Pop Feminism, Sex-Positive Activism, and the Polemics Surrounding the SlutWalk

Recently, feminism has made headlines in both the mainstream and social media to the point where Time Magazine included “feminist” in a list of words to ban in 2015—a list featuring other “overused” words such as “kale”. The Time’s reference to celebrity culture is symptomatic of the suspicion and disdain surrounding what has been labelled “pop feminism”. And this is especially true when it comes to sexuality and sex-positive activism: since the commercialization of sex is seen as oppressive to women, the conjunction of feminism and popular culture is often considered silly and deceptive. This Paper focuses on the SlutWalk and the many debates it has raised. I argue that this movement is particularly relevant to addressing the current issues and tensions surrounding popular culture, feminism, and sex-positive activism. In addition to its specific media coverage, the SlutWalk has been the subject of much criticism, especially amongst feminists. According to many critics, just like hegemonic pop culture, the SlutWalk would be white, sexy, and commercial. First, I will offer a contextualization of the SlutWalk emphasizing how past events, forms of activism, and debates within feminism have led to what is now perceived as “a neoliberal and postfeminist sensibility circulating in popular culture” (Gill & Donaghue, 2013). Then, by means of a critical analysis of the discourses produced about the SlutWalk within the feminist blogosphere, I will demonstrate how the polemics surrounding the SlutWalk rearticulate old arguments about female agency, sexual pleasure, and feminist commitment. More specifically, I will highlight how, by resorting to binary oppositions, which characterize both popular culture and mainstream feminism (e.g. pleasure/danger, oppression/resistance), these discourses articulate a politics of respectability (Skeggs, 1997) and set the normative contours of the “good feminist subject”.