Delhi trees filled with feminist messages on sanitary pads

Violence against women has been prevalent for centuries. However, not only is gender-based violence condemned by most societies today, most nations have laws against this. As painful as it is to see that women have to fight for basic human rights in the modern world; we shouldn’t forget how far we’ve come. All this has been possible because of thousands of  women and men, who have been fighting sexism across the world- some through policies and governance and others on a more grassroot level.

The International Women’s Day this is year saw one such effort. A German artist, Elone scribbled feminist messages on sanitary pads and put them up all over Karlsruhe city. Inspired by this, students of the Delhi University and Jamia Milia Islamia in Delhi are sticking sanitary towels with messages written in Hindi and English, all over their campuses.

The taboos regarding menstruation are highly common in India, both in villages and urban cities. Taking this and women’s safety up as a cause, Slogans like ‘Streets of Delhi belong to women too’, ‘Rapists rape people, not outfits’, and ‘Period blood is not impure, your thoughts are’ are being seen in the capital.

According to a report by Scroll.in, Rafiul Alom Rahman, who initiated the campaign at DU, said, “We simply want people to understand that menstruation is not a crime and a girl should not be victimised for something so natural… We put feminist messages on the pads even though we knew that people will not be okay with seeing sanitary pads with red paint.”

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