Walk Of Shame

Indian Women Divided Over 'Slut Walk'

Sonya Barnett, organizer of the April protest in Toronto, said it was important to draw attention to “shame the victim” attitudes, according to a CBC News report on the walk. These include highlighting the way a rape victim is dressed or her relationships. The college student who is organizing the Delhi walk agreed with that.

“You cannot justify violence by saying that the woman was not appropriately dressed,” said Umang Sabarwal, 19, who is studying journalism at Delhi University. Indian women are conditioned to behave in a certain way so as to “protect themselves,” while men are hardly ever told how to behave, she added.

“Why am I told not to wear skimpy clothes at night or make eye contact with strangers who stare at me?” asked Ms. Sabarwal. “Every section of society is putting pressure on [the woman] to feel ashamed.”

The walk, which was early supposed to take place in June but is now set to take place in late July, also has a Hindi name—Besharmi Morcha—which translates as Shameless Walk, or alternatively, Walk Without Shame.

But in recent days, some Indian women have bristled at the idea of taking the streets in this fashion, and some men have derided it , mostly in the pages of the Hindustan Times daily.

Reacting to the use of the word “slut,” columnist Seema Goswami wrote in Brunch , the Hindustan Times Sunday magazine, “I’m no slut; and I will be damned before I ever refer to myself as one.”

She said that the walk represented a double standard being set for men and women.

“What we are effectively saying is that women have the right to sexualize their environment if they feel like it,” wrote Ms. Goswami. “But the men around them must do nothing of this sort – for fear of being dismissed as Neanderthals and hit with a sexual harassment action.”

Ms. Goswami also said, however, that she agreed with the organizers of the march that rape isn’t a woman’s fault even if she is provocatively dressed, although she went on to draw a slightly cringe-inducing analogy between a sexily dressed woman attracting the wrong sort of attention and being robbed after you “leave your front door unlocked.”

“You turned yourself into an easier target because of your actions – and you have to take the rap for that,” she wrote.

In an email to India Real Time this week, Ms. Goswami added that it would be nice to live in a world where women didn’t need to take measures to protect themselves, but “the truth is that we have to survive in the world as it exists.

Tracy Morgan's Walk Of Shame Continues As He Apologizes In ...

," Morgan said. “ I pride myself on 20 years, 18 years of standup, using it to heal people and not hurt. That was my whole thing and I hurt people with this. So, from the bottom of my heart, I apologize to everybody who I offended with my words on stage in Nashville and anywhere else. I just apologize to you… To err is human, but to forgive is divine. These young people here forgave me… I just want to take this opportunity to help and not hurt.