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Making some noise

Bloggers got together to discuss problems relating to `street sexual harassment'

WE AREN'T OBJECTS Blank Noise volunteers during their "Y R U Lookin @ Me" campaign in Bangalore

Next time you leer at someone, make obscene gestures, grab or intentionally rub against anyone, simply put — humiliate anyone sexually — you may be shot. Cameras are on the prowl. At a click, you will go online with interesting adjectives to tag your name. Blank Noise held its first meeting in Chennai recently.

Activists, victims, bloggers, the curious, an academic, people looking for something to do, there was a mix of all in the 30-odd crowd that turned up at Woodlands Café, Royapettah.

In 2003, Jasmeen Patheja tried to capture the experience of the `daily silent experience of street sexual harassment' in words and came up with `Blank Noise'. `Blank', she says in her blog, stands for something with `no form or meaning' and `noise' for anything that `heightens, builds, breaks form'. A contradiction like our attitude to eve teasing. We ignore the experience of eve teasing, a sexual violation, but structure our lives by dressing a certain way or reaching home early to avoid it, she explains. With her blog Blank Noise, she started a project to fight this violation. Anyone could be part of the project through blogging, performances and street interventions, and the response was tremendous. Participants are also encouraged to "revert the gaze" by photographing the perpetrator. The photographs can then be put online.

"Cheers to Chennai!" said Jasmeen based in Banglore, in her mail to the group. People from across the nation and abroad wanted to initiate the project in their cities, and this city had the maximum number of respondents.

"I was surprised at the turnout," said a 43-year-old academic about the Chennai meet. He was there to observe `social networking', the phenomenon of technology bringing people together. "The response is significant because Chennai, when compared to other metropolitan cities such as Banglore and Delhi, has a static society." Honest about their prejudices, passionate about solutions and sometimes sceptical of the results, the group members seemed to be waiting for a forum to discuss the issue. Uma Sreedevi was present to be part of a collective protest. "It is a moment of reflection and making a statement. Perhaps it should not be called a project, since there is no clear objective," she said.

Padma Ganesan, who works with Prevention of Crime and Victim Care, an organisation that fights domestic violence, was present since she sees a link in attitude between the two. She stresses that not all eve-teasers become wife-beaters, but they have a common attitude of seeing women as objects, and therefore with no choice. "Women have to deal with the contradiction of having no power of choice but being held responsible for whatever happens to them," she says.

At the meeting, though no plan of action was drawn out, they fixed the date for the next meeting and each were asked to come up with a question for an opinion poll.

Chennai responded enthusiastically to the call, but the people here still hesitate to file cases. Many cases go unreported mostly because of the social stigma, says a woman police officer. If the women register a case under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act (1998), the burden of proof is on the accused, says Shantakumari Rajagopal, an advocate. But under this act, to prove your case, you need a witness. Witnesses are hard to produce. Sometimes, the police register the case under IPC 294 but under this, the burden of proof is on the victim.

ASHA S. MENON

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