Take Back the Night

Take Back the Night march in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Take Back the Night is an international event and non-profit organization with the mission of ending sexual, relationship, and domestic violence in all forms. Hundreds of events are held in over 30 countries annually. Events often include marches, rallies and vigils intended as a protest and direct action against rape and other forms of sexual, relationship, and domestic violence. In 2001, a group of women who had participated in the earliest Take Back the Night marches, came together to form the Take Back the Night Foundation in support of the events throughout the United States and the world.

History

Take Back the Night Foundation's Board members have participated in Take Back the Night marches and events from the 1970s to present day. Early Take Back the Night events include a protest in San Francisco against pornography in 1973. One of the first "Take Back the Night" marches was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in October 1975, after the murder of a microbiologist, Susan Alexander Speeth, who was stabbed to death while walking home alone.^[1]

"Take Back the Night" was used as the title of a 1977 memorial read by Anne Pride at an anti-violence rally in Pittsburgh.^[2]

A "Reclaim the Night" march was held in Belgium in March 1976 by the women attending the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women.^[3] They marched together holding candles to protest violence against women. Other marches were held in Rome in 1976 as a reaction to recently released rape statistics, in West Germany in 1977 demanding "the right to move freely in their communities at day and night without harassment and sexual assault", and in 11 towns in England later in 1977 in response to the "Ripper Murders" in Leeds.

In 2006 a Reclaim the Night was organized in Ipswich as a response to the murders of five prostitutes there, with between 200 and 300 attendees.^[4]

Events

Events typically consist of a rally followed by a march and often a speak-out or candlelight vigil on violence against women. Early marches were often deliberately women-only in order to symbolize women's individual walk through darkness and to demonstrate that women united can resist fear and violence. (Most marches in the present day include men; the organization differs as each event is organized locally.) The women-only policies caused controversy on some campuses; activists argued that male allies and sexual assault survivors should be allowed to march in support of women and male victims of sexual violence.^[5]

In current practice, Take Back the Night events are not only inclusive of men, but include men as victims, bystanders, and supporters. Wesleyan University in Connecticut allows men to participate in speaking on their own experiences with sexual assault. The march at Wesleyan University includes performances by a cappella groups. Until 2012, when an all-male group was also invited to perform, these performances were done by two of the university's all women groups. More notably, Bowdoin College in Maine organizes a similar candlelight vigil and walk that encourages students of all genders to show solidarity for survivors on campus and in this nation. Michigan State University's^[6] Take Back the Night event includes a list of demands to the university community to end sexual violence.

While the march began as a way to protest the violence that women experienced while walking in public at night, the purpose of these marches was to speak out against this violence and raise community awareness as a preventive measure against future violence. The mission of Take Back the Night has since grown to encompass all forms of violence against all persons, though sexual violence against women is still the top focus. The word night was originally meant to be taken literally to express the fear that many women feel during the night but has since changed to symbolize a fear of violence in general. This helps the movement incorporate other feminist concerns such as domestic violence and sexual abuse within the home. Take Back the Night events occur on college campuses, in major metropolitan areas, in small towns, on military bases, and even in high schools. International events have been documented in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Bermuda, Canada, Italy, Poland, Germany, Hungary, India, England and many other countries. The common purpose is to advocate for the right of everyone to feel safe from sexual violence.

Women are often told to be extra careful and take precautions when going out at night. In some parts of the world, even today, women are not allowed out at night. So when women struggle for freedom, we must start at the beginning by fighting for freedom of movement, which we have not had and do not now have. We must recognize that freedom of movement is a precondition for anything else. It comes before freedom of speech in importance because without it freedom of speech cannot in fact exist.

— Source, The Night and Danger by Andrea Dworkin

On November 7, 2009 the first Take the Back the Night annual conference took place at Columbia University.^[7]

Controversy and debate

While some Take Back the Night marches later allowed men to participate, others still have refused to allow men (even male victims of sexual assault) to be involved under the claim of creating a "safe space" for women. Several critics have argued that this ignores the struggles of male victims and fails to provide them male role models, as well as implying the need to "take back the night" from all men, not just the minority who are perpetrators of sexual violence. Advocacy for having a broad coalition of participants including men, women, and transgender individuals alike has come from many different commentators in a variety of publications.^[8][9][10]

The specific focus of Take Back the Night events on sexual assaults from strangers and the lack of focus on date rape, child sexual abuse, parental incest, and other such forms of victimization has attracted criticism from a broad group of commentators such as Megan Greenwell of Good Magazine. Greenwell has remarked that the use of the "righteous rape" trope by Take Back the Night participants, to refer to sexual assault in the open by strangers as being somehow inherently morally different to other types of assault, is belittling and wrong.^[10]

In the student context, the policy of some institutions to make Take Back the Night events mandatory for students, compelling them to attend regardless whether they want to or not, has come under criticism by some women's rights activists as being hypocritical and inherently self-defeating. After a 2015 controversy at Virginia Tech emerged in which a mandatory event had some football players in the audience laugh at accounts of sexual assault, try to leave early, and otherwise disrupt the process, 'Womanspace' Co-President Malavika Sahai remarked, "Requiring people to go to an event encroaches on that safe space... [i]f you don't want to be there, you really shouldn't be there.”^[11]

See also

• Ni Putes Ni Soumises
• SlutWalk

Notes

References

• Brownmiller, Susan (1999). In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (ISBN 0-385-31486-8).
• Dworkin, Andrea (1993). "Letters From a War Zone" (ISBN 1-556-52185-5).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Take Back the Night.

• "Official Online Headquarters" for Take Back the Night- Resources to assist with running TBTN events, calendar of TBTN events.
• WMST-L: Take Back the Night, 1 of 2 (1995) and 2 of 2 (1997, 2001).
• Take Back the Night - Ipswich, United Kingdom - (report on response to the 2006 Ipswich murder investigation)
• Take Back the Night 2006 at UC Santa Cruz
• Ireland speaks at Take Back the Night rally (discusses men getting involved in a rally at the University of Virginia)
• The Rape Relief Files: Take Back The Night - Vancouver Herstory
• Reclaim the Night - Brighton, UK