Most women have at one time in their lives being called a slut for the way they dress or for not conforming to some saintly code of conduct that applies only to women.

Dictionaries are filled with words used to insult women: whore, tart and tramp, for starters. But no word equals slut for its power to degrade and wound one half of the population. Interestingly, there’s no male equivalent of the word slut.

A quick glance at the history books shows that the slut-word has been part of patriarchal societies for centuries. The great patriarchal fear of women not knowing their place found expression in the word slattern, used to abuse women who didn’t keep a clean house, and later, slut, to describe women of loose morals.

Slut has been in popular usage ever since. Google ‘porn’ and see how often slut comes up in the title. The mass media love a slut, and, recently, policy changes to welfare payments for teenage mothers were underpinned by a subtext (or was that a dog-whistle), one where defenceless young women were portrayed as lazy, uneducated and of questionable morality.

So when I heard about SlutWalk – protests motivated by a policeman in Toronto who told schoolgirls not to dress like sluts if they didn’t want to be ‘victimised’ – I hopped on email and Facebook to spread the news. I was excited that women were taking on the slut-word and taking over the streets. I was also encouraged that a young generation of women were putting a more media-savvy spin on a feminism whose concerns have gone the way of Keynesian economics.

But as I was dragging out the fishnets and red lippy, I began to question if dressing in a way that reinforces the objectification of women would yet again mean that women were seen and not heard. Certainly, the titillation surrounding the slut-word, and pictures of women who look as if they’ve been auditioning for Victoria’s Secret, seem to have lost the campaign its most important message: men are responsible for sexual violence – women don’t ask for it and they don’t deserve it.

The belief that men are driven to rape or to assault women because of the way women look or dress is one of patriarchy’s most powerful and pervasive messages. Given that we are socialised within a patriarchy, it’s worth considering how much free will we exercise when we decide what we wear even when participating in a protest for women’s rights.

Rather than a challenge to capitalist culture, which has co-opted women to sell goods in the marketplace and perform unpaid labour, the sexual glam of SlutWalk risks reinforcing the commodification of women’s bodies. This sends the wrong message to young women (and men) already indoctrinated by hypersexualised images of women that are as much a celebration of capitalism as anything else.

SlutWalk, at this early stage, seems less politically motivated than campaigns such as Reclaim the Night (RTN), a global movement that began in the 70s, which also held (and still does) protests against sexual violence. RTN challenged the advice of male authority, arguing that men, not women, should stay home at night so women could feel safe on the streets after dark. A little more than a decade later, the sexually charged radical-punk movement Riotgrrrl gave birth to girl bands whose music addressed sexual violence and female self-determination (not to mention beergutboyrock), as well as being critical of capitalism. And then there was girl-power, but I won’t go there.

The sight of women taking control of the message and holding banners with slut written loud and proud is seductive; another reading is that women have accepted male terms rather than determine their own. And in spite of the rhetoric, is it really that easy to reclaim a word that for centuries has been used to hurt and humiliate women?

Instead of adopting or adapting the slut-word, SlutWalk might better use its popularity and energy to call for changes to a legal system that re-traumatises women when they report rape, and demand that perpetrators of sexual violence are made accountable by the courts. Maybe that way slut will come to mean a woman who stands up for herself.

I’ll still join SlutWalk, sans fishnets and red lipstick, because anything that attracts attention to sexual violence is worthwhile, and the more support we give this movement, the more likely it will be a growing force for change.

But if the most radical thing we can do is look hot and join men in branding ourselves sluts, capitalism and patriarchy will have notched up another victory on its bedpost.