Political Protest: Research

My Group: 

Molly, Jesse and Immie. 

Our Protest:

Having being inspired by the recent protests known as slut walks that have spread from canada to our own city of london, we have decided to take direct action against 'slut shaming and victim blaming.'  In january of 2011 a Toronto police officer, speaking to a group of law students quoted this:

 "In order to avoid being raped women should avoid dressing like sluts." 

This statement sparked protests all around the world from Chicago to Amsterdam. The anger felt by many was the idea that Women were being blamed and being made the perpetrators of there own rape. Its also highlights how incorrect the statement was as woman dressed in things such as tracksuit bottoms to Burquas are raped. 

Why do we want to do this?

This is a subject that I have been passionate about for months and have followed the protests closely. As a group of young woman we feel it necessary to reiterate to the people within our school community that we are aloud as women to wear what we want. Do want we want and act however we desire without feeling the threat of Slut Shaming and Victim Blaming. 

Research:

The video below is one that Molly posted on the facebook group we share. Its from an organisation called 'Sluts mean speak up', they are responsible for protests and partitions surounding this issue in the UK. I believe this link is really relavent to my research as it showes first hand the woman who we are speaking out for furthermore stressing the importance of preventing experiences like this in future. 

The video below is of the Ukrainian protest group 'FEMEN'.To me This highlight an incredibly powerful way of protesting against violence against women. The amount of courage these woman have is empowering and the issue they raised was that of police rape in Tunisia and how women are condemned afterwards. This video is useful to us as it shows us another way in which woman can create protest in a completely different way. 

   

Our Protest, Timings and Meanings:

- Begin, stand outside in the courtyard by the tree. Dressed in revealing clothing and masks that are plain card but read the word 'SLUT' across them. We have degrading language written across our skin as a symbol of the labels men give woman, this is to symbolise the humiliation victims of rape carry round with them. 

- We shout 'However we dress, wherever we go. YES means YES and NO means NO.' This is to draw attention to ourselves. 

(1 minutes)  

- Once we have drawn a crowd, We will then step forward one at a time. We will read one quote from the Project Unbreakable blog. 
http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/

+

- While we speak our quote, we will be kneeling infront of a bowl of water. We will wash the words off our skin as we speak. This symbolises the healing process that can be bought around from woman uniting against Slut shaming and victim blaming.

(2 minutes)   


- We will then get back into out line and shout facts in order to make people realise the severity of the way our nation, and many other nations deal with rape and victimisation. 

(1 minute) 

Here are the quotes we will read out individually: 

This is the quote I will read. 

This is the quote Jesse will read

This is the quote Molly will read 

This is the quote Immi will read. 

The protest:

the protest day was frantic and rainy which wasnt great news as were outside. Despite this we just go on with it. As did all the other groups. 

 

Here is an image of our protest. Youn can clearly see the location of out protest. We are standing by the tree with huge signs. 


















Evaluation:

In our protest we aimed to shock the audience by giving victims a voice through speaking their words to an audience. We hoped that people would hear the tragic things these woman had to say and our aim was gain support of people in around the school community and raise awareness about Slut shame and victim blame. 

Our protest is something I can say I am proud of. It wasn't the most amazing piece of work I have ever done,  but it was such a great experience as me and the rest o group channelled our passion into something we truly believed in and managed to capture people's attention even if it only was for a few minutes.
Our protest was well planned and worked as a cycle. However I don't feel that our performance or 'creative delivery' was as prominent as many other groups. Despite this out frequent use of chanting and shouting stayed with people (an example of this can be seen in the link below) . This meant we were able to gather a crowd. Another contributor to our ability to draw a crowd was our position. I think we effectively chose a  position near to where we new all the classes would be leaving as we're the first thing many people saw as they came out  for their break.

Our use of theatre in the protest worked fairly well as it was able to be repeated time and time again. By us washing words of our skin it was a clear symbolism to many spectators however some didnt quit understand. This could be due to the fact that not everyone could hear as we spoke individually or perhaps our choices just weren't good enough when it came to this aspect of the protest. Another disappointing aspect of our protest was the maturity level of the spectators. Our message was that woman shouldn't be victims because of clothing we wear. However as we stood in bra tops with skin showing some people took this as an excuse to gawp. But perhaps this is just something that comes naturally and  is unavoidable in any society.  Therefore to me this reaction poses the question of are these people contradicting our message. 

This link is a video of our protest and shows the chanting technique we used which proved most effective:

http://nivenbrechtgenius.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/slut-shame.html