People take part in the SlutWalk protest in Reykjavik, Iceland, July 25, 2015. Nearly 30,000 Icelanders participated in the SlutWalk protest against slut-shaming regarding sexual abuse on Saturday. (Xinhua/Huang Xiaonan)
by Huang Xiaonan, Xie Binbin
REYKJAVIK, July 25 (Xinhua) -- About 30,000 Icelanders came out of home to the streets in this world northernmost capital city of Iceland on Saturday for a march of the SlutWalk, protesting against slut-shaming regarding sexual abuse.
Beginning on April 3, 2011 in Toranto in a respanse to Toronto police officer Constable Michael Sanguinetti's suggestion that "women should avoid dressing like sluts" as a precaution against sexual assault, SlutWalk has so far become a transnational movement of protest marches and was held for the fifth time in Reykjavik.
Holding slogans reading "Protect victims of sexual violence", "I will stand with you", the marchers chanted "I am a slut, don't rape me!"
As one of the organizers who have initially introduced the SlutWalk into Iceland from 2011, Sunna Ben Gudrunardottir described the slut-shaming as "ridiculous".
"It's very important. It's an important discussion. It's an important topic. The first year we did this, it was started in Toronto, not by us, but we adopted the idea," she told Xinhua.
"It was because a police officer over there said that if women would stop dressing slutly, they would stop being assaulted, which is ridiculous. So that's why it's called the Slut Walk. That's why we use this word because it doesn't matter how you dress, no one is allowed to hurt you. This is our theme or like our concept," she said.
"An Icelandic police officer had said something similar a while before. It's a discussion that's been around for a very long time and we just want to stop it. It's going well as you can see," said Sunna Ben.
The main goal of SlutWalk is set to stop slut-shaming regarding sexual abuse and to tell people the responsibility does never lie with the victim but with the violator.
Delighted to see so many participants, another organizer Maria Kristinsdottir told Xinhua that here in Iceland and in the world, people don't talk about sexual abuse. They would hide their dark secrets and don't talk about it.
"But with this slut walk, we want people open up and talk about sexual abuse," she said.
Among the protest marchers is Lilja Jakobsdottir. The Islandic university student told Xinhua that it is important to have the rights to your own body.
"You should control your body what to do with it and no one can be able to define you from what you wear or treat your body in the way you don't want to," she said.
"It's people's getting together for the course that's really important for all of us," she said, "because this is a part of a revolution in Iceland. You have so many familiar things going on here and we are just in the middle of the revolution right now."
