Kapiti's Natasha Tahiwi, 26, wearing a splash of red lipstick for this month's international Red My Lips campaign.
Kapiti's Natasha Tahiwi, 26, wearing a splash of red lipstick for this month's international Red My Lips campaign.
Kapiti women are among thousands participating in an awareness campaign that launched in New Zealand and around the world last week, tackling the controversial topic of rape culture through the collective splash of red.
Red My Lips, an awareness month in its third year and running through April, invites women to brighten their lips in shades of red to help stir conversation surrounding sexual violence in communities.
Promoted around the world through social media, an online event saw a collection of local women join in on the initiative, which organisers said creates "visibility and awareness about the realities and prevalence of sexual violence, while combating rape myths and victim-blaming".
On the campaign's Facebook event page, New Zealand is among 90 countries painted red on a map to highlight their involvement in the cause, which runs as a non-profit organisation based in the US.
Campaign founder Danielle Tansino, now 33, created the Red My Lips campaign in 2012 after a night out with friends in April 2011 that saw her become isolated and raped by a childhood friend of her then-housemate.
After filing a police report, and following a traumatic experience with the court system, she was told by a female district attorney they would not prosecute because "jurors don't like girls that drink".
"What was almost more shocking was the response from friends and family who suggested the attack was a mere misunderstanding, or attempted to frame it as a natural consequence of not being careful enough," she wrote.
"Red My Lips promotes the idea that the problem does not lie with tight or revealing clothes, makeup, or 'letting your guard down'."
She said contemporary culture tends to see people convince themselves that rape only happens to "girls who gave mixed signals, or put themselves in a bad situation".
"This tendency to deny, shame, or blame survivors who come forward only serves to convince other survivors they are wise to keep quiet, giving those who perpetrate these crimes free reign to continue doing so without consequence."
Victim-blaming and the blur between what is deemed rape have been hot topics in New Zealand media recently, following the exposure of the Roast Busters in 2013.
The Auckland-based group comprised of young men ran a Roast Busters Facebook page, where they boasted about getting underage girls drunk and sleeping with them, before publicly naming and shaming them.
At the time, Women's Refuge chief executive Heather Henare said the incident showed that "many segments of our society, including within the police (who knew about it since 2011 and didn't shut the site down) and even within some media institutions, have a dominant culture of victim blaming."
In the wake of the Roast Busters scandal thousands of people marched the streets of several cities around the country protesting the case, which protest organisers said provided a "catalyst" for action against "New Zealand's rape and victim-blaming culture".
Kapiti Red My Lips supporter Natasha Tahiwi, 26, who works for a New Zealand government department, said she was wearing red to "break the stigma of victim-blaming, which includes incidences being brushed under the table".
"If I can get people talking by wearing my favourite red lipstick, then why not?" she said.
Kapiti councillors wearing red for the cause, from left, Jackie Elliot, Penny Gaylor, Diane Ammundsen and Janet Holborow.
