Logo to upload on the UN Women website. © DR
The DiY anti-rape kit does not exist… However, our DiY gives you a few keys to take action whether you are a man or a woman. On Tuesday 25th of November, the international Day against violence on women focused attention on women.
We started from a rather silly idea- we’ll admit to that: find a tutorial that would relate to the subject matter of the week, since it was the international Day against violence on women on this Tuesday 25th of November. We naively thought we’d find a thousand resources and ideas from makers to warn against and prevent violence. Alas… We did find a few demo videos to design various anti-aggression wearables (anti-aggression bracelet for less than a dollar: nails attached to a bit scrap metal, fixed with glue on a bit of foam to wear on the wrist for example)… But the majority of protective clothing emanates from survivalists who are expecting the big disaster. They find the best equipment such as camouflage uniforms and bullet-proof clothing. Well, violence on women, as pointed out by the shocking figures of the UN, concerns one woman out of three throughout the world who are victimized by their partners most of the time. The bullet-proof vest in bed is not really an answer…
A boy’s problem
Most websites dedicated to the subject of violence on women, on the contrary, mention prevention, listening, receiving suffering women… and the necessary mobilisation to talk to boys before they reproduce their fathers’ violence when they get older. No miracle anti-rape kit in such cases: no siren or electric shock bra will be able to shift the balance of power that is set up safe from prying eyes.
In India, after the cases of rape of women and the mobilisation of the population in 2013, students (two girls and a boy) had imagined a SHE (Society Harnessing Equipment) bra that, in case of aggression, sent 3.8 million volt shocks and alerted the police by SMS. But, as indicated by feminist associations, these announcements principally shed a bit of light on revolting habits and yet largely underestimated (2.6 billion women and girls live in countries where rape is not criminalized, according to the UN).
Militate, sign, broadcast…
So, here is a small anti-violence on women kit to militate online, to defend and remind men of their ultra-dominant position (one still chokes when reading le Point magazine that ran the headline “International Day against violence on women: let’s not forget men!” – and if you find no link it is not an oversight…)
To begin with, ELLE magazine gives us a few tricks to talk about the subject on social networks (in French) by releasing the worldwide logo (orange) or the French strip (white), or by signing the ‘Dare feminism on feminicide’ petition. One can add the re-tweet proposals of the official campaigns of the UN or their infographics made for the occasion. And hey presto, here it is:
The official figures for the French part of the dossier are available here and they are far from impressive (a woman dies from violence inflicted by her partner every three days…). One can remind people and give out the 3919 number “Violence on women info”, free and anonymous since the beginning of 2014 (60,534 calls received from the 1st of January until the 31st of October 2014).
Still in an activist DiY mode, one can relay this Swedish video campaign that sends shivers down our spine and is also an indicator of our collective responsibilities. A little experience with a hidden camera in an elevator: in one corner a couple is having an argument…leading to physical aggression. A majority of people who witnessed the aggression did nothing at all.
«Abused in the elevator (Social experiment)», 2014:
We particularly recommend the page dedicated to the action of the United Nations website Women: to re-tweet Nicole Kidman’s message or share a viral video, as a man, sign a commitment for gender equality (the He for She campaign has already received 194,000 signatures including 7,587 in France)…
To conclude on a happier note, let’s be inspired by this prototype imagined by the Korean arty collective Shinseungback Kimyonghun: a young Korean presents a fine image with his Aposematic jacket (aposematism is the capacity of certain animals to send warning signals when they are in danger). Filled with 360° cameras, it allows you to send messages such as “be warned, fella, I’m calling the police” and send pictures of the aggression to the said police in real time. This “fashion wearable” project was designed based on Raspberry Pi and mini cameras. One could very well adapt it to women and in a DiY version.
The Aposematic jacket of the Shinseungback collective :
