Iconic Photos From the 2022 Melbourne Slutwalk

In 2011, a Canadian police officer told students that if women wanted to avoid being raped, they should avoid dressing like sluts.

That year, the Slutwalk was born. 

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It’s a transnational event involving marches across the globe that rally against sexual assault, harassment and violence against women and gender-nonconforming people. 

It’s people coming together, united in the – fucking normal – understanding that no one should be assaulted for any reason, regardless of how they’re dressed. Slutwalk is a reminder that people should be able to wear and do and be whatever they want, without the threat of being violated, and that rape should never be the responsibility of the victim, but is the sole responsibility of the perpetrator. Gendered violence is a product of rape culture, which is in itself a product of the patriarchal system. The system has allowed and even encouraged that culture for far too long. 

It’s been a fucking crazy year for misogyny, victim blaming and rape culture. 

In Australia, the ongoing, high-profile Brittany Higgins case, the galling findings from the Independent commission of Inquiry into the Queensland Police Force, and the ongoing genocide of Indigenous women – aided and abetted by negligence, fostered by the intersection of misogyny and racism – are just three pertinent examples.

Overseas, one only has to look at the Amber Heard / Johnny Depp court case to see how far we’ve come since “#MeToo” [barely anywhere]. 

And in Iran, women are being slain at the hands of the state, for protesting for the simple right to their own bodies. 

These events feel as though they ought to be a product of the past, but are in fact a very real threat to all women, everywhere. It was in outcry against these injustices that people from across Melbourne converged on the State Library of Victoria on the weekend, to participate in Slutwalk Melbourne. It was the first Australian Slutwalk since 2019, and there was a lot to talk about.

“The whole message is that, even if you’re a slut, even if you’ve been labelled a slut, you don’t deserve the things that have been done to you.”

– Mev, Slutwalk organiser

“I am sick of having to decide whether it’s better to wear makeup when doing the shopping and have men calling me ‘luv’ and hitting on me from their cars, or not wear makeup and risk loud transphobic comments. I’m sick of transgender women only being considered valid when we look ‘feminine’ enough, and being considered fair game for ridicule, discrimination and violence when we’re not.”

– Bebe Lynx, speaker

“That man had stolen my voice… It took me eight years for me to finally face the fact that what happened to me was sexual assault.”

– Kira Djnalie, speaker

“I’m not a statistic. I should feel lucky. Perhaps I’m here as a sum of my so-called risk management. The sum of the extra scarf shoved in my bag in case the weather changes, or a guy stares at my tits. The sum of offers from my friends to walk me to my car. The fact that I’m privileged enough to have a car, with petrol in it, a safe home, and a door that locks. A sum of all my near misses, privileges and fortunes. When I think about it, why aren’t I over the moon and grateful? Because we know it can turn at any moment. Because once I am violated, I am no longer a person, but a sum of all my mistakes.”

– Vi La, speaker

“The abuse we are talking about directly affects Indigenous people, and it is a direct result of colonisation. So we need a treaty, and we need to be signal boosting the Indigenous people of this country.”

– Anna Piper Scott, Slutwalk host

“Right now, we, in the streets of Tehran, in the streets of Melbourne, in the streets of all of the cities around the world, are shouting ‘neither hijab, neither getting attacked, death to this dictatorship!’.”

–Nazanin, speaker

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