Banned by slutwalk

So I've been banned from the Slutwalk page for persistently disagreeing with them, in what they considered a hostile manner. Fair enough, I did get hostile with them since they were twisting my words and attacking my character based on opinions I don't actually have, and things I didn't actually say. But I digress, here are the reasons for my banning, straight from the horse's mouth:

Due to the repeated demeaning nature of Matthew Russell's commentary that refutes the experiences of rape survivors by calling some of them and those who speak up in support of survivors "delusional" and "spew[ing] all kinds of crap" he has been banned. He was given time continued to be abusive in refusing to acknowledge the occurrence of some sexual assaults. Thank you for those who tried to engage with him.

And here's a message they wrote to me directly

Matthew Russell, we've received repeated complaints of your commentary and aggressive refusal of the experiences of some assault survivors. It doesn't matter in what "context" you are "dismissive of rape experiences", it is incredibly harmful for you to suggest that the shared experiences of assault and harassment that many face are "delusional" and people are just "spew[ing] all kinds of crap". You cannot define someone elses experience of gender, harassment, rape and societal shaming and fear. Also, men in fact DO experience sexual assault and at alarming rates. A large part of SlutWalk in discussing the word used by the Toronto Police officer is to discuss language surrounding victim-blaming and slut-shaming with includes not only the word 'slut' but a variety of others and certain ideas that aim to shame those who have been assaulted and place responsibility on them. Your efforts in engaging in some dialogue and reading commentary here are in part appreciated but when you demean the abusive experiences of others and simply refer to ideas you do not agree with, especially in the vain of violence against women and men, in the ways you have you are crossing the line. We have given you time and quite a few allowances. Your blog is particularly demeaning to those who have survived sexual assault and continue to fight against damaging ideas of victim-blaming and slut- and sex-shaming. Due to all of this, you are being banned from our page.

Apart from the terrible writing itself, the content is also flawed. It seems to imply that context is irrelevant in discussion. It’s black and it’s white. Let me go back to an old standard to show how context affects morality, and in effect, whether or not certain actions and behaviors are appropriate.

- It is never okay to kill another human being.

At first glance, most people would agree with the statement above. I’ll be the first to say, it’s a pretty good rule of thumb. Before I give some obvious examples, can you think of a circumstance under which there may be an exception to this? Off the top of my head… to defend one’s own life, during war, Hitler, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, etc

This being said, I was accused of being dismissive of rape victims’ experiences; effectively accused of lacking sympathy for them. What I actually dismissed was the relevancy of such experiences to a point I was making. So is it ever okay to dismiss the relevancy of a rape victim’s experiences? Are a rape victim’s experiences relevant to all topics? My opinion is that some context is necessary here.

The argument I put forward was this:

Apart from the futility in trying it, reclaiming the word ‘slut’ in order to dismantle its use in offending women is not of any benefit to them because there is still a large number of words that can be used in its place for this purpose. A better goal would be to change the perspective of society in general towards promiscuity of women. The word itself is a pawn in a larger chess game.

In other words, if the word ‘slut’ was no longer considered an insult, one could still offend and ‘slut shame’ women just as easily by using other words instead (ie dirty ho, cunt, whore, bitch, etc).

The rebuttal to this point was along the lines of “When I was assaulted, I was called a slut” or ‘I got called a slut by all the mean kids at school’ or even as far as “A friend of mine was raped, and everyone said ‘well, she’s a big slut, so we can’t really take that seriously’”.

I countered these arguments by saying that in each of those circumstances, the same effect would have been possible without using the word ‘slut’, so those arguments are therefore irrelevant to this discussion. That being said, those experiences are valid to other things; psychology, sociology, anthropology, and certainly as evidence that there are people who do and say dickish things, but they do nothing against the argument I’ve put forward, and are therefore dismissible in this context.

The outrage from this was astounding; it was interpreted as “So you think rape victims’ experiences are irrelevant and don’t matter? You honestly don’t care about them or what they feel or think? You sir, are a douchebag!”. To anyone with high school level reading interpretation skills, that is not at all what I was saying, but this is definitely what was understood. I added fuel to the fire by calling that perspective “delusional”, ie an idea they held with certainty despite strong contradictory evidence.

This, in turn, was interpreted as “now you’re saying rape victims are all just delusional crybabies!?! What the hell is the matter with you! You monster!”

And then… the banning.

So to those of you who have been victims of sexual assault, I do feel sympathy for you. I wish you had not been the victim, and I hope you are not again a victim in future. For this reason, I continue to be adamantly against the Slutwalk campaign, because their messages will get girls assaulted. They encourage girls to disregard their safety on the grounds that “they shouldn’t have to look out for themselves, everyone else should just not rape or assault them”. Everyone, even most rapists I would think, agrees that it is morally wrong to rape and assault women, regardless of the circumstance. That said, it is still a good idea to take precautions for your safety, regardless of your gender.

Be safe all
Matt