Boston SlutWalk
Powerdressing at the Boston SlutWalk … ‘Sluttiness is in the eye of the beholder’. Photograph: JOSH REYNOLDS/FR25426 AP

The first time I was called it, I am not sure I knew exactly what it meant. I was being told off. I was always being told off. I had rolled up the waistband of my green pleated skirt to make it shorter, as we all did. Miss Shipp took me aside and told me I looked like a slut. I was 11. I was to become well versed in the ways of sluthood, which were many and varied. Eating chips in the street was sluttish, apparently. Talking to boys while wearing your school uniform was the height of slutdom. "I'll just take mine off then Miss," I said, which I thought was hilariously witty.

To be a slut was, to my mind, mostly fun, and to do with wearing and doing what you liked. My mum told me that when she had wanted pierced ears and my grandma said that was sluttish, she walked into the hall, stood in front of the mirror and pierced her own ears with a hat pin. She also wore an anklet that the neighbours said was a sign of being a prostitute. So I soon acquired one of those.

Still, though, Mum often disapproved of my clothes, even when I was fairly covered up. She never liked the tutu-and-leather jacket ensemble. "Ipswich," she used to say, "is not ready for footless tights." What she considered most slutty was the state of my bedroom. A total tip.

When I went home in a We Are All Prostitutes T-shirt, (the Pop Group), PVC skirt and ripped fishnets, she simply sighed that it was a shame I didn't make more of myself. Much of the gear of those days, before the actual punk uniform came in, was deliberately "sluttish". We messed around in thigh-length boots and bin bags, and rubber and suspenders, clasps and corsets out of Oxfam shops. I don't think I have ever looked less approachable. Clothes are a vocabulary, and one that we hammered the meaning out of. We took the signs of "sex" and tore them up. Wore them with defiance. We may have looked whorish, often quite disgusting. Attractive? I'll pass on that. Guys shied away. Did they call us names? Probably. Well, that was kind of the idea. This was powerdressing, but not of the 1980s corporate kind.

Maybe this is why "slut" seems mild to me. But now I see people getting fairly worked up about this very bad word used by men about women. I have only ever heard it used by women about women. My older girls don't use it. They think there are far worse words out there – slag and skank and ho, just for starters. They live in a world where "alternative" comedians make incredibly misogynistic jokes all the time; where female bodies are commodified in every other music video. No wonder they are quite at ease with the upcoming SlutWalk, a demonstration following the one in Toronto, where women gathered to protest about sexual assault and rape. The original SlutWalk came about because of an idiotic remark by a Canadian cop about there being fewer sexual assaults on campus if women stopped "dressing like sluts".

This is a warped but fairly common view of sexuality. Women ask for it. Men can't help but act on impulse. If women wear short skirts or show their bra straps they are sending out the wrong signals to men, who are so simple-minded that they ignore what women say and force sex on them. This attitude is one of the reasons for our low conviction rates on rape, and is as likely to be held by female as well as male jurors. Anything other than a greying sports bra is seen as in invitation to rape.

But if rape is understood as a confusion about outfits, then the solution is that we all wear burqas. No woman in a burqa is ever abused, is she? But the thinking behind the get-up is similar. Sexual desire, or nine tenths of it, somehow resides in the female. This does not explain why some men rape babies. Or elderly women. In war, rape is increasing used as a weapon of mass destruction. Dying, mutilated women are raped in front of their children. I hardly think this is to do with "stripper shoes" and miniskirts.

Personally, then, I am heartened to see the number of younger women joining the SlutWalks, which are becoming part of an international movement. There are rumours of one in Tehran. Of course, an amount of the press attention is because some demonstrators are scantily dressed, but actually most of them are in normal clothes. Anyone, male or female, can go, and wear whatever they feel comfortable in. Actually, the summer uniform of a vest top and shorts is as revealing as what many of these girls wear anyway.

There are some feminists who object to this reclamation of the word "slut", but the Take Back the Night or Reclaim the Street marches did not get this much mainstream attention. The Hollaback! movement, set up to combat street harassment, is also international. One of the many things it does is to use technology by snapping pictures of harassers and posting them for all to see. A good way of flashing.

Still the argument goes that, unlike "queer" or "nigger", we can't simply reclaim a word that has been used against women. Using it doesn't make the hate disappear.

But I don't object to all the connotations of slut. I also like "slattern", a fine Joycean word (to slatter is to spill or slop). I even like slovenly, because in these days of ever-more wholesome and sanitized coupling, I like the idea of women being chaotic, messy and having whatever sex they want.

The Tory MP Louise Bagshawe, who is often terrific on women's rights, objects to SlutWalk on the grounds that it "lionises promiscuity", which she says is harmful. But when did feminism lose any concept of sexual liberation? Why are we still so afraid of female sexuality? What is the masculine for slut? I think you will find it is bloke.

There has been an understandable reaction against "sex-positive" feminism, which was in itself a reaction to the perceived puritanism of earlier versions. Clearly though, lap dancing, tit jobs and imitating porn stars has been empowering of nothing but the rather dull status quo. No woman has to suddenly adore sex or like dressing up, but some girls do. And always will.

What I still hate are dumb rules. Too sexy or not sexy enough. Indeed, at my age, there is a list of things I am not allowed to wear, except possibly a floral tent or a shroud. Female dress is no one else's business. I no more want burqas banned than I want bikinis banned. To see a grassroots movement that brings together young women who say "hands off our bodies, and our clothes" is fabulous.

For sluttiness is always in the eye of the beholder. When Germaine Greer criticised my cleavage, hair and "fuck-me shoes" aeons ago, it felt very much like my mum saying: "You are not going out dressed like that."

But the thing is, I was. I was going exactly where I wanted. As I hope those who go SlutWalking are, too.