Evaluation of Political Protest

The protest was effective; we got large audiences watching us for a while which was really encouraging. The worst thing about the protest was that it was freezing, but we knew this and thought that, for the point we were making, it was worth it.

The passion that my group put into getting it ready, researching and doing it was really good- we all felt really strongly for the cause and dedicated ourselves to the making and doing it. The signs allowed people to understand what we were talking about, so making them was good- the only thing we could have taken into consideration was that the rain would smudge the words as time went on. The chanting got people interested in watching our protest and the passion with which we chanted had a huge effect on the campaign- a lot of people were shouting ‘Yeah!’ etc which was good to hear- allowing others to become involved. The order of our protest worked well- shouting for people to come over and then continuing with the quieter but more personal/theatrical aspects of it. When we had a crowd we each shouted our sentences that we had taken from ‘Project Unbreakable’. The realism and harshness of what we were saying really shocked people and we could see this from people’s reactions. The words we had written on our bare skin had a really good effect because, again, it caught people’s attention even before the protest which made them want to come and watch it. The bluntness of the words shocked people into becoming more interested; the more risks we took, the more it interested people.

To improve we could have thought more about the weather and the physical implications of it; obviously we were freezing but we had thought about this and made the decision to brave the coldness because of the message we wanted to put across. Also, we could have thought about more physical ways of getting our point across that would have made it more engaging, as well as maybe thinking of more verbal things to say rather than repeating the same lines. We did this because we had not thought about the amount of time we would be doing the protest. Although, the repetition allowed people to really get the point of what we were saying. The other group that did Slut Walk thought about the theatrical side a lot more that brought a lot of people to their campaign; we could have brought this to our protest.

Another issue with our protest was that boys shouted out things that went against what we were saying completely. There was one shouting ‘what will you do for £20’ and one taking pictures of us because he thought it was exciting that we were in vests... even though this really annoyed us, it made the point more clear to them because it made them look completely stupid when they were given a negative reaction by us and by the rest of the audience. It made the point that they should really think about what they say normally because it seemed as though they were encouraging what we were protesting against. One of the boys came up to me the day after and apologised because he knew what he had done was wrong; this made me think that our protest affected people personally because they felt guilty about how they had previously treated girls. Even if they don’t stop acting like that completely, it made them feel humiliated for some time, which I thought was really interesting for us, trying to get a point across about sexual objectification. 

http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/ We are going to use text from this in our protest. These words are really strong and scarily true to people around the world; to protest, we need to have an understanding of supporting those who have been though what we are protesting about and therefore the use of these words will have more of an impact on us and therefore the way people see what we are doing.

http://she.msn.astroyogi.com/photo-gallery/index.aspx?GalleryId=30This picture shows women who are on the Slut Walk. We thought of the idea to use masks with slut written on them to portray the idea that all we are seen as is sluts and people don't look for the person behind the stereotype of women who aren't completely covered up.

This video is of a protest group called 'Femen' who use their bodies to portray a message of feminism. The desperation with which they move and shout conveys their ideas in one way- we had the idea of writing on us before I saw this, but this just shows that it is a way of symbolising what seems to be written over women today.

'Rape conviction rates may have improved but women remain reluctant to report the crime. The poor understanding by young men of what rape is all about worries me.' Guardian Article

After researching and finding sites and clips of previous protests against rape and sexual objectification, such as the links here... we have developed our ideas for the protest. 

We initially thought of the idea to dress with very little on, with words that are used to describe women with negative connotations written all over our body in black and red to represent the dirt and fact that on the outside, women are an image that men have drawn for their sakes. We formed the idea that, because we actually are not the image they conceive, we will rub off the words with some form of water/wipes as part of the theatrical piece to symbolise the idea that together we can get rid of this image. 

I found this quote from the bible: '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' 

I found this really shocking, because there are so many people who will follow the bible as a culture and are justified by something that is internationally recognised by many cultures. 

We have written facts and statistics on pieces of large cardboard so that there are visual aids for people to know what we are protesting about. Whilst we are getting the words off of us, we may say the statistics, after shouting the words that we will use from 'Project Unbreakable' at both the beginning and the end. 

I was hoping to maybe walk on holding hands with all of our group and walk off doing the same, showing a sense of community, and if we are all in it together, we can change something. The idea of us coming on with hardly any clothing on will shock people and create instinctive thoughts and comments made by people passing who will then in turn feel uncomfortable about thinking or commenting on us once they have understood what we are standing for. The personal guilt will hopefully change what they say to girls in the future. 

Starting it off...

I am in a group with Molly and Immie, and we are going to protest against the objectification of women; there being absolutely no excuse for it in any shape or form.

We all have strong feminist views that come from different angles but we will show these off in our protest; concentrating on the idea that girls should be allowed to wear whatever they want and not be objectified. Women all over the world are violated against, raped, trafficked, shouted at and generally abused- we want to make sure that this abuse is never seen as the victim's fault because she was 'asking for it'... abuse should never be accepted.

The use of the school building will be really interesting because there is so much objectification in school, such as name calling and joking about that is completely unnecessary and even though is seen as a joke, can lead to much more serious implications.

We are fighting against this. From the smallest to the biggest violations... there is no excuse.

Our first ideas were to dress in little clothing to catch people's attention and draw out people's first thoughts about girls in little clothing, because we know what the majority of people will be thinking; 'sluts' and 'I want some of that'. Our statistics, dialogue, and art forms will make people feel ashamed of thinking these things and noticing what few words can do in the long run. We were thinking of writing names that women are called over our bodies as if they are permanently attached to us- maybe we could continue with the idea of getting them off of us as a protest that things can change.