In January this year, a Canadian police officer suggested that to avoid being victims of sexual attack, women should stop dressing like “sluts”. Slutwalks have grown up around the world in protest and on 11 h June, it is the turn of London.

I had to think about it; there is a part of me that can kind of see what he is talking about, young girls teetering around city centres late at night, in skyscraper heels and tiny skirts definitely look as though they are “up for it”.

I wonder why they want to give out that message. Do public figures like Katie Price really provide them with role models to aspire to? Is baring flesh still seen as a reliable route to success? Or is the suggestion that they would be prepared to have sex with a man, before they go home, a desperate plea to connect, a thwarted yearning for love or affection? I suppose my issue was around the mixed messages that provocative dressing gives out, and the suspicion that maybe it is prompted by unhappiness?

That said, I do believe that how we dress is a matter of individual choice and expression. To suggest that men are unable to stop themselves when presented with a provocatively dressed woman is ludicrous and strips them of any responsibility for their actions. The idea that our appearance is responsible for inciting sexual assault is just one step away from donning the burka for our own protection.

Freud is often caricatured as being sex mad, and he did theorize that libido is a major part of our life force, but even his psychosexual model of development allowed that, bar a late surge in adolescence, the urge for sex is managed within our psyche. Maslow also suggested that sex is at the very bottom of our hierarchy of needs, along with food, shelter etc, it is part of what we need to survive. But again, that doesn’t suggest that the need is uncontrollable, if we followed that argument through supermarkets would keep their wares behind lock and key to prevent men from overeating!

Thank God I have never been assaulted, but this is not just about rape, it’s about the guy in the office who talks to your breasts not your face, the shop keeper who contrives to stroke your palm when giving back your change, the commuter pressed up closer that he needs to be in rush hour, all those men who think by virtue of the fact that you are a woman, it’s ok to objectify you.

So, I’m slutwalking to say; my body belongs to me, and “no” means “no”.