Bengaluru: When women are warned to be careful every step of the way, the implication often is that they have a choice in the matter of being sexually assaulted.
“But can the length of a woman’s skirt really be an excuse for sexual assault or molestation?” asks Ms Jasmeen Patheja, founder of the citizen -driven initiative, Blank Noise, echoing the views of thousands of women in the country, who face sexual violence followed by victim blaming.
“There is no excuse for sexual or gender based violence,” stresses the activist whose project, “ I Never Ask For It,” begun in 2015, tries to confront the issue of sexual harassment in the country through public art . “The point is to make the environment non- judgemental. The more people speak up and share, the less judgment is passed around,” she reasons.
I Never Ask For It aims to speak up against victim blame by building testimonies of clothing that the victims wore when they experienced sexual or gender-based violence, she explains. “Victims are usually asked what were they wearing, and more often than not, they do remember, which means that on a subconscious level, we women have been asked this so much that how we dress is always at the back of our minds and deep down we too doubt whether we could be to blame and that needs to change,” she underlines.
By the end of 2020, the project aims to co-create an installation with 10,000 garments of people from different parts of the country that will be installed in sites of public significance in Bengaluru and then in other cities as well. “The form will take shape as we go forward, but by the end of this we aim to have 10,000 clothes, which will represent the many stories about healing and sharing. We don’t have all of them yet and we don’t plan to put it up rightaway. It’s a slow process. They will be a part of their experience that they are putting out there into the world and all are welcome to be a part of this. We want to do it in different parts of Bengaluru as an example and we’d like to do it over and over again in other cities till we reach our goal,” she asserts.
