User:Alisonbailey/WhyLoiter

Why Loiter is a campaign that was launched on December 16, 2014 which marked the two-year anniversary of the 2012 Delhi gang rape that aims at women reclaiming public spaces and asserting their right to wander freely. Borrowing it's name from a book titled, Why Loiter?: Women and Risk On Mumbai Streets, written by Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan, published in 2011, grew the movement which began in 2013 with two women Neha Singh and Devina Kapoor coordinating and organising events such as Walk Like a Woman. The online campaign that was started by the book authors in collaboration with the movement, as the word 'loiter' ("to stand or wait around without apparent purpose") suggests, is people walking around the streets of their localities and places of their choice in an attempt to thwart the notion that loitering is primarily a "male prerogative" and to make public space accessible and free to all at any given time. A second campaign was launched on the same dates in 2015 and collaborated with the likes of GirlsAtDhabas and Blank Noise. In this second one, groups in India and also Pakistan joined the event. The book also inspired a play directed by Satchit Puranik titled 'Loitering'.

The book
Why Loiter?: Women and Risk On Mumbai Streets written by Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan is based on the findings of a three-year research project, namely the Gender and Space Project, based in Mumbai, that examined the differences in access to public space. Conventional as well as non-conventional research methods such as locality studies, ethnography and mapping from the fields of social sciences and urban planning, audio and video documentaries, photography were made use of to conduct the research. The authors also organised workshops and seminars with undergraduate and graduate students to discuss relevant topics. Researchers came together to interview women from varied parts of the city- places as different as Nariman Point and Chembur, Zaveri Bazaar and Kalachowki- documenting the lives of upper, middle and lower class women. The book while acknowledging the increasing crime rates against women, dismisses safety for women as a limited initiative, as it entails the exclusion of the threatening 'others', some of who, as the book recognizes are migrant or Muslim men, and increased surveillance thus letting the status quo remain unchallenged. It contests the widespread notion of women as victims, as being in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong clothes. 'Pleasure' and women having fun is given primacy over safety, and the negative connotations attached to the word 'loiter' as is evident from the Hindi usage of the word ('lafanga', 'tapori', 'vella', 'lukka' etc) are discarded. Loitering, as the book asserts, includes activities such as standing at street corners, drinking tea and engaging in conversation at roadside tea stalls without surveillance, using public toilets at night and "indulging in consensual flirtation and sexual encounters"

The book is divided into four sections, each dealing with a separate theme or area of interest. The first section, "City Lights" addresses the existing dichotomies, of the moral versus the immoral that manifests in the figures of the middle class housewife versus the lower class bar dancer. It focuses not only on the dangers of public spaces that women have to face or deal with, but also on how homes and private spaces are equally, if not more, unsafe. The second section, "Everyday Spaces", talks about the everyday hassles that come with travelling and defecating and about gathering spaces for women. The third section, "In Search of Pleasure", identifies certain groups of women- 'Bandra girls', 'Muslim girls', Rich girls, 'Old girls', 'Slum girls', 'Lesbian girls' and 'Working girls'- and is an account of their 'fun' experiences which in actuality are compromises made with the existing system rather than an open flouting of the same. The fourth and the last section, "Imagining Utopias", emphasizes on the need for women and people in general to come together and loiter, to assert their fundamental feminist right of claiming spaces and to open up the city to a whole new world of possibilities that is inclusive of all.

Shamolie Oberoi's book review emphasised on the following, "In making a case for loitering as a feminist activity, it says that “the struggle against violence and the quest for pleasure cannot be two separate things." While the struggle against violence is premised on exclusion, in as much as it divides people into “aggressors” and “victims”, the quest for pleasure is framed in more inclusive terms and is thus non divisive – this right to loiter is not just for women, but for all marginalised groups, therefore envisaging an “undifferentiated right to public space"."

In an interview about the book, the author says the following- "“Research across the world suggests that women's homes are the most unsafe places for them,” says Shilpa Phadke, one of the authors of “Why Loiter?”. “The largest percent of assaults, sexual and other kinds of assaults, against women take place in the private space of the home and [are] committed by people known to them. But we never tell people, ‘Don't go home.’ In fact, we urge them to be in this space.

Recent headlines about rape and sexual assault suggest otherwise. But crime statistics show that in fact men are attacked more often in public than women, says Phadke. And yet, no one in India tells men to stay at home.

“The city can be aggressive, and it’s not a welcoming space for anybody,” she says. Cities are often quite aggressive towards minorities, especially toward poor men, who are often the target of violence by police. Middle class women, she says, actually have greater privilege in Indian cities than these poor men.""

The movement
Besharmi Morcha, the Indian version of SlutWalk, Freeze the Tease, Chappal Marungi are some of the movements that have mobilised women in the past and encouraged them to speak up against violence and harassment. Why Loiter urges people to come together in public spaces and simply loiter. Pioneered by Devina Kapoor and Neha Singh who read the book and decided to act on its ideas, the movement is a broad based and loosely organised movement that started in 2014.

In April, 2015, a group of 15 men dressed as women headed out in the night with Neha Singh, asserting the right to dress up as the individual pleases irrespective of sex and heteronormative notions. The walk, inspired by a protest in Turkey where men came out dressed in miniskirts to raise their voices about the murder of a 20 years old student and women's right to public spaces, saw these men come out dressed in 'saris', 'salwar kameez', skirts, tube dresses and tie-knot tops and walk from Juhu Beach to Prithvi Theatre. The authors of the book have organised workshops with college student and various girls' and women's groups. They tied up with the Delhi-based NGO, CREA to conduct a workshop on reclaiming public spaces and loitering with fifty tribal girls in Jharkhand. Women are going out to beaches, parks and other spaces which have been described as 'male-dominated' to assert their presence and their right to be out as and when they please, wearing whatever they please and are posting stories and photographs of their experiences on social media. These women have also called for an end to victim blaming and slut shaming.

Online campaign
Starting as a two-week campaign, launched on 16th December 2014 and lasting till 1st January 2015, women were invited to come together and loiter and post pictures of themselves doing the same on social media with the hashtag #whyloiter. It asked women to  “hang out in the city, to make use of its public spaces, to loiter aimlessly and to use the hashtag #whyloiter everytime you do!"  . Nishant John, an advertising professional and Abhishek Jayprakash, a designer, put together and designed the posters for the Facebook page of the campaign. It was widely talked about in 2014. A second campaign was launched on 16th December 2015. Though at first the movement remained limited to people with access to social media, it grew in its second year and spread to places like Jaipur, Aligarh, Delhi and other cities including those in Pakistan.

The campaign mainly demands safe, accessible public spaces for women. "Pitched as a counter to the concept of victim blaming, the authors discourse upon what they call the “right to risk”. Thus, the demand to claim public spaces is built within the larger framework of fundamental rights." It also includes in its agenda the demand for more public toilets that are regularly maintained, accessible public transport and street lighting after dark in all areas.

To spread awareness about the initiative, a series of posts and tweets were shared for a period of two weeks and participants were urged to share their experiences on social media. In two weeks, the campaign went viral online with more than 3,000,000 impressions on Twitter, 1200 Facebook posts and 10,000 re-tweets. Scroll magazine, The Times of India and Business Standard interviewed the people behind the campaign and the movement. In the December 2015 campaign, the social media pages of Why Loiter shared conversations, Tweetchats and videos on loitering in Pakistan. Girls at Dhabas organised Why Loiter campaigns both online and offline on the same days, in Pakistan. "The use of the hashtag has, in a sense, democratised their activism. The Twitter feeds of both movements have an ongoing conversation, which has helped remove the barriers of distance and geography. Several posts share stories of liberation and the struggle to reclaim public spaces."

"Zebunnisa Chughtai, a student at Lahore University, and students at Aligarh Muslim University, decided to frequent male-dominated parts of their cities like streets and roadside tea stalls to reclaim these spaces. Women in Mumbai decided to walk down Marine Drive at night, and even Delhi women walked around Chandni Chowk after dark."

One of the posters from the campaign reads,"“Not all protests are marches, some are strolls.”"