the night(?) and danger(?)

Freelancer updates on Palestine, Occupy Wall Street and the Ontario Election have distracted me from putting typeface to screen lately. There’s a united voice out there that seems to be getting louder. Feeling the pulse and getting excited for the first time since May 2 and Jack Layton’s passing.

Last week, I attended Ottawa's Take Back The Night (La rue, la nuit, les femmes sans peur) with some of my feminist posse. For those unfamiliar, TBTN is a march for safe streets that (allegedly, but not according to wikipedia) began in Philadelphia in 1975 after a young woman microbiologist was murdered on her walk home. In 1976, an International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women culminated in a march in Brussels.

The event has carried the typical “women’s only(?)” controversy over the years, and each year, organizers field dialogue on whether or not to welcome men. Traditionally, the marches are women-only, but the discussion varies on how to include men. The purpose of the walk varies contextually as well, as some marches include domestic violence under the broad VAW umbrella, while others are more directly tackling rape and safe streets, and even the right for women to walk alone in public.

Admittedly, I find the collision of slogans in Canadian walks a little emotionally confusing. “Hey, hey mister, get your hands off of my sister,” is absolutely ridiculous to me (no wonder men are scared of us), as is the tried and true, “However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no,” and even the more-to-the-point, “2-4-6-8, no more date rape.” We are not cheerleaders. And it's not like we can easily shout, "Hey, hey mister, you may touch me where and when I say, and not feel at liberty to access my body as though it were an object. But mix it up a bit: sometimes just catch me off guard and kiss me, and sometimes ask politely if you may kiss me, and sometimes take control when I falsely protest as I am socialized to be gatekeeper and I really don't want to be, and other times when I protest, it is certainly not false, and you'd better listen, and you'd better not get me to that point of anger in the first place..."

Why not march in silence with candles as and for the women who are sexually assaulted and murdered daily in our streets and around the world?

I marched in relative silence with my friends, reflected on what we were doing as women and feminists, and soaked in the stares and honks of onlookers. Activists against segregation in the march are met with considerable backlash on this night. I usually favour inclusivity, but I do appreciate how at the Ottawa event, men are asked to walk behind women or line the streets in solidarity and are not generally seen among the ranks of marching women. This of course brings up the intensely problematic reification of gender binaries, which I generally resist. But for such an event as Take Back The Night, where the purpose is to highlight the particularly gendered nature of volatile bodies and street (sexual) violence, I think the symbolism is important. I think those who identify as men should be involved. At the back.

At one point in the march, there was a throng of young boys walking behind me, screaming (shrieking!) at the top of their lungs. Would it not have been so painfully ironic given our cries for non-violence, I would have stiff-armed them. They really did pollute the space.

As I conclude, I realize I set out to critique how the event was organized (who gave speeches, what did they say, etc.). Maybe it’s not the organization I have a problem with, but the way we conceptualize “safe” streets and “rape” and “power” that distances us from what I believe would be meaningful and provocative forms of protest. Paralysis by sloganitus at its finest.