| Blank Noise | |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of project | Community, Public art |
| Location | India |
| Founder | Jasmeen Patheja |
| Established | 2003 |
| Website | blanknoise |
Blank Noise is a community/public art project that seeks to confront street harassment, commonly known as eve teasing, in India. [1] [2] The project, initiated by Jasmeen Patheja in August 2003, started out as a student project at Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in Bangalore and has since spread out to other cities in India. [3]
Blank Noise is led and run completely by volunteers. A core team of male and female volunteers from across geographical locations and age groups work with the collective. Blank Noise seeks to trigger public dialogue on the issue of street sexual harassment. Conversations range from collectively building a definition of "eve-teasing" to defining the boundaries of "teasing", "harassment", "flirting". The collective builds testimonials of street sexual violence, harassment and "eve-teasing" and disperses them back in public, thereby creating public debate. [3]
It addresses women's fear based relationship with their cities via direct street action and public interventions, which ask women to be "Action Heroes" by not being idle in public. [3] They are referred to as Blank Noise Guys. Blank Noise works towards an attitudinal shift towards 'eve-teasing' and involves the public to take collective responsibility of the issue.
Though Blank Noise was founded in Bangalore, it has spread to other cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, and Lucknow. It tackles the notion of shame and blame through campaigns such as "I never ask for it" (ask to be sexually harassed when on the streets). [4] A major notion that it seeks to dispel is that women get harassed because of the clothing they wear. Through street actions and dialogue, Blank Noise hopes to achieve its aims of achieving a safe and free environment for women on the streets, and enable society to become more egalitarian towards women in general.
In December 2012, following the brutal gang rape of a young woman in a moving bus in Delhi, Blank Noise started the Safe City Pledge, an initiative urging citizens to pledge ways in which they can make cities safer for women. [5]
The project has undertaken actions such as spray painting messages, recording the testimonies of victims of sexual harassment in public places, and printing tee shirts with anti-harassment messages on them. It has also staged demonstrations. [6]
Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment can be physical and/or a demand or request for sexual favors, making sexually colored remarks, showing pornography, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal, or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, or religious institutions. Harassers or victims can be of any gender.
In India, eve teasing is a euphemism, primarily occurring in English, used for public sexual harassment or sexual assault of women by men. The name "Eve" alludes to the Bible's creation story concerning Adam and Eve. Considered a problem related to delinquency in male youth, it is a form of sexual aggression that ranges in severity from sexually suggestive remarks, brushing in public places and catcalls, to groping.
Right to Be is a nonprofit organization working to end harassment in all its forms, through bystander intervention trainings, storytelling, and grassroots initiatives.
Street harassment is a form of harassment, primarily sexual harassment that consists of unwanted sexualised comments, provocative gestures, honking, wolf-whistlings, indecent exposures, stalking, persistent sexual advances, and touching by strangers, in public areas such as streets, shopping malls and public transportation. Besides actions or comments that contain a sexual connotation, it often includes homophobic and transphobic slurs, and hateful comments referencing race, religion, class, ethnicity and disability. The practice is rooted in power and control and is often a reflection of societal discrimination, and has been argued to sometimes result from a lack of opportunities for expression of interest or affection.
The Pink Chaddi Campaign is a nonviolent protest movement launched by Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women in February 2009, in response to notable incidences of violent ultra-conservative and right-wing vigilantism; against perceived violations of Hindu culture by women, who were attacked at a pub in Mangalore. The campaign was a brainchild of Nisha Susan, an employee of Tehelka political magazine.
In a sexual context, groping is the act of intentionally touching another person in a sexual manner, usually without their consent. The term generally has a negative connotation in many societies, and the activity may be considered sexual assault or otherwise unacceptable. Touching a consenting person's body during sexual activity, a massage, or a medical examination is not usually considered groping, though the term is sometimes used to include clumsy, selfish, or inappropriate sexual touching. Areas of the body most frequently groped include the buttocks, breasts, vulva, thigh, penis, and scrotum. Gropers might use their hands, but pressing any part of their body against another person can be considered groping.
Slut-shaming is the practice of criticizing people, especially women and girls, who violate expectations of behavior and appearance regarding issues related to sexuality. The term is used to reclaim the word slut and empower women and girls to have agency over their own sexuality. Gender-based violence can be a result of slut-shaming primarily affecting women. It may also be used in reference to gay men, who may face disapproval for promiscuous sexual behaviors. Slut-shaming rarely happens to heterosexual men.
Jasmeen Patheja is a human rights activist in India and was born in Kolkata, West Bengal. She graduated from Srishti School of Art Design and Technology in fine arts. She is a former Ashoka Fellow and works towards gender sensitization. She has been bringing attention to sexism and harassment in forms such as eve teasing, a form of sexual harassment which is very common in India. She established Blank Noise for the same purpose.
During the 2015–2016 celebrations of New Year's Eve in Germany, approximately 1,200 women were reported to have been sexually assaulted, especially in the city of Cologne. In many of the incidents, while these women were in public spaces, they were surrounded and assaulted by large groups of men who were identified by officials as Arab or North African men. The Federal Criminal Police Office confirmed in July 2016 that 1,200 women had been sexually assaulted on that night.
The mass sexual assault of women in public has been documented in Egypt since 2005, when Egyptian security forces and their agents were accused of using it as a weapon against female protesters during a political demonstration in Tahrir Square, Cairo on 25 May. The behavior spread, and by 2012 sexual assault by crowds of young men was seen at protests and festivals in Egypt.
Engy Ayman Ghozlan is a social activist and journalist who highlights problems of sexual harassment of women in the streets of Egypt. Starting in 2005, she was a project manager at the NGO known as the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights (ECWR) and actively pursued efforts to make Egypt safe for women. She is known as the "voice and face" of efforts to eradicate sexual harassment of women in Egypt.
Sangama is an LGBT rights group based in Bangalore, India. When it began in 1999, Sangama acted as a documentation center but it has since grown to become an LGBT rights and HIV prevention NGO that mobilizes against sexual harassment and discrimination and conducts HIV prevention seminars and programmes. The organization works with non-English speaking, working class sex workers and LGBT people and people living with HIV (PLHIV) in Karnataka and Kerala.
Safecity, also known as Safecity.in, is a free website that allows anonymous reporting of incidents of gender-based harassment, abuse, and violence, and creates a map that can be viewed and downloaded by anyone. It is available in India, Kenya, Cameroon, Nepal, and Malaysia.
I Will Go Out was a nationwide march carried on 21 January 2017 in India to demand women's right to fair and equitable access to public spaces. People marched across 30 cities and towns of India including Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Puducherry, Silchar, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Bhopal, Udaipur, Kochi and Karimganj and was organized by a collective of individuals and organisations.
Pinjra Tod is a collective of women students and alumni of colleges from across Delhi, India, that seeks to make regulations for hostel and paying guest (PG) accommodation less restrictive for women students. They aim to counter a perceived official narrative that women need to be protected. Challenging what they consider to be the CCTV-driven police-security complex, Pinjra Tod demands that concepts of safety and security not be used to silence women's right to mobility and liberation.
The Indian#MeToo movement began in late 2018 to manifest in areas of the Indian society including the government, the media, and the Bollywood film industry. In India, the Me Too movement is seen as either an independent outgrowth influenced by the international campaign against sexual harassment of women in the workplace, or an offshoot of the American "Me Too" social movement. Me Too began gaining prominence in India with the increasing popularity of the international movement, and later gathered sharp momentum in October 2018 in the entertainment industry of Bollywood, centered in Mumbai, when actress Tanushree Dutta accused Nana Patekar of sexual harassment. This led to many women in the news media, Indian films, and even within the government to speak out and bring allegations of sexual harassment against a number of perpetrators.
On 6 February 2020, at around 6:30 pm, a group of intoxicated men entered the campus of Gargi College, a women's college affiliated to University of Delhi. The incidents happened during the annual cultural fest of the college, Reverie. Reportedly, some students were sexually assaulted by members of the mob. It was also reported that some of the men masturbated in front of the female students.
Kalpana Viswanath is a social entrepreneur in India. She is the co-founder and CEO of Safetipin, a social enterprise which uses technology and apps to collect data for the safe movement of women in urban spaces. Viswanath is on the advisory board of UN Habitat, International Centre for the Prevention of Crime and SLOCAT. She was part of a study group with Delhi government to prepare a report on Women's Safety in Delhi.
The Jasleen Kaur harassment controversy stemmed from the allegation of sexual harassment made by Jasleen Kaur against Sarvjeet Singh in 2015 and the events that followed. In August 2015, Jasleen Kaur, a woman from Delhi posted a photo of Sarvjeet Singh on Facebook, alleging that Singh had sexually harassed her. The post went viral on social media in India, garnering widespread attention. National celebrities and politicians provided Kaur with widespread support for raising her voice against eve-teasing and sexual harassment on social media.
Safetipin is a social organisation working with a wide range of urban stakeholders including governments to make public spaces safer and more inclusive for women. Safetipin collects data using 3 mobile phone applications and present this to relevant stakeholders with recommendations. The apps also generate a safety score based on the data collected and provide it in the My Safetipin app for users to make safe and informed decisions about their mobility.