SlutWalk, burlesque and censorship: the silver lining of a cultural divide

About ten days ago I attended the first SlutWalk in Geneva, Switzerland. SlutWalks are demonstrations with simple mottos like “don’t tell me how to dress, tell them not to rape”. Rape victims are rape victims, whatever they wear, and rapists are criminals, period. Organizers get attention from the media by using the word slut and dressing in revealing outfits. I wrote a blog post in French about it, comparing it with a Parisian anti-ACTA demonstration I joined in January. To summarize: both events highlighted worthy issues that the mainstream media ignored at the time, the SlutWalk was deeper, more emotionally intense and the Stop ACTA demonstration had more participants. But because both recruited mainly through online social networks, demonstrators came from similar demographics: young, spending a lot of time on facebook and of mostly one gender. In a way, they were already “in the know” and did not reflect the average person affected by the issues, especially older, less-connected people. This was also apparent in the anti-ACTA signs that sounded more like geeky private jokes than publicly understandable slogans. Still through facebook, I learned from Le Courrier, a Swiss progressive daily, that being parts of a subculture and using jargon actually saved part of the events of the SlutWalk by unwittingly escaping censorship.

Because of the name SlutWalk («Marche des salopes» in French), the content of every sign and banner had to be included in the administrative application to use public space.  Part of the Genevan administration later complained that not every single sign was submitted, and the organizer rightly commented that, a demonstration being a public event, they cannot plan in advance what signs random people will bring. And just like some of the anti-ACTA signs, I think some may have been a bit too l33t for the administrators’ censorship radar. They found the one saying «I’m a slut, but not yours» too explicit, but I’m not sure they got the one that simply said ({i}).

Still according to Eric LeCoultre’s Courrier article, the administration complained that one of the post-march events, after public testimonials of rape victims, was a show where women “unveiled their breasts”. Organizers stated that they did mention there would be a burlesque performance. But in French, burlesque usually refers to old fashioned funny, goofy and over-the-top comedy. The American and neo-burlesque meanings are mostly known by younger people with an interest in US pop culture, or people who saw the movie Tournée.

So the only reason this show happened is because of the age and cultural divide between the organizers and the mainstream. In the middle ages, thieves would use jargon to escape the police. In the 18th century, philosophers would use foreign settings and characters to escape censorship, as in Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes. In the 1990s Shabba Ranks‘ albums unwittingly escaped «Parental advisory: Explicit Lyrics» stickers due to his use of jamaican patois. And twenty years later, at the opposite of the feminism spectrum, the SlutWalk’s main weakness, its subcultural nature, enabled it to perform one of its boldest public stunt: a show of women reclaiming classical feminine stereotypes in broad daylight. As the Genevan censors won’t be fooled twice, let’s hope that by the next SlutWalk they’ll understand that such events give strong message that need to be heard, even if the delivery style is a bit shocking for the old Calvinist city.