Slutwalk and sectarianism

On FaceBook, Juan G posted a link to an analysis of Slutwalk:

http://www.yasminnair.net/content/slutwalk-end-feminism "If Slutwalk is to remain relevant, it needs to become more than a gathering where people share stories about their abuse. Without a critical self-awareness and a willingness to address and act upon the structural, economic, and political problems that face women and others, Slutwalk is in danger of becoming the Halloween of feminism: the one day of the year when women feel empowered to dress in scanty clothes and call themselves sluts, but which leaves them without the power with which to actually make and create the kind of change that goes beyond an Obama slogan.

There is nothing insignificant about the demand that people not be harassed or worse for how they dress, but reclaiming “slut” is only the beginning. There is a particularly vapid form of activism that has overtaken the left-progressive world, where mostly people of colour and other oppressed groups engage in “story-telling.” This works like a drum circle, an endless chanting of personal woes that drowns out the structural components of capitalism, and allows for the construction of a fiercer, more powerful neoliberalism that uses the realm of the personal to erase our consciousness of the destruction of our social, political, and economic resources." - a thought-provoking piece ;0

I made the following comment:


We can see it a bit like this... Every powerful movement covers a broad spectrum, from very radical to ultra-cautious, and the more powerful and long-term it is, the more kaleidoscopic and varied the colours and pieces making up the mosaic. Important historical movements affecting huge numbers of people (like universal democratic issues such as national independence, freedom of association and expression, and women's emancipation) include tendencies so clearly delimited from each other that they seem to be totally incompatible, even if they are mainstream in relation to the extremes. 
Slutwalk is one of these apparently separate mainstream trends. It doesn't advocate a castration for every rape, for instance, and it doesn't hide in the gut of male chauvinism like some ultra-respectable tapeworm, so it's not extreme. But it seems incompatible with rational class-based socialist programmes for women's liberation.
So let's not see it as a threat to feminism, but as a partial ally, doing our work for us in places we can't and don't really want to reach. Not the way we would do it, naturally, but nonetheless.
In the 1926 General Strike in Britain the students were out fighting the workers and scabbing alongside the cops and troops. In 1968 they weren't. In some situations the petty bourgeoisie goes rabid and supports the most brutal exploitation of the workers and farmers - Germany and Italy in the 1930s, say. In others it sides with the broad masses and boosts the forces of emancipation - Russia 1917, Cuba 1959, for instance. In yet others it vacillates - as in Venezuela today where the petty bourgeois nationalist military leadership opposes imperialism and its local lackeys.
Our job is to explain, agitate and lead working women and girls in a revolutionary socialist movement for women's emancipation. We haven't really started in this task yet, so naturally people who want to see things change join what's available and visible. Like Slutwalk.
Slutwalk and similar movements show us what gets people angry and on their feet, and reveal all sorts of creativity and humour in mobilization that we're not too good at ourselves. 
Hell, I welcome the appearance of extremes! It shows things are happening, things are moving. If we handle the extremes well it gives us a perfect opportunity to define our own position as clear and rational - that is, as the most attractive and human position to take.
We need to get out of the habit of smacking down every trend in the broad movement that riles us. It's defensive and sectarian. And if we can't handle the variety and human cussedness in our own movement, how the hell will we be able to handle the variety and cussedness of real world society when the capitalists have been kicked out and we get to run the country??