A long time ago on television I saw this programme about artists. Well I’ve seen lots of programmes about artists really, being as I used to think I was one, and every now and then I occasionally still think it. But there was this one in particular:

A man collected over 1000 autumn leaves and he wrote on them. Happy little statements, nice little messages. He put all 1000 into a sack, and went to the roof of a tall building, and then emptied the sack of leaves into the wind so the messages would get carried far and wide and would perhaps make someones day.

I thought abut it again recently, when reading somewhere (I think it was at Graces) that you always see the streets in some city littered with sexxxy ‘empowermentful’ porn posters and fliers. I got this mental imagery of fliers all about town with sexist depictions of women all over them, just papering the streets. N’I thought… ‘I want to paper the streets with opposite fliers. Things that promote women and are anti porn and anti empowermentfulism. Maybe with some ‘love your body’ stuff thrown in as well.
I thought about how maybe women reading those fliers would see them, and maybe it would brighten their day, and then I remembered roof-leaf-man. N’I thought about how leaves and such are absolutely better because they don’t harm the environment in the same way (Though it’d be harder to notice a message written on a leaf I guess.)
I think I want to do that, or something like that.

N’maybe make little fliers that I can stick on noticeboards and things. Like, outside shopping places etc.

I don’t know. It might brighten some womans day, and I think the effort is worth that.

Does this sound good to anyone else? If it does sound good, and anyone else would want to be involved, then wouldn’t it be awesome if we made a real day of it? Like a bunch of women-folk and pro-women-folk collecting leaves and writing on them for a few months, and then releasing them into the wild on the same day.
It sounds fantastic.

Would anyone else want to be involved in a project like that?

This is how it went down:

Note: This is actually just a copy paste of a post I made over at genderberg, so it’s aimed at a specific audience, and not a wide one like this blog usually is, which is why it’ll sound a bit off kilter.

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Here’s how it went down:

I left my house with 11 of the 12 posters (It seems I lost one.)
The first thing we did was paper lightpoles, my housemate drove me around to “good” lightpoles. (i.e one was on a busy intersection, another at a bus stop etc.) I prepared the posters to be taped while in the car, darted out and taped them to the poles, then darted back into the car, as we moved on to the next one. Most of these were a block away from the store. (It’s a busy block.)

Then we went to the store. My housemate drove me up to the side which I had sussed out I needed to enter from to avoid being seen by the security camera, but they had a metal roller door covering that entrance, which totally took me by surprise.
I walked around to the other side of the alley, figuring I could just cover my head for the camera, but there was this giant police paddy wagon sitting there, and a man in what looked like an office suit sitting in the alley, looking at the store. (I don’t know who he was, or what he was doing there.) so I chickened out of putting them on the store, and put some more posters on closer lightpoles.

I drew a little diagram in case my description of the street doesn’t make sense. I’m not too great at describing things clearly I don’t think.

Not to scale. <3333

I still have three posters, because my guess is that the roller door comes down when the big shopping centre closes and perhaps the playboy store closes before the shopping centre does. I might try again at like 10:00pm tomorrow night (Though at that time the street would be really busy I imagine )

Before I went out, I was feeling really tense, I wrote a blog entry to describe it, if you’re interested in that: http://is-power.blogspot.com

While I was out there though, I didn’t feel that bad, there was maybe a little adreneline but otherwise I was just being all methodical.

There we go, that’s the description of my first attempt of activism. (I don’t think my scribbling on offensive signs counts you see.)

I guess I’ll put what I’ve written here in my blog. *nods*

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A note about that first attempt at activism thing. Technically I guess i’ve done some activism before (beyond the scribbling on offensive things with a ballpoint) because I’ve written letters and what not, but none of that felt “real” if that makes sense. Writing a letter feels so distant to the issue, and scribbling on posters counts I guess, but it doesn’t have that ‘planned, prepared, organized then acted’ thing going on, and it’s not like the signs I wrote on were big ones, or anything like that.

So, that’s why I call this my first bit of activism.

SupaNova - Interesting.

I went to SupaNova (a comic and anime convention.)

For the most part, I had a great day. My costume was not ready in time for the event, but that’s cool. I dyed my hair blue (something I have wanted to do for years, but was always afraid of people on the street and such heckling me.)

Later at some point I must post photos, I love it. <3

There was something I found very disappointing, some presenter in an event made a jovial comment about schoolgirl tentacle rape. I wrote an emailed letter of complaint. Here it is if anyone is interested:

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Dear Sir/Madam

I attended the first day of Supanova, and had a good time at the majority of the event, however I have a complaint to make.

I watched the Iron Artists competition hosted by Oztaku. At one point in the presentation one of the presenters mentioned a convention that he’s organizing, which he said is the only anime/geek convention in Australia not ashamed or worried by adult content. Jovially he talked about how at this convention you can buy tentacle rape pornography, with schoolgirls.

I understand that these comics and such do exist, but I feel it was completely inappropriate of the presenters to talk about rape, especially because they were smiling.

This was a family event, and I expect audience members were not expecting such conversation, I understand rape jokes are common in geek spaces, but it was entirely inappropriate for a presenter to conduct himself this way in front of a large audience.
Rape is a delicate subject, it is a crime which leaves the victims traumatized often for many years.
The subject of rape can be triggering, and very upsetting to people who have survived the crime. The presenters did not know the backgrounds of the people in the hall, and did not know if this would be a triggering response for members of their audience.

As a woman who has experienced rape, I must express my disappointment at the insensitivity that was displayed by these men.

I thank you for your time, and sincerely hope nothing like this will happen in future.

Yours Faithfully

(insert real name here)

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I have a friends account of the details as well:

http://rosek.livejournal.com/228367.html

It was otherwise a great day (and the dinner with the four lovely ladies was just great!)

Please write a letter. <3

Over at ‘I can’t Fly’ there was a post about a woman named Sally Henderson who was jailed for ‘preventing the course of justice.’ She reported two rapes in her lifetime, was deemed a liar, and was sent to jail for wasting the courts time.

Here’s an article about it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1939283,00.html

In the comments, Stormy said that she was trying to get access to information about which prison Sally was sent to, so that people could send her supportive letters. I spoke to her, and found that she has the address, but she can’t give it out because under the Data Protection Act (DPA), she’s unable to pass the information along to a third party.

However, you can write letters, and attatch them to an email, sending it off to letter.rally@hotmail.com where Stormy will print out all the letters, and post them off to Sally in a bundle.

They will be sent via snailmail, so a proper proper letter formatting is strongly encouraged (including return addresses) If you’re (understandably) wary about giving out your address online, email type submissions could be acceptable.

Stormy requests that all letters be sent to the above email address by the 14th, so that she’ll be able to mail them all off in a bundle.

The idea is just to send support, to let her know that there are people all around the world who support her, believe her, and think her being sent to jail is bullshitty.

It’s not an act that’ll change the world, but it seems like a nice thing to do for a woman who has had a rough time, and who hasn’t been given justice.

Summary:

1. Write a letter to Sally Henderson.
2. Attatch it to an email.
3. Send it to: letter.rally@hotmail.com

Stormy will pretty much do the rest.

I’m looking to get as many people to send letters as possible, so if you could advertise this on your own at forums you go to, or your own blogs, that would be great. Thanks.