Women in Black Uk

On the day of the big Stop the War demonstration (Feb 15th, 2003) a few
friends arrived at the Edith Cavell statue ready with sanitary pads, pins
and bright red-lettered stickers. We moved to the side of the statue, away
from but within sight of the normal Women in Black vigil space as agreed, so
that our adventure wasn't "part of" Women in Black's activities that
morning.
As soon as we began taking out the stickers and pads to assemble the
finished product, people walking past stopped to ask us what the stickers
said or to watch, fascinated perhaps by the breaking of the taboo of
publicly displaying menstrual pads. Most people walking by laughed out loud
and some came and asked us for stickers. When we realised that they were
catching people's attention, we started giving them away to passers by
before the march or the vigil had even began so that they would carry the
message all the way through the crowd.
As agreed before hand, those of us who were wearing and giving out the
stickers put them away to join the vigil. After the vigil, some WiB'ers did
not want to wear a sticker, but probably over half the women at the vigil
did accept or ask for a sticker. On the march, a small group of us gave away
the remaining sani-pads with stickers and then just stickers themselves that
remained, without pads. We could have easily given out thousands more and
they were to be seen all over the march as we moved up and down giving them
out, and later at Hyde Park.
We got an amazing response from most people who passed by. If anyone took
offence they did not say so or did not approach us to tell us. Rather the
experience led us to believe that people thought the slogan was spot on
(excuse the pun!) We did have some funny responses from people who looked
quizzically at the stickers and then asked 'But what does it mean'?
Obviously not Freud readers! We realised too that men responded to the
stickers as positively as women. In some cases, a man with a woman
encouraged her to take one or simply took one for himself. Generally, when
people saw what we had in our hands they stared for a few seconds and then
burst into laughter. Men, women, old, young, and all manner of skin colour,
religion, language......
We had a great time giving out the stickers and the activity gave a focus to
the march for us. We feel that although the slogan and the sani-pads may
have given the appearance at first of being too light-hearted or possibly
offensive, on balance it was neither of these things in interpretation on
the day. Yes there were laughs, yes there was some embarrassment. Yes, this
is a complex message that is sometimes either misunderstood or not
understood at all. But by bringing something so apparently mundane and
normally private out into the open, we were able to remind people that there
are normal human lives at stake in this war and many people appreciated
this. By using the slogan we were able to give voice at yet another level to
people's sense of outrage and feelings of futility. We have given them out
at actions since then (outside of WiB) and have received much the same
responses. We would like to give them out again, perhaps this time as part
of WiB action.