Well, the birthday is a bit rubbish but it has given me the opportunity to catch up on the excellent Five Live early-morning debates hosted by Nicky Campbell – and I’ve just finished listening to the SlutWalk discussion.

The basic tenant of a SlutWalk is women walking in support of being able to wear whatever they like and protest that this should have no bearing on how they are then perceived sexually. It was a very politically correct debate for the most part, with people dancing around the issue – which wouldn’t have been the case twenty years ago. No, twenty years ago I’d wager some significantly more forthright, and probably cutting, views would have been put into the discussion.

However, for all the various nuances, my viewpoint is fairly simple.

If we were living in a utopian society, of course there would be no question of the clothes a woman wears having a negative impact. And even in our obviously non-utopian society, the vast, vast majority of men wouldn’t take the various states of undress as an open invitation to have sex with them. Problem is we don’t live in a utopian society, and there are less than fine, upstanding citizens out there who would and by force. And there is nothing anyone can do about it re: prevention – just like we can’t do anything about murder and all the other various forms of crime. You can punish, but no-one has yet solved the thorny issue of prevention.

Just like we have burglar alarms on our property and just like you don’t easily open your front door after dark, our society demands a certain degree of common sense. That I shouldn’t need to protect my property is exactly the same basic argument as is being used by those taking part in the SlutWalks – problem is that I do. Society is, unfortunately, broken and is, for want of a better phrase, full of scum who will take rather than earn. And I’ll bet that those on these marches hit their four-digit codes as they left their house, and locked their car – making sure there were no obvious valuables visible. In other words, they were minimising the risk. And if you do so for property, which is replaceable, then why would people not extend this paranoia to themselves? For some point of principle? Laudable, but high-ideals doesn’t offer any protection.

The world is a dangerous place to be, and therefore the concept behind the SlutWalk is naivety at it’s most dangerously, and idealisticly, foolish.