30.6.06

'DID YOU ASK FOR IT?'



1000 clothes in 40 days clothing meter counts 99 !!

Our volunteers are in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kashmir, Kolkata, Jaipur, Portblair, Singapore, Pune,...to contribute your one garment, write to us and get in touch with your city Blank Noise volunteer!

If you would like to volunteer your time and collect clothes towards the Blank Noise Campaign, Did You Ask For It? from your city, contact us at blurtblanknoise AT gmail.com

About 'Did You Ask For It?'


Whenever an incident of eve teasing or street sexual harassment takes place, the first thing most women themselves and the listeners to the incident ask is ' what was she wearing?' ,' did she 'provoke him'?

Testimonials of street sexual harassment/ eve teasing from women across age groups, and from diverse places tells us that women get sexually harassed in no matter what they wear.

Blank Noise also believes that women do have a right to feel good about themselves, and wear what they please, without being sexually violated, because 'you' think she's 'avaliable'.

We question, defy, and attempt to put an end to the argument that women 'ask for it'. To establish 'asking for it' as a mere excuse for sexual harassment, we are asking all women to send in one garment that they wore when they were eve teased.

Each contributed garment comes from someone's incident as a testimony, or a witness and forms part of a larger collective.

You could chose to send text, describing yourself, or the incident along with the garment.

The garments given will be strung together and installed in a public site. We require 1000 or more clothes from participants all over. The installation of clothing testimonials will travel across cities Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai...

We have collected 99 clothes so far. 901 more to go!
The clothes collected include saris, salwar kameez, school uniforms, track pants, t shirts, jeans..

Thankyou Sridevi, Gayathri, Manjula, Prasheila, Payal, Bhumika, Ratna, Naini, Sakthy, Rajvi, Meena, Sahana, Neha, Tanisha, Shravanti, Sneha, Sharda, Suren and his friends/ sister in Chennai, Naveed and Asiya from Baramulla Kashmir, Aarti, Pratima, ....

To participate, volunteer, send clothes contact us at 98868 40612 or email at blurtblanknoise AT gmail.com

thankyou for participating

There is power in numbers.

29.6.06

Rape or not?

She got very drunk one night and woke up to realise that she had sex with someone in a corridor and could not remember whether or not she had consented to it. The man in question says she was aware they were having intercourse. She says she wasn't. So she files a case and the judge says - drunken consent is still consent. And therefore, rules that she was not raped.

The case has sparked off a tizzy.

What's your take? Rape? Drunken sex? Fair judgement?

28.6.06

WATCH OUT !

Blank Noise Project will be featured on Times Now , news channel.

Saturday, July 1st at 10 30 pm. The story will be featured in a programme called ' All About Her'.

The same episode will be repeated in the next week on
Wednesday at 4.30 p.m. and on Saturday at 2.00 p.m.

20.6.06

Dispersing testimonials - Mumbai

Blank Noise Mumbai's intervention has been cancelled due to a sudden emergency. But please email blanknoisemumbai@gmail.com to be informed of the change in date/ venue. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Chennai this Sat

Y R U LOOKING AT ME ?

Chennai Blank Noise
location:
ISPAHANI CENTER ON NUNGAMBAKKAM HIGH ROAD
Saturday. June 24th at 5 pm

Blank Noise Chennai will intervene on the streets with Y R U LOOKING AT ME? this has been sucessfully done in the past in both Bangalore and Mumbai.

list of participants: Gayathri, Priyanka Bhatt, Pavithra, Uma G, Lakshmi, Anna, George, Divya, Padma, Sushmita, Nina, Jai Krishna..

total number of women participants needed to form the sentence: 14
documenters: 2
participants to distribute Blank Noise pamphlets at the traffic signal: 4

Come along!

To participate email us at

blurtblanknoise AT gmail.com


17.6.06

VT Subway, Bombay - Testimonials

The Bombay group - Deepa, Pallavi, Piroja, Rajvi, Shriya, Shreeda, Sonika - distributed testimonials in the VT Subway on Friday, June 16.

Photos and the girls' perceptions of the intervention to follow.

I chose Jasmeen's testimonial for the blogathon because I think this sums up what we're trying to achieve with Blank Noise - Who we are, where we go, what we wear, how we sit, stand, talk, walk in our very own cities. When we demand the need to make our cities non-threatening , I don’t expect anyone to think of me as their sister or mother, but to really look at women as citizens who have every right to be out on the streets, without any explanation. Sometimes we just love to walk, stand around, hang around, without looking ‘avaliable'.

We stood around the subway - such a teeming public space - watching the crowds rush past, staring back at men who stared at us. Some rushed away, some came to take a testimonial, while others seemed to think it was some sort of a game and tried to stare as long as possible. What was empowering was this reclamation, in whatever small sense, of a subway that women use every single day, and get harassed in.

We also plan another Bombay intervention on Sunday, June 25. If you're interested in participating, please mail chininath@rediffmail.com.

16.6.06

Rakhi Sawant

"Culture". Clothes. Provocation. Past Behaviour. Exaggerated affront.

But at the end of the day (party), a No is a NO is a NO.

Uma MD on the Rakhi Sawant-Mika Singh episode.

15.6.06

TODAY

Hello,

Am in Chennai and would like to meet anyone interested in extending this online talk.

AMETHYST:
(Amethyst is situated at Gopalapuram between Lloyds Road abd Peters Road. Its the first right when you come from the Mount Road end on Lloyds road after you go past DAV school. It the last left before you hit Mount Road, just before Saravana Bhavan.)

Time: 6 pm

Date: 16. 6. 2006 {TODAY}

let's meet, let's get it started

contact: 98868 40612

In chennai today

13.6.06

BLANK NOISE HYDERABAD: DISPERSING TESTIMONIALS






Blank Noise Hyderabad Team participants for the first public intervention included
1. Ratna- also from Blank Noise Blore
2. Tanu
3. Arshi
4. Diya
5. Vrinda
6. Lakshmi
7. Meghna
8. Soumya
9. Ambrish
10. Bobby
11. Venkat
12. Krishna
13. Amit
14. Uday

photos by Uday and Ambrish

Blank Noise Hyderabad intervened at Eat Street and an open ground adjacent to it, by giving random strangers letters. These letters contained blogger's testimonials of eve teasing (from the blogathon).

A more detailed account from email extracts:

Ratna:
Blank Noise Hyderabad met at 5.00 p .m at ES, began working on folding the letters etc. Later we found out that the ES security guards weren't going to allow us to distribute pamphlets even on the pavement outside and also that distributing pamphlets itself was banned in Hyderabad!

[ES is a food court type thing- partly open air, on a road by the lake that also has parks etc, so we started outside ES and walked along the road through the park and also through an exhibition. Outside ES and along the road the people were - a lot of young men and some older men and families too, but the area wasn't crowded at al

The women stood along the wall and stared/ tried to keep people’s gaze.

The women volunteers leaned against a wall and gave a letter bearing an eve teasing testimonials to people amongst public (mostly men) who responded in some way.

The group also went to a mela ground like place and the women volunteers just hung out at different spots maintaining eye contact. The men played the role of passive observers, spoke to people, photographed and distributed pamphlets/testimonials to people who they thought were responding to the situation or even ‘checking us out’

Arshi says:
To begin with it was very difficult for me to stare back at men. Even after trying it a couple of times I felt really uneasy when one person continued looking at me, rather scanning me up and down. On giving him the letter he continued smiling, as if I had handed him a love letter. I stood across the path to see his reaction. While reading he kept biting his lips, winking and showing it to his friends. The letter did not seem to affect him.

After a while he noticed the other women around me and men carrying pamphlets, some clicking photographs. Then probably out of fear or curiosity he began a conversation with Uday and (Ridiculous enough!!) even showed interest in joining BNP.

I had to give him the "unwanted" sticker. This time he did not make any eye contact and looked apologetic. Next time I'm sure he would think twice before indulging in eve teasing


Uday says:

Some of the comment heard yesterday:
1. "What are you guys doing about Adam teasing? You guys need to keep track of the trends. As one of the victims of it, I can tell you its more of adam teasing that takes place these days." - This came from a guy who was obviously trying to hit on one of the participants, while the intervention was on, so I stepped in to talk to him.

2. "Which newspaper are you from? Plz dont publish our snaps, plz understand we come from respectible families and it will get very embarrasing if you publish our snaps."

3. "They are asking us not to tease girls who wear bad clothes (?)". This came in response to a question from a passerby as what we were doing. The question was obv aimed at us, but this decided to step in and answer it for us. Incidentally he was a buddy of the guy who made the statement in 2. He actually said this in telugu - "chadda battalu". When asked what he meant by "bad" clothes, he listed, sleeveless tops and mini skirts. The person who asked what we were dng there said "Being a man, if I can wear a ull shirt and trousers, why do the women dress themselves in such short clothes?"

more coming up...

The act of dispersing testimonials in the form of letters also took place in Delhi and Chennai on the 28th of May.

Thankyou for reading...

Blank Noise Hyd.

9.6.06

BLANK NOISE HYDERABAD!

June 10th from 5 30 pm

Hyderabad Blank Noise intervenes in the city's Eat Street !


The Blank Noise team Hyderabad, will disperse testimonials of eve teasing in the form of a letters via performance.

The group comprises Uday Prakash Tekumalla, Ambrish Bansal, Diya Shivlani, Ratna Apenender, Tanushree Parial, Arshi Singh, Soumya Divakarla, Bobby Yerra, Lakshmi Kishore, Poorna Shashank, Vrinda Chandra Shekhar, Krishna Atkuru, Vicky/ Vignesh Ramakrishnan...and others...

The team meets inside ES at 5 pm.
To join in call: Uday at
98 66 10 36 30 Ambrish at 939 3333 522

3.6.06

BLANK NOISE THINGS...



CLAIM IT IF YOU'VE PARTICIPATED!
A NON CITY SPECIFIC ONE COMING UP FOR ALL THOSE FROM EVERYWHERE ELSE BUT THE CITIES MENTIONED.

2.6.06

ONE DAY IN THE COUNTRY: DELHI



Delhi: South Ex Market 1

Delhi Team- Shruti of Jagori, Monica Mody, Raj Shekhar, Amit Kendurkar, Sharad Kapor, Sumati, Geetha Bhardwaj, Nikita Doval, Svetha, Param Singh, Shruti ( 2)...Sakthy

Ive been told that there were more...incase youve been missed out in this list please mail me or hemangini at blurtblanknoise@gmail.com

here's what delhi blank noise did:

maintained eye contact with passersby. stood stiff in their locations and gave a letter bearing a testimonial of eve teasing to anyone who reacted to their fixed gaze. it could be anyone in the public- eve teaser, mute spectator, 'victim'. The testimonials were taken from the Blank Noise Blogathon, where bloggers shared incidents of 'eve teasing'/ street sexual harassment, online.

Our male participants distributed Blank Noise and Jagori's safe Delhi campaign material in the meantime.

The results were open ended....hear it from Svetha and others as they write in....

At first i was very apprehensive about staring back at the starer. i guess i am just conditioned to NOT making any eye contact with men on streets. but i think the fact that i was with a group who would all be staring as well was good because it allowed me to shake off my own apprehension.

Being able to stare back at the person and give him a letter was a very empowering feeling. This was a fantastic idea! There was even a point when I felt it would be very useful for me if I could hand out these letters just generally when I am walking on the streets by myself to every single man who letches/whistle/passes remarks at me. But I think I abandoned that idea this idea because I am not sure I would be able to stare back and hand out testimonies when I am alone.

I handed out a lot of testimonies to many men. There was one point when there was a cop who was letching but I did not give him a letter because I was scared that I might get arrested or something.

Overall I think the intervention helped to change my opinion about south ex. I would never have thought about just standing around and just…well… being over there at all before. But now I realize that it is possible to do so and that I can :-) so that is great :--) -Svetha


ONE DAY IN THE COUNTRY: CHENNAI


MEET THE CHENNAI TEAM!

from left to right: Swarna, Sudhish, Shilpa, Anuradha, Jaikrishna,
Vignesh, Vivek, Darshan and Diya.

The team distributed Blank Noise tamil/ english pamphlets at Beasant Nagar Beach, Chennai.
Our female participants stood frozen maintaining eye contact with public present and giving a pamphlet to the chosen one.

(the point was to actually disperse testimonials of eve teasing in the form of hand folded letters/ private notes along with pamphlets that were being distributed in the peripheries anyways..didn not quite happen in the last min...so that's for next time!)

thanking Darshan and Sudhish for the video documentation+ personal responses to the intervention!

to view the video click on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzRRA0zNpvs