Political Protest -

SAY NO TO SLUT SHAMING AND VICTIM BLAMING

God said unto woman: "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thy shall bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Genesis, Chapter III verse xvi

We were all given the task of devising a theatrical political protest in groups to last about 5/10 minutes. I am in a group with 3 other girls and we decided to do a protest about 'slut shaming and victim blaming'. This is essentially the campaign for rape to be taken more seriously by people and by the police, and that it isn't the victims fault but the rapists. I first had the idea to do something like this because I  went on the official 'slut walk' protest where men and women all got together and protested and made speeches in trafalgar square from rape survivors and other women's rights campaigners.

It is basically against the idea that when a women decides to report a rape, which many don't as it is too traumatic, they are asked about what they were wearing and if they had been drinking. The public demonstrations sparked from when a police officer said that, in order to avoid being raped 'women should avoid dressing like sluts'. 

This is a link explaining some of the issues we are campaigning. The original Slut Walk 2012 was where I took my stimulus for our protest and where I really heard what some survivors had gone through.

Our basic idea for our protest was to dress 'provocatively' and write derogatory words for women and our sexuality such as 'slut' and 'whore'. We then wanted to have signs with official rape crime statistics so we had some factual political grounding in what we were saying. Then we are going to use the words from an organisation called project unbreakable which is where rape survivors wrote down on a banner what their rapist said to them before and after the attack. They were then photographed. 

http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com

This is a link to project unbreakable. We decided this was a good stimulus to use for the dramatic side to our protest because it is real, honest and incredibly emotive.  Using this as our verbal communication, we are also going to be using water or face wipes to try and scrub away the words written all over us. This could be as a way of symbolising how hard stigma and reputations can be to get rid of and how rape is a crime that stays with it victims and can take so much away from them, even though it can create the most amazing survivors.

Rape Crime Statistics

• 30% of people surveyed said that rape was partially or totally the victims fault.
• In 2004 the conviction rate for rape was 5.3% or 1 in 20 (the lowest on record)
• Women are more likely to be raped by their husbands or boyfriends or a person they know in some way.
• False accusation of rape and sexual abuse is no higher than in any other crime.
• Between 1/2 and 2/3 of reported rape cases do not advance past the investigation stage. 
• Half of rape convictions were due to a guilty plea ended in Aquital.
• There is supporting evidence for 86.7% of cases so the majority isn't  one persons word against the other.
• If you were intoxicated when you were raped you have a lower chance of getting your attacker convicted.