The purpose of this post is to brainstorm around DOT shaped placards for the demo next Sat, 9th July.

NB: If you are coming to the demo, please bring your own dot!

If you want to come along, but don’t want to hold a dot, we will need people to give out leaflets and generally give a hand too!

What kind of dot should I make??

It can be any colour and obviously should be dot shaped (ie a circle) and must have two holes at either side as shown in this diagram. This is so we can ‘join the dots’ together with rope. For size, a good rule of thumb is to get someone to hold the dot and walk a few feet away from you. If you can still read it – it’s a good size!  For materials, either pop into your local shop and ask them for some empty crisp boxes or else hit up Easons for an AO Poster Card (about €3). Vibes & Scribes and Cork Art Supplies would also be likely places to get materials. But you should be able to make a great dot with a free piece of cardboard and a permanent marker!

There are five general themes we aim to cover in the demo:

• The sexualisation of young girls
• Objectification of women in advertising/media
• Challenging Myths/Stereotypes like ‘if you’re a slut you deserve it’ and challenging victim shaming
• The acts of sexual violence – rape, date rape, corrective rape and all other forms of sexual assault and abuse
• Justice & the legal system – from comments made by guards to the poor conviction rate

At our planning meeting today, we started chatting and came up with a few different phrases, feel free to use these on dots:

• Rape is never ok
• Over 2/3 of women are raped by someone they know
• Do you find rape jokes funny? I don’t.
• We don’t ever ask to be raped.
• Sex is something you do with me, not to me.
• Rape is about power not desire.
• If you use boobs to sell a product, I won’t buy it.