{"id":1342,"date":"2011-06-27T14:37:05","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T14:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=1342"},"modified":"2011-06-27T16:38:32","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T16:38:32","slug":"slutwalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=1342","title":{"rendered":"Slutwalk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some years ago I went to one of the personal safety training courses run by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust<\/em> that had been organised at my workplace. I was the only man in the group there, although much of the advice that was being given there was relevant to me as I made a habit of walking around obscure parts of London with a bag carrying almost \u00a310,000 pounds worth of equipment on my left shoulder, stopping occasionally in some very isolated areas to display some of it to any prospective muggers.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if it happens now at these courses, but among the personal advice given to us by the woman trainer was the suggestion that we could reduce the risk to ourselves from sexual assault by dressing in a deliberately unprovocative way. It wasn’t a part of the course that I felt particularly applied to me, but it caused no outrage among the others taking the course, who I think regarded it as sensible advice. And there was certainly some other advice I found useful, and its perhaps why I have yet to be mugged while taking picutres.<\/p>\n

But as is often the case, what matters is how advice about behaviour is given and by whom, and for a male police officer to talk in a way that might be taken to suggest that some of the blame for a criminal act is due to the victim is clearly going to cause considerable offence.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

Of course there is no excuse for rape under any circumstances, and the women on the slutwalk were certainly making the point clearly that “whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes, NO MEANS NO<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

Being a man photographing women in a demonstration like this required a certain sensitivity that I don’t think all the photographers present showed.\u00a0 One of the many placards I photographed\u00a0 said ‘Don’t be so distracted by the underwear that you forget THIS MARCH IS ABOUT RAPE’ and it was a sentiment that I had tried to keep in mind throughout, with most of my pictures concentrating on those who were using the event to put forward clear ideas about the issues.<\/p>\n

Of course I didn’t always agree with what the protesters were saying.\u00a0 I don’t for example think it sensible to call for Ken Clarke to go as the mass produced SWP posters did, if only because any replacement would almost certainly be a right wing bigot with less sensible views on almost every issue. Nor did I think I was\u00a0 “thinking like a rapist” when I was photographing a placard that accused me of it; what I was trying to do was to think how I could effectively get across the message that these protesters were trying to convey.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

You can see quite a few more of my pictures from the event in Slutwalk London<\/a> on My London Diary. Here are a couple more of my own favourites.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some years ago I went to one of the personal safety training courses run by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust that had been organised at my workplace. I was the only man in the group there, although much of the advice that was being given there was relevant to me as I made a habit of … Continue reading Slutwalk<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-photo-issues","category-political-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}