taking safety precautions. That doesn't mean we ever excuse criminals.
"If you are even a casual reader of this blog you know that we are all for women and men taking safety precautions. That doesn't mean we ever excuse criminals."
But isn't that my point exactly? The False Rape Society may believe that women (and men) should take precautions, but Slut Walkers do not. They believe that asking a woman to take precautions is "condoning rape". Therefore, they are morons.
For those who think sexual politics trumps all else, and that the sex act is incomparable to any and all other situations, analgogies are largely wasted (after all, an analogy implies that there may be some equivalence between the two situations). Acknowledging that analogies are unlikely to affect "true believers", I would still posit the following for consideration.
Full disclosure: I have never raped anyone, and am not a rape apologist in cases of actual, forcible rape.
Women supporting the slut walk demand the right to dress as they choose, and take no responsibility for what may happen. They insist they should be able to drink to full-on innebriation, and if they they agree to have sex with an equally innebriated male, it is somehow rape, and that he is the rapist, even if she initiated the encounter and the act was consummated in the female superior (cowgirl) position. They require a world in which, should they go back to a man's apartment in such an innebriated state, disrobe to near or full nakedness, and sleep in his bed with him, if they wake up bespermed and sticky the following morning they bear no responsibility for how they got that way. They act indignant that a man may assume such behavior implies consent and act upon that inferred consent, and that no liability or responsibility should attach to their actions at all.
If one leaves the ignition keys in an unlocked car in a high crime area and the car is stolen, it is still grand theft auto, despite the fact that most of us would consider the car owner to be a fool, or at the very least careless and unaware.
If one gets blotto drunk and staggers through Central Park (a mythological high crime area) with hundred dollar bills hanging out of each pocket and gets robbed at gunpoint, it is still armed robbery despite fact that many of us would mutter under our breath that the idiot got what he should have expected.
And, if one is held down and forcibly penetrated, despite their protestation and resistance it is rape.
But if one has put themselves in a position and location to invite any of the three circumstances described above, is that individual's actions any less contributory to the crime in the third circumstance than the individuals in the first two examples above? So yes, the slutwalkers have the right to dress as they want, and drink as much as they want, and go wherever they want, but don't pretend that doing so is risk free. It isn't, and it never will be.
Uno Hu, note that people like Jackson Katz go around the country shaming innocent men to not be "bystanders." The fact is, innocent men have far less ability to stop rape than women who consciously put themselves in dangerous situations. Not of it excuses the rapist, but don't be telling innocent men they are bad for not doing more to stop rape while telling women they have no responsibility for their own safety.
Apparently the only thing that pisses them off more than not being covered by the press is BEING covered by the press. Typical feminists- they won't take yes for an answer.
Archivist - ”people like Jackson Katz go around the country shaming innocent men to not be "bystanders." The fact is, innocent men have far less ability to stop rape than women who consciously put themselves in dangerous situations.”
Indeed.
And, in yet another case of “strange bed-fellows”, the same sort of shaming of men for not anything and everything to ensure that no women, ever, anywhere, will be raped come from the socio-political right as well. Take this male-shaming screed: Where Have All the Men Gone, by Devvy Kidd - Part 1 of 3
It’s a good example of how the supposed anti-feminists on the Social Conservative right are saying almost exactly the same things about men not sacrificing of themselves and their time in an all-out effort to protect women from being raped – because women are (apparently) entirely incapable of looking out for themselves at all.
If you don’t have the stomach to listen to the linked screed, I can break it down into it’s fundamental message: She thinks men (in general) are a bunch of useless cowards for drinking beer and watching sports instead of patrolling the streets to stop women from getting raped right-and-left in the streets.
I totally just jerked off to that picture. Shes hot.
Have you ever noticed how feminists act in ways that compete with what would be considered the most crack-brained of misogynistic fancies were some twit imprudent enough to actually enunciate them?
Of all the ways to send a feminist into a mottled rage perhaps the most reliable is to bring up the issue of cock teasing where a woman knowingly acts in a sexually provocative manner but who has no intention of following through to satisfy the lust she has so predictably aroused. To hear feminists tell it, a thing like that hardly ever happens. And any idea that it's somewhat common is just another slander men have concocted in order to justify their violent, rapey oppression of wimmen.
Yet this is extremely close to what they're doing with the slut walks. They dress in a deliberately sexualized manner and then get enraged when people notice that they're sexy.
And they're doing it in an age where they stereotype men as rapists and wimmen as victims but also insist that men and women who have no previous romantic entanglements be college room-mates in the apparent conviction that there's no way this could reasonably be expected to lead to some sort of trouble.
Feminists insist that we listen to them to understand what they want. I've been listening for over 30 years and near as I can tell what they want is to screw with people's heads in order to abuse them by playing victim.
My other theory is that they're Republican fifth columnists. They're certainly not helping liberals--though, to be fair, an infuriating majority of liberal men seem to be not at all clear on this point.
But isn't that what slut walk is trying 2 accomplish?--2 get the message out that no one asks 2 be raped--What better way 2 get a message that everyone already knows out than getting photographed?--These same feminists would be upset if no one showed up 2 watch & then would claim newspapers don't care about rape(even though they do)-Well,What do you want feminists?--Do you want 2 be watched & given publicity over your man-bashing or not!???
Yeah, Man Slut, very helpful comment.
Man Slut ya can't even see her face!
"Man slut"
Looks like our old friend Bart Calendar is at it again.
manslut - she had a bitten off penis in her mouth.
How hot was that?
These women are idiots...plain and simple. They completely ignore the pathology of a rapist. It isn't about sex, it's about power and dominance. If these ill-informed harpies would get off their rears, get a real degree and do some research they would see that the real problem is that there are bad people in the world. Bad things happen to good people. Also, is it wrong to hate the ignorance and idiocy that these harpies are perpetuating? Also I am posting this using my real name and Google account because this is absolutely ridiculous
This is excellent. At least one news outlet is not going to white knight to feminist drivel anymore.
This reminds me of those topless protests filled with women complaining that they're being stared at.
I have heard of a few of the "loudest, proudest, sluttiest raunchiest, gender-feminist lesbians around who have now converted to strict islam and wear a hijab.
Are some of these loudest proudest gender-raunch lesbians somewhat bi-polar??? And if so, why do they have so much sway over American law enforcement protocol??
@Slwerner,
I recall that Dewy Kidd wrote a similar article some time back (around 2002 I think), i.e. where have all the real men gone?. I see she is now broadcasting the same tripe on youtube.
In her original article, she cites Bill Clinton's philandering as evidence of the declining character of American men. Gee, does it even matter that women voted for Clinton in much greater numbers than men (IIRC, in 1996 men split evenly between Clinton and Bob Dole, while women favored Clinton by 18 percentage points). But hey, women are not responsible for how they cast their ballots. And it is also the fault of men that women have a soft spot for cads.
(I remember as a teenager in the early 1990s my mother commenting on how charming/good-looking/whatever Bill Clinton was. And my mother has always been very politically conservative, and pretty much despises just about everyone on the left of the spectrum).
For the sake of my own sanity, I don't think I can sit through all of that broadcast.
She should know that nothing done in public can be considered private. She waived her personal/political rights by participating in the slutwalk." her body, her right and her choice.
She's woman, so she's a victim, and they hurt fer feeeeelings. What else do you need to know.
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