Sluts Against Rape

We are feminists. We call ourselves "Sluts Against Rape" because we believe that a woman should have the right to be sexual in any way she chooses and that she is never at fault for rape. We choose to focus on sexual promiscuity-straight or queer-as a positive assertion of sexual identity and to focus on women as sexual agents as opposed to sexual victims. We remember that this embrace of sexuality in the public sphere has been particularly difficult for people of color, women-especially sex workers-and queer women. Each of these group's "supposed" inability to sexually control themselves has been used as justification for violence. At the same time, each of these groups have continued to explore and refine the place of sexuality in their lives and insist that public spaces remain open to them.

Promiscuity is often used as a justification for rape and violence-it is used as a justification for rape by rapists, by the legal system, and even at times by other women who attempt to impose their own rigid morality upon others. Discourse on male violence tends to centralize male sexuality and demand women's safety in relationship to it. In this context, our own sexualities become peripheral, almost non-existent. When female sexuality does become visible-when we put on a sexy dress and say naughty things-we are seen as colluding in our own oppression (read: we invite rape). When women's innocence is invoked as a reason to curb male sexual violence, the usual assumption is that this innocence is only something white, middle class, heterosexual women can have, all women of color are presumed to be already sexually available. Thus, we argue, innocence has never protected any of us and we need to recognize the racist and classist assumptions behind any embrace of innocence.

We participate in this year's "Take Back the Night March" to protest rape and to protest the lack of safety in public spheres shared by all women, all people of color and all sexual minorities. But we will not erase our own sexual adventures, our own sexual displays to occupy this public space.

We support the rights of prostitutes to be prostitutes, the rights of strippers to be strippers. We support the rights of porn stars, transgendered people, transsexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, gay men, all self-defined sluts (and there is no hegemony of style here), and all sexual minorities made invisible by the institution of compulsory heterosexuality. Though we are often victimized, we will not be passive victims. We are active sexual agents strutting our stuff in the face of rape.