SILENCE IS VIOLENCE - against apathy

Link to event page on FB In lieu of the recent cases and cases we have been hearing forever and after, of incidents of violence against women, a few of us have decided to come together to raise our voices. Express dissent. For how can you not see the evil, hear it, speak of it when it exists all around you? How can there so much apathy when Pinki Pramanik was humiliated? How can you raise again and again questions of character of the victim when a minor gets assaulted on the streets of Guwahati by 20 men, all who's faces we have seen on Facebook but the police have been unable to reprimand? We have decided to show our dissent on a working day, working for office goers, homemakers, freelancers, all of us in various roles. We will drop everything we are doing at 10 am and head for the venue to reach it by 11 am in the middle of the week on 26th July, a Thursday. We think enough is enough and this one day we refuse to contribute - to productivity in our offices, to the food larder at homes, to our clients or our children. So, we will leave our 'work' and go to the venue to spend time with each other, sharing, sloganing, singing, telling stories, teaching each other what we know, learning from each other what we don't. And then from all of us in Bangalore we will write a note to the police in Assam to take action on the attackers of the victim of the Guwahati incident. We will sign our demand - not an appeal or a petition and send it. How long can they remain silent if women from every city, town and village do the same? How long? And if nothing happens still, we will do this again. And again. Let us gather as women, as men who understand, as citizens, as humans, to show that even SILENCE IS VIOLENCE. Raise our voices. Be heard! Organisations Joining hands for Silence is Violence: Citizens Against Violence Ridhdhi Vimochana rAFIKI (Waiting for more) PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN PLACARDS: How to make a placard: Get some old cardboard box and flatten it to cut out the size of placard you want. Stick chart paper on it. Write/ paint the slogan/ pics you want on it in any language. make it large so people at least 15 feet away can read it. Make two holes on the top two corners with eyelets. Tie a string and hang it around your neck. Date: 26th July 20122 Time: 11 am venue: Town hall, Bangalore Organised by  By Neelima Prasanna Aryan, Srimatha Ramanand and Arundhati Ghosh. I think this is a great idea, and a good first step to take - I hope to see some of you there.

Slutwalk police permission revoked.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/slutwalk-bangalore-the-official-portal/a-note-of-victory/303434233020408

I'm copy-pasting the most important bitsfrom Dhillan Mowli's note below, but you should click the link above to read the whole thing.

I’m home today after a very long and very hard day. Amongst the many emotions that the events of today rile up, a sense of victory stands tall. Today was a day of victory. I met with the Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order), Mr. Suneel Kumar, at 3:00 P.M. in the afternoon; he was warm and receptive to the cause and only asked me to ensure that no “untowardly incidents” happen at the march. I gave him my guarantee (obviously enough) and walked out with a sense of nervous anticipation. 

 At 8:15 P.M. we get a call from the Police Commissioner’s office saying that our permission has been revoked. Why? Because of “security concerns” they said. Mr. Suneel Kumar, informed my mum (who has also been helping with organizing) that the BJP, RSS, Ram Sene and other organizations had aggressively protested against the march happening. Many of them had apparently even communicated in the tone of threatening violence if the march went on. And hence, just as we were at the printers getting the last of the banners printed out, SlutWalk Bengaluru was brought to a crude halt.
 ...

 Now let’s visit the issue that SlutWalk actually tackles – Victim Blaming. We were made an example of the very issue we sought to fight. Instead of providing us with the security we needed, the police decided to put the onus on us as the “ones who are attracting trouble”. True there may be “undesirable” elements, true there may be people wanting to cause trouble and true the risks may be many more. But the solution is not to shut down a perfectly legitimate movement that addresses an issue that has landed our country’s reputation at the bottom of the global barrel. The solution is to beef up measures and ensure that such “undesirable elements” do not obstruct a peaceful protest. Don’t punish the victim, punish the criminal. Don’t brand those protesting against Victim Blaming as a “Law & Order threat”. Blame those who think it’s NOT ok to protest against victim blaming.

And for an “upcoming superpower” such as ourselves, it is truly pathetic that all we look for is the smuggled tantalism of skimpy clothing in a movement whose true aim is to protest the act of blaming a victim of sexual assault. Burqa, salwar, sari, jeans, shorts, hot pants or a skirt; it doesn’t matter. It never did. The word “Slut” was simply a play on irony, something that is clearly lost on many of our extremists. We had 22,172 reported cases of rape in 2010. That amounts roughly to 1 rape every 34 minutes and 1 case of molestation every 26 minutes. 571 reported rapes of children under the age of 10. The conviction rate is 26.6 %. And this is just for rape, not any other form of sexual abuse. In the face of figures like that, it’s appalling that these “upholders of Indian culture” think they can tell me how to dress and how to behave, when i choose to protest for my right not to be blamed for a sexual crime committed against me. What they have done is not sent us back with our tails between our legs, but instead taken on an underdog that will chew their rancid mentality and spit it out for good.

You know, I went to the first Slutwalk meeting and then decided that I wasn't going to be able to work with them - the people in charge had styles that put my back up. SR went along a little longer, but stopped for much the same reasons - well, worse, because they'd had time to pile up.


Some of us dislike the Slutwalk campaigns because it's sensationalising, because reclamation is never an entirely successful project, and often not at all, because being sex positive needn't mean being publicity positive, because the Slutwalk campaign as it is a structured does not lend itself with ease to class/caste/race solidarity,


But one of the essential principles from the outside remains worth while - we can wear what we like on the streets and still have the right to not be raped. Our clothing is not someone's excuse to hurt us. We don't rape ourselves. Someone else does that, and then pretends that we deserved it, the way someone is sent to jail after being convicted in court for murder/robbery - and yes, rape.

People looked at the methodology of the march, and proved the Slutwalk point - they will blame us, shut us down, pull out the time-exploited phrase "Indian culture", threaten us with physical harm - all to stop us from openly, collectively, powerfully taking responsibility for ourselves, and denying responsibility for the actions of others.


We've just come out of Pride Week - which went off very nearly without a hitch. The police walked with us, talked with us, did crowd and traffic control with us. We spoke to reporters and were on tv, and in the print media. I was speaking to AC about this and she said"it's safer to be gay in this city than a slut" - which basically means it's not safe to be a woman, at all.


Well fuck them. Fuck them all. I'm out tomorrow in high heels and low necklines, 'cos I wanna, and they can't stop me. And if they try, it's on them, and not on me.

<looks for pepper spray and camera>

SlutWalk (?) Bangalore planning meeting

No one actually recommends walking in those heels; they do look pretty, though.

So, the Slutwalk. This is where it started: in summation: a Toronto policeman told a safety class that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."

In the world where we live, we take precautions. We do this for reasons of common sense, or fear, or because our personal styles insect with a life of taking precautions. Sometimes, we don't take precautions. We wear what we want, even if someone is going to say, That's provocative - sometimes because we want to be provocative. We drink, we walk the streets after dark, we have jobs and transport and we take advantage of our ability to move about freely. Sometimes, bad things happen - actually, no, let's rephrase that: Sometimes, people do bad things, and they sometimes do those bad things to us. The basic point of the Slutwalk is this: That the police, the public, the media, the society around us, should not use our attire as reasons to hold us responsible for someone else's actions against us, and further they should use use these as reasons to excuse or validate the actions of our assaulters.

To sum up: don't blame the victim. don't excuse the perpetrator. He is not "like that only". Don't police the victims. Police the assaulter.

It is a sad fact that in a world that is mostly, informally or formally, structured around patriarchal gender lines, a woman can be called a slut for any number of reasons - not all of them having anything to do with her sexual activity. She is rarely called a slut admiringly. She is not given the same admiration, she has not the same coolth - again, I am talking about the application of the label, not her actual behaviours - as a man who, for instance, is a stud, or even a womaniser. We can reclaim the label - we can say, I am happy to dress this way, I am happy to have sex, I am happy to have sex with several people over the course of time - or at once. We can reclaim the label, be proud to be sluts. We can eschew the label - we can say, I am not promiscuous, my clothing, my drinking, my travelling alone, does not mean that I have sex at all or out of careful relationship bounds. But none of this is the central point of a Slutwalk. The central point is this: In a case of assault, the action was not invited. No one asks to be raped.You do not get to excuse the rapist by implying that the woman asked for it, or is at fault for it. The rapist, the assaulter, is the only person responsible for his (and in this sort of case, it is usually a man, and there is room for argument later about statistics and the like) crime, the harm he did.

To repeat: Don't blame the victim. Don't call them sluts and think that the rape, the assault, was bound to happen. Don't blame the victim, don't excuse and validate the assaulter.

In Toronto, women took to the streets, dressed varyingly, "normally", "provocatively", to make the statement that no one asks to be raped, no matter her attire; "Yes" is not merely the absence of "No", that clothing is a superficial message at best, and not about (or just about) a woman's willingness to have sex with anyone in general, or the men who approach her in particular.  They also organised open debates, workshops on gender sensitisation and the like, but the Walk was the Event, the centerpiece of the campaign. Their website is taking forever to load on my browser, but here is the link.  SlutWalk Toronto: BECAUSE WE'VE HAD ENOUGH.

Following the Toronto Slutwalk in April, there have been rallies around the world, with the campaigns spreading to Asia, and now India. Delhi had a walk at the end of July - have a look at the site for the Besharmi Morcha.

Quick and dirty arguments for a "Slut"Walk and against.

But! Now there are people who are hoping to organise a SlutWalk, and satellite activities, in Bangalore. This is the official Facebook Portal for the Bangalore SlutWalk.

The first meeting was yesterday, at ALF. There seemed to be three main initiators: Dhillan Mowli, our own Sowmya, and someone whose name (I am not sure, I am a horrible person!) is probably Shonali.

[Let's ignore all the arguments for and against the campaign having a man in the collective helm for now. Let's also ignore arguments of male privilege, how we don't need a man to validate our voices and choices. It's an argument for later, and a moot discussion until more has been accomplished. Or not.]

[So long as it's not ignored forever.]

Not much has been decided. DM had a truly excessive list of things we could do associated with the walk - plays, street plays, films, photography exhibitions, music events, school and campus outreach programmes, open panel discussions.

It was a fairly long discussion, and I am not going to go through it all. Here are some of the main points, and main decisions we did manage to reach:

• we're going to avoid a narrative of victimisation. The Walk, and associated events, are to be about our voices and choices, about the appropriate taking and apportioning of responsibility. 
• we need to figure out precisely what we are targeting: violence in public spheres, private spheres? Violence against women, children? 
• the concepts of consent - the giving, the denying, the requesting of it. A large part of or concern as feminists, individualists and as human beings is to ensure that people can clearly say, No. Or Yes. Or "Would you?" As women we have the right, and as citizens and social beings we have the duty, to exercise these privileges. We don't, very often. We're raised, conditioned to be nice, to be polite, to not make scenes. But sometimes, it's necessary. Make a scene, darlings, raise your voices. Ask for what you want! Accept what you want that is offered! Give what you want to give! And say No - and let's work on making sure that that No is heard.
• The school/campus outreach programmes. They need a lot of work, to be structured, to have people who know what the hell they're doing - and if they're not just limited to December, we need more manpower and more training and people with skills. This is not stuff to be trifled with just because we have good intentions.
• The word "Slut" - is this what we want? Is it context appropriate? Moral policing in India works along different narratives and terminology, with the same final effect. We need to name our SlutWalk something that connects with us in our contexts, without losing sight of our basic goal. This means we want to try to keep it a bilingual campaign, too.
• Communication, networking with the police and the media. Reminding ourselves and the public that we have instance-specific reasons in Bangalore and Karnataka (remember Mangalore and what started there. Remember the recent Darshan horrors.) to conduct a campaign that speaks out against victim blaming, moral policing and assaulter-excusing.
• We want this campaign to be inclusive. We do not want a one day spectacle that can be dismissed as "upper-middle-class women dressing up because they want to be able to dress up" - though we want that too. We want all women to be safe on the streets, without fear that they will blamed for being assaulted - this means we need to network harder with people outside of the internet platforms that have informed us of the SlutWalks so far.

Of immediate concern:

• DECEMBER 4th. We walk.
• So much of what we need to do begins with figuring out what we want to do, what our specific aims and goals are. We want to be done with that in two weeks or less.
• We meet again on MONDAY, OCTOBER 10TH, 5 pm at ALF.

That's it for now. There's a lot of work to be done, and a lot of principle to be negotiated. Contact Sowmya or the the Facebook SlutWalk Bangalore Portal for more information or to volunteer!

_______ and Violence. Far too much violence.

I've been trying to respond to Afreen's post for a while now, and my thoughts get tangled up in that morass of fear-of-guilt, agreement, indignation and what-have-you. Then my life took a vacation without me, and I lay about at home not watching the news or being online or being in touch.

I came back today gung-ho to respond to Afreen, and saw, amongst other things, a Gaysi article that made my blood freeze. I want to go back to not paying attention to the news.

I followed links around until I found a more complete story: In a McDonald's restaurant in Baltimore, USA, Chrissy Lee Polis went to use the restroom. She was stopped by two other women. These two women attacked her, dragged her around on the floor, beat her, kicked her. Why? Polis is transgendered.

(There's a video here. It's terrible; I can't watch it all the way through. Be careful if you click to watch it.) An emplo

That's it. A woman got up to use the restrooms. Two other women beat the shit out of her because - er. Because they don't like to share? They're afraid they'll catch cooties? The McDonald's ladies' toilets should not come in contact with peepees that no long apply?

The attackers are 14 and 18 (Teonna Monae Brown) years old. They're being charged, possibly with a hate crime.

The employees at McDonald's stood around and watched. (And laughed.) Vernon Hackett - an employee again - caught the attack on hir mobile camera and put it on youtube. Someone was being dragged around on the floor, beaten and kicked, and he taped it and put it on the internet. (He was fired. McDonald's as an enterprise does not want to be evil.)

The video received widespread attention because of the racial dynamics of the attack...

In America, this attack gets extra attention because the attackers are black, and the victim is white. No, seriously. A woman is beaten and dragged around on the floor of a public eatery, the video is put up on the internet, and it attracts comment because it might have been racially motivated. While racial attacks are an atrocity, something is still very wrong with this picture.

They said, "That's a dude, that's a dude, and she's in the female bathroom... They spit in my face."

Of all the people in the place, only two people went to help Polis. The manager, and Vicky Thoms. Vicky Thoms is 55 years old. I don't like it when people talk about the manners and morals of the older generation. I am subscribed to the old-people-are-more-narrow-minded school of thought. The vicious beastlings punched Thoms in the face. I'm subscribed to the wrong goddamned school.

As someone who grew up female and is acknowledged as female, I was and am conditioned to be female too - I negotiate my Inner Self with my Outer Self and my Social Self and all in all I think I have a fair grip on the bits of me I call "female" or "woman" or "feminine" or "I can has babies (but don' wanna)". But as a person, as a socially acknowledged female human, as a feminist, I have dealt consciously and unconsciously all my life with being relegated to my body. And just my body. Weaker, shorter, softer, bloodier, and therefore finer, more delicate, more nervy, more emotional. Right? Right. And I have read, heard, watched people - women, men, people I couldn't pigeon-hole - say, We are more than our bodies. Or We are our bodies, and we shall claim them. I've seen feminists increase the chasm between the sexes, humanists say, I just want us all to get along, asexual people say, I'm not frigid, all my bits work, I just never want to have sex. It's icky.

But we get to say it. Within the bounds of informed consent, people/our prdecessors/we have worked for decades to ensure it!

In a "queer" world - in a place where we consciously, inevitably, break with heteronormativity, surely it should be easier for us to say, We're Not "Normal", And That Is SO ALL RIGHT. We're together in this. In a world where I get to say, my vagina is not the Men's room (sorry, men, I love you but the metaphor seems funny right now), it's the Ladies', where I can say, I'll love, fuck, make love to, anyone I choose, and you can complain all you like, but if your complaint is their genitalia I'ma gonna tell you to fuck the fuck off -

One assumes that some sorts of tolerance become easier with time.

I keep coming back to those girls. They're girls. Not even women. I don't think they need to be gentle loving souls or whatever feminine crap American girls in Baltimore get fed. I don't know the details of the concerns they face and negotiate every day as a racial minority in a large country. I'm certain that as girls, as women, they are trained - perhaps sensibly, perhaps not - to be wary of male abuse, attack, oppression, chauvinism. But surely, surely, as women, as women pleased to be women, as women who must be careful as well as strong, female as well as women, protective as well as defensive - sure, when someone comes along who says, In my heart, I want to be like you. I have this aspect of you. I am one of you. When that person comes along, whether we're gay, straight, queer, mundane, asexual, misanthropist, ornery, giving - when that person comes along, shouldn't the most natural response be a smile, a hug and a "you took your time getting here, but we've saved some cookies! Dig in before Roh finishes them all, she's a greedy pig."

We're so busy, sometimes, naming things, knowing things, learning things. We're taught where things go, what the physical world is made of. We learn to categorise, to include, to exclude. That's how two young girls, not even women yet, were able to say, "That is a MAN. He does NOT BELONG in the LADIES' toilet."

What would have helped stop this? If Chrissy Polis were black? Would she have been "allowed" the restroom in peace if her skin tone said, "I like sunlight!"? Would she have been categorically safe?

We're a very clever set of apes. So we'll get to the point where we remember what all the learning is for. Hopefully. What being human ought to be for.