Colored Tees help women affected by violence. Do you have one to donate and one to wear this Topical Wednesday in respect for women affected? The Clothes Line Project could use your donation. It is an international awareness-raising event where women affected by violence decorate a color-coded Tee shirt to be displayed as a barometer of those affected by intimate violence.
Herstory: The idea for the Clothesline Project grew out of the Men’s Rape Prevention Project in Washington D.C. The men’s project claimed that while 58,000 soldiers died for the love of their country in the Vietnam war, 51,000 women (in the same period) were killed by men who supposedly loved them. In the summer of 1990, that statistic became the catalyst for a coalition of women’s groups on Cape Cod, Massachusetts to develop a program that would educate, break the silence and bear witness to a global issue – violence against women.
This small voice of women found a starchy way to turn staggering statistics into a provocative, educational and healing tool. The concept of using tee shirts – hanging on a clothesline – was accepted as the ironing board of awareness raising.
Doing the laundry has long been considered women’s work and in the days of close-knit neighborhoods, women often exchanged information over backyard fences while hanging their clothes out to dry. In a similar vein, the Clothesline Project allowed each woman to tell her story, off her own back, using words and/or artwork to decorate her shirt. Once finished, the women hung their shirt on a clothesline that acted as:
• an educational tool for those who come to view the Clothesline,
• a healing tool for anyone who decorated a shirt ,
• a life line, to those still suffering in silence, to know that they were not alone.
From an initial display of just 31 Tee Shirts in 1990, the project has extended with an overwhelming international response and strung the Clothesline Project from a single, local, grassroots effort into an intense national campaign. This month there are an estimated 500 international clotheslines with an approximate 60,000 shirts to be displayed.
In 2004 I became involved in my first clothes line project in Cairns Australia. My group gathered second hand Tee Shirts from survivors of violence and we displayed them in a public park for all to see how many women in our town had been affected.
Why not donate a new, or used, colored Tee to a Women’s service in your area. The Tee will be representational of acknowledging the different forms of violence and help a sister in need. Donated shirts are made available at no cost to any survivor. The clothesline occurs on different dates in different States, so please, donate at any time, to any women’s service. Just let them know that the tee is for the Clothesline Project.
Each colored Tee represents a different type of violence:
White: women who died because of violence;
Yellow: battered or assaulted women;
Red, pink, and orange: survivors of rape and sexual assault;
Blue and green: survivors of incest and sexual abuse;
Purple or lavender: women attacked because of their sexual orientation;
Black: women attacked for political reasons.
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Topical Whensday: When Will YOU Tee On to Cause an Effect?
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