Sixteen Days of Activism

Last Friday at the launch of the Victoria Against Violence campaign, I met Nikita Chawla’s family.

Nikita and I had been at school together, and when I learned of her death, I was forced to look at domestic violence in a different light. As a pressing issue that can affect anyone, of any age, of any background.

Her brother Tarang is a strong, male voice crying for change, constantly urging people to be better, and actively fighting for equality.

Her mother, Sunila, is a gentle woman full of love, wisdom, and of course, terrible loss.

Tarang and Sunila both congratulated me on the Bird Girls exhibition, and commented on the frightening number of works.

I congratulated Tarang, and thanked him for all the work he was doing.

And then I didn’t know what to say.

What do you say to a family who have had their bright, successful, ambitious daughter and sister snatched away from them?

I’m sorry.

It’s the best I could manage.

And it felt immensely insufficient.

I wondered how you would say this to 73 families across the course of a year in 2016.

To 86 more in 2015.

There are not enough words to be able to express how frightening, heartbreaking and helpless this sort of death makes you feel.

You can’t call it unlucky.

You can’t call it fate.

You can’t say that some people’s time is shorter than others.

That’s bullshit.

These women were murdered.

Their lives were brutally and unnecessarily cut short.

Their deaths were entirely preventable.

No amount of “I’m sorry” will change that, or make it better.

At one point during the conversation, Tarang bowed his head

I’m sorry for men

He said.

I said

You don’t need to apologise

Of all men, he has nothing to apologise for.

In fact, what he does extends far beyond a token apology.

His mother agreed with me, insisting that it was not just men who are responsible for the gender inequality in society.

It’s the product of centuries of cultural practice.

From the moment we celebrate the birth of a son.

This is such a prime example of how deeply gender inequality is ingrained in our world.

There are so many people (myself included) who have said

Oh, I bet they’re hoping for a boy this time.

I would hazard a guess that most of the people who say this would be horrified to think that they are contributing to gender inequality. It is so normal, that we don’t even see it.

Sometimes I worry that the change we need to make in our society is so huge that it is impossible.

But then I meet people like Tarang Chawla, Rosie Batty, Michelle Gallaher, Sonya Kilkenny, and Claire Spencer, and my hope is restored.

To produce this exhibition, I have had the privilege of working with an incredible team of women from the state government who run the Victoria Against Violence campaign.

At the launch of the Bird Girls, and the 16 days of activism, they asked me to give a speech.

For those of you who have been following the blog, it will be familiar, but you can read it here:

"When invited to speak this evening, I was asked what the campaign means to me, and that really took me back to the beginning of this project.

A few years ago, like many others, I enthusiastically and genuinely took the White Ribbon Day pledge:

I swear never to commit, excuse, or remain silent about violence against women.

This is my oath.

I then promptly forgot about it.

At the beginning of 2015, a girl I went to school with was murdered by her husband

I heard the news of her death on the radio before I knew it was Nikita Chawla.

It was some time later that I had a conversation that disturbed me.

A close friend revealed that, after a work function, her male manager had pulled her aside and tried to be physically intimate with her. Uncomfortable and afraid, she had run off, telling herself she was a strong and independent woman, before she broke down in the street and cried.

I felt so stupid.

She told me

And I thought - we’ve all been there right?

How many times have we doubted ourselves – wondering if we’ve worn the wrong thing, if we’ve parked our car in an unsafe place, if we should really be walking home alone?

We are taught from such a young age how to be careful, be safe, and not tempt ill-fate in this big, scary world. How then can we not feel foolish and neglectful when something bad happens?

I encouraged my friend to speak to her workplace, contact Human Resources, ask for support.

She looked at me as if I was completely naive.

And then what Alisa? They move me? To a team that I don’t know, in an area I don’t want to work in? I become the girl who everyone tiptoes around because I claimed sexual harassment? No thanks.

I desperately wanted to tell her that wouldn’t be the case, that justice would be served, and that she would be applauded for her bravery.

But if I was completely honest with myself, and with her, I knew that she was probably right.

And so I was silent.

That silence bothered me.

I swear never to commit, excuse, or remain silent about violence against women.

I thought of Nikita, and how silence had affected her.

We occasionally hear about these atrocities of violence against women in the media, but never think they will happen to someone we know.

I began to think about how I could give a voice to those lives lost, how to illustrate the shocking statistics, how to help break the silence.

And so The Bird Girls project was born.

I decided to draw a portrait for every life lost as a result of violence against women over the course of one year.

Each woman is drawn faceless, they are anonymous, reflecting the manner in which most of their deaths are reported.

The body of a 42 year old woman was found…

An unnamed woman was discovered yesterday…

A woman (35) has been found in her home…

It could be your neighbour, your colleague, your sister.

It could be me, it could be you.

I think the most difficult part about undertaking this project, was not the shock at the amount of deaths.

It was the fact that I wasn’t shocked at all.

It was exactly what I expected.

Like the majority of women, I experience and witness gender inequality every day.

So a society in which domestic violence is the leading cause of death in women aged 15-44 is not so hard to imagine.

And this make me feel sad, and frustrated, and angry.

But more than anything I feel tired.

I’m tired of feeling like our world is moving backwards instead of forwards.

Because I have had this conversation so many times.

It's not my friend's job to report it.

It is her boss's job not to sexually harass her.

It is her male colleague's job to call out the boss's misogynic jokes that enable him to think he has the right to treat her like that.

It is a partner’s job not to commit violent or controlling behaviour against his wife or girlfriend.

And it is Australia's job to enshrine its women’s protection under the law and ensure that their safety and wellbeing is prioritised.

This is not an issue that belongs just to Australia.

Misogyny is rife across the globe and my work doesn’t even touch on problems that women face in regards to education, health care, work, the right to vote, or being given a voice.

But I cannot take on something as big as all of this. It is impossible.

The Bird Girls are my contribution, my attempt to join the other voices crying for awareness, change, and women’s rights.

This is me, honouring my oath and breaking the silence.

This is me, putting up my hand to end violence.

This is me, challenging you to do the same."