On April 26, as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the Women’s Resource Center and Portland Women’s Crisis Line co-sponsored this year’s Take Back the Night (Bike Back the Night, for those who participated on their bicycles) here at PSU. Take Back the Night is an annual international event that seeks to raise awareness about the prevalence and impact of sexual violence in communities.
According to the TBTN website, “the first documented Take Back The Night event in the United States took place in October of 1975 in Philadelphia.” Citizens of Philadelphia marched together after the murder of a young woman, Susan Alexander Speeth, who was attacked and then stabbed by a man a block away from her home while walking alone at night. Though that event involved only a candlelight procession through the streets, TBTN has evolved since then to include a full range of activities.
This year at PSU, the evening began with some tabling and socializing with donated snacks in the Smith Memorial Student Union. (The event had been moved inside from the South Park Blocks due to worries about the weather.) Then there were some speakers, as well as a series of powerful spoken word poetry pieces dealing with issues of sexual violence and victimization. Following this was the march around campus, complete with signs, chanting and lots of awareness-raising. After that, participants were invited back inside to hold a Speak Out, in which some brave women in the community shared their stories of surviving sexual assault.
Finally, to complete the program, a candlelight vigil was held in the South Park Blocks in order to remember all those who have been affected by sexual violence.
The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network is the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. Their website publishes some grim statistics regarding general sexual violence and rape.
According to RAINN, someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes in the United States on average. In our country, 15 percent of women and 2 percent of men are raped in their lifetime. Nine out of every 10 rape victims are female; nine out of 10 rapists are male. Approximately two-thirds of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim; 38 percent of rapists are a friend or acquaintance, while 28 percent are an already-established intimate partner.
Only 46 percent of rapes are ever reported to the police, and a mere 3 percent of rapists ever spend any time in prison.
Rape, and sexual assault in general, is primarily about power. It’s about the power and entitlement to take what you want, regardless of the victim’s humanity. It’s about the power and ability to assert control over someone else without a thought for their personal agency.
Most of all it necessitates a complete lack of respect. In this case, I would argue that the disturbing figures presented above betray a culture-wide lack of respect for women and an unwillingness to punish accordingly when that lack of respect manifests in sexual violence.
We live in a culture that is incredibly “pornified.” Images of almost-naked women are used to sell everything from cars to deodorant to cheeseburgers. A scantily clad woman appears on almost every magazine cover. Porn itself is a $14 billion industry, with annual revenues greater than the combined income of technology giants Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Netflix and EarthLink. Surely all of this sexual objectification begins to rub off on those who constantly absorb it.
Feminists have written extensively on the concept of the male gaze, and the inherent power imbalance that occurs from positioning men as the viewers and women as the viewed. Could this visual power imbalance translate into a sexually physical one, whereby men assume entitlement to women’s actual bodies in addition to mass media images? Or is there something else going on?
Beyond our inability to pinpoint concrete causes, our culture has also been traditionally inept at dealing with the realities of rape when it does happen (and it apparently happens a lot). Despite the fact that sexual violence causes long-term psychological trauma to the victim, those brave enough to come forward are often met with the worst forms of victim-blaming imaginable.
Interrogations about what they were wearing, if it was dark out, if they had smiled a lot beforehand, or if they thought they had said “No!” enough times, are all par for the course. The truth is that the only person who has any control over whether or not a rape is going to happen is the rapist—the person who makes a conscious decision to physically violate someone else.
Sadly, we live in a society that teaches “don’t get raped” instead of “don’t rape.” Sexual violence (by men) is considered a natural hazard, and women are given extremely offensive “advice” on how to “prevent” it, including but not limited to not wearing short skirts, not leaving our homes alone after dark and not giving any signals that we’re interested in a man. Otherwise, we’re practically asking to be raped!
Events like TBTN are visible ways for people to take a stand against sexual violence and the offensive ways in which it is usually addressed. To “take back the night” is to assert that you have a right to travel in the dark, a right to wear what you wish and a right to display personality without fear of being preyed upon simply for being a woman.
To “take back the night” is to demand that society cease advising women to avoid men for their own safety and instead begin telling men to cease raping women.
Let’s hope they listen.