'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.

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?

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.

Women's commission suggests dress code in MP

Lengthen the skirts, control the crime?

Link from Amit Varma over at India Uncut

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

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.

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.

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