The SlutWalk protest marches began on April 3, 2011, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and became a movement of rallies across the world. Participants protest against explaining or excusing rape by referring to any aspect of a woman's appearance. The rallies began when Constable Michael Sanguinetti, a Toronto Police officer, suggested that to remain safe, "women should avoid dressing like sluts." The protest takes the form of a march, mainly by young women, where some dress provocatively, like sluts. There are also speaker meetings and workshops. Some objectors have remarked that this approach is an example of women defining their sexuality in male terms.
There have been a number of responses to the SlutWalk phenomenon, not all of them positive. For example, Australian commentator Andrew Bolt observed that guidance on how to dress in any given context is simply risk management, and such advice need not exclude opposition to victim-blaming. Rod Liddle agrees, saying "...I have a perfect right to leave my windows open when I nip to the shops for some fags, without being burgled. It doesn’t lessen the guilt of the burglar that I’ve left my window open, or even remotely suggest that I was deserving of being burgled. Just that it was more likely to happen." Mike Strobel even suggests that the approach SlutWalk is advocating is dangerous, and he would not advise a daughter to dress "provocatively in iffy circumstances." But Jessica Valenti says: "The idea that women’s clothing has some bearing on whether they will be raped is a dangerous myth feminists have tried to debunk for decades."
