A Critical Reading of SlutWalk in the News: Reproducing Postfeminism and Whiteness

Since its inception in April 2011, SlutWalk has exploded from a Toronto-based protest into a global grassroots movement against victim-blaming through virtual activism and traditional media coverage. Because of the unprecedented mainstream visibility of SlutWalk, I argue it is a key site of analysis for understanding the place of feminist politics and protest in Canadian culture. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological tools of feminism and cultural studies, this chapter presents some key findings from a contextualized reading and discourse analysis of the representations of SlutWalk across Canadian print, radio, and televisual media during its first nine months of press. I begin this chapter by describing my experience at SlutWalk in Kingston, Ontario on 9 March 2012; this narrative serves as an entry point into a discussion about my rationale and research methodology. Then, with reference to key excerpts and trends, I demonstrate how the media oversimplified both the problem of slut-shaming and the politics of SlutWalk primarily through a visual whitewashing of solidarity, victimhood, and resistance. I argue that the media spectacle surrounding SlutWalk is premised on an unmarked white positionality that renders invisible the experiences of people of color and essentializes gender differences.