A crowd of mostly women marched through downtown Ottawa in the rain at Ottawa’s SlutWalk march on Sept. 13, waving signs and chanting protests against slut-shaming and victim-blaming.
This was Serena Marcantonio’s second year taking part in the SlutWalk. The first-year humanities student at Carleton said she has been slut-shamed since high school because of her clothing style.
“I prefer to wear more tight-fitting tops or pants, and just walking down the street or walking in my own school, I get comments in the hallways,” she said.
Participants pulled out umbrellas and raincoats for the march through the streets of downtown Ottawa that began at the Human Rights Monument on Elgin Street, taking them past Parliament Hill, and ending back at the monument.
Some marchers wore casual clothing while others were in lingerie and high heels, and a few went topless as a form of protest. One participant went topless and invited others to write messages on her body.
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The SlutWalk protest was born in Toronto after a police officer suggested women avoid dressing like “sluts” to prevent rape. SlutWalk marches have since expanded to cities across the globe. This is the SlutWalk’s fifth year in Ottawa.
“The whole reason we’re all doing this is because it’s such a huge issue,” Marcantonio said. “The idea that people think just because of what you wear, or how you act, or how much you’ve had to drink, that any of these things have to do with whether it was okay that you got raped.”
“Just the fact that we have to argue about this at all makes me want to come out here,” she said.
In front of the Human Rights Monument before the march, speakers addressed the crowd on missing and murdered Aboriginal women, the hypersexualization of women of colour, and the rights and protection of sex workers.
Paul Dewar, the NDP MP for Ottawa-Centre, was in attendance. He explained that his mother, a second-wave feminist who was Ottawa’s mayor from 1978-85, taught him there’s a lot men can do to further women’s rights.
“You do have a role. You don’t have to be at the front of the line. Talk to women about the issues that they face and talk to your male friends about them,” Dewar said. “The most important thing one can do as a male is to listen, to understand, and to learn.”
Marley Gourley-Sturgess, SlutWalk Ottawa’s co-organizer, said she was pleased with how smoothly the event played out. The biggest hiccup was the rainy weather, she said, but the number of attendees was this year was slightly higher than last year.
CORRECTION: The print version of this story stated Marley Ann Heather was the lead organizer of SlutWalk. Marley Gourley-Sturgess is her real name and she is the co-organizer of the event. The Charlatan regrets the error.
