This project started out as an online blog, where Jasmeen Patheja an art student began posting her experiences regarding street sexual harassment and tried to initiate a public dialogue in order to “build testimonies of street harassment in the public space and make them public”. It began with a group of nine female participants sharing their experiences with each other through art workshops which finally culminated in a multimedia installation. The second phase or the current phase revolves around the concept of “public spaces” and interventions in order to explore these spaces as victims of street harassment. It also involves a clothes collection drive which seeks to address the misconception that women asked to be “eve-teased” by dressing provocatively.

The essence of this project is that each member deals with the issue in a way that best suits her, and reacts to events based on her past experiences. It is drastically different from anything the women's movement has come across till now. This I feel has to do with the ‘demands’ of the Blank Noise Project. Unlike earlier women's movement’s it is not demanding the re-opening of cases or the amendment of certain laws to favour women. It is not demanding the enactment of legislation to ban practices derogatory to women. However it is seeking to strive something much more complex- which is a change in societal attitudes that are firmly rooted in patriarchy. Societal attitudes that objectify women, impose restrictions on the behaviour of women and believe that women “ask for it” by dressing in a certain way or traveling at a certain time. These changes cannot be achieved by working with the State, as enough legislation on sexual harassment and “outraging the modesty of a woman” already exists. The problem lies in the implementation and use of these provisions, the reason for the lack of which again is social norms and attitudes. Also, Blanknoise concerns itself more with the issue of why street harassment occurs and how we can hack away at these attitudes that give rise to street harassment rather than concentrating on ways to punish the perpetrator. By societal attitudes not only do I mean those of the perpetrators or of the mute spectators but also of the victims. One of the main factors behind this project was that Jasmeen saw that there was a ‘normalcy’ attached to experiences of street harassment by the victims. This was partly because they too believed that the victim ‘asked for it’ to a certain extent and that the best way to deal with it would be to ignore or work their lives around it by sacrificing their personal liberties. Because of these questions due to which the project was begun it hopes to tackle the issues in a manner that is based on each individual’s experiences and responses.

One of the main instruments it uses are Street Interventions, which essentially involve women who have been victims of street sexual harassment wearing clothes they otherwise wouldn’t have dared to wear for fear of inviting ‘unwanted attention’ and reclaiming the street. This firstly involves reflecting on the way in which a woman usually behaves on the street- trying to take up as little space as possible and reversing these power dynamics by say a simple act of ‘staring back’. Through this it not only intends to initiate a dialogue between the victim and the perpetrator but also a personal one within the victim herself.

Another instrument is for each individual to photograph the perpetrator when she experiences street harassment and put it up on the Blanknoise website. Though not entirely successful in practice, it signifies the emergence of innovative and extra legal methods to deal with such issues.

This movement seems to be a culmination of the Rights oriented approach used by Indian Feminists starting in the 1970’s. It has been made possible both by the feminist movement preceding it and by the nature of present day society that is beginning to revolve around the individual and her rights.

The fact that the movement is an online blog is both its strength and its weakness. Strength because it does not require concrete commitment and hence is able to tap the talents in terms of online discussions and debates of a large number of people. Larger than it would have been if they needed to make a fulltime commitment. And because the methods used to deal with street sexual harassment and the way in which this project questions street harassment is probably the first of its kind there have been severe criticisms, which I feel have only helped the movement grow. Apart from people having problems with the issues Blank Noise is dealing with they also feel it is an upper middle, urban centric movement, which it is. At this juncture of the women's movement I feel this may not necessarily be a disadvantage as only because of the fact that it is a smaller group, is it able to deal with issues on an individual and personal basis. Also at this stage of the women's movement there seem to be a very large number of women's organisations dealing with both very broad mandates and with specific issues. As the numbers of organisations grow I feel it is more important for newer organisations to deal with more specific issues which enable them to understand the issues wholly and address them through alternative methods which are entirely suited to the issue. Though the Blank Noise Project has been begun by one individual it resembles an autonomous women’s organisation more than it does an NGO which is identified with one individual. This I feel is because it works with and not for the women. The essence of the interventions for example is that each woman takes up agency and deal with the situation as she deems appropriate.

The Blank Noise Project draws volunteers from a diverse range of careers, ranging from software professionals, to architects, to journalists and most importantly students as opposed to people from a purely social science/social work background. This diversity which is absent in more “ngo-ised” organisations is possibly because of the nature of the project- the fact that it affects each person all the time, and doesn’t involve working for a cause, and also the fact that it works from an easily accessible online blog.

Another very significant aspect of this project is that there are a substantial number of men involved, so though the mandate might seem to be very radical and anti-man as it only deals with male perpetrators the presence of these male members gives it a legitimacy that will help the movement in the long run.

An area where the Project doesn’t entirely take the women's movement forward is that it doesn’t recognize the interrelated nature of the feminist movement and the queer movement and attempts to deal with and is structured in a way that only deals with heterosexual harassment.

From what I have gathered from the Blanknoise Project members I have spoken to, the most important aspect of being involved with the movement for them is that it provides a space for people to talk about an issue that has been ignored/accepted/normalized for so long. One member specifically said that it helped her rediscover her sexuality as a result of meeting other like minded women who re-enforced and supported each other because it helped her to not be ashamed of her sexuality and her body. One of the main strengths the Blank Noise Project has inherited from the stream of feminist movement’s that work with the Queer rights movement and other sexual minority movement’s is that neither it’s mandate nor it’s methods de-sexualize a woman or create the image of a chaste, good woman that people have to adhere to.

When I introduced the Blank Noise Project to people who were not a part of the movement, both men and women responded rather pessimistically. Among the women it was mostly the older women who responded with a “you can’t change the world” and “it’s best to be safe”. However it is not that this degree of internalizing the issue wasn’t present among the younger women. A lot of the younger men felt the project was problematic because it was too radical in the sense that it questioned the actions of men too much, for example the project contends that even ‘looking’ can be offensive if done in a certain manner. Among the young men who did support the project I noticed a slightly patronizing attitude, and also that the way they felt street sexual harassment should be dealt with was very different from what the project has adopted, they felt it should be dealt with aggression, either the woman carrying pepper spray and other protective devices or hitting the man. The older men who I introduced the idea to were reluctant to even talk about this issue in detail and also felt that it isn’t possible for a small group of women to try and change the world.