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Danger is the Nature of the Darkness

This is one of those entries that gets me into trouble. Still, though my curmudgeonly nature creates conflict in my life, sometimes it just won't be denied. So I'm just going to come out and say it: I really can't summon much respect for 'Take Back the Night Marches.' And there's a large one going on tonight.

I don't wish to be misread as trivializing the problem of violence against women, any more than I'd trivialize the problems of violence against anyone, group or individual. Domestic violence, street crime, date rape, etc. are all difficult and real problems. Unfortunately, 'Take Back the Night' isn't a real solution, for at least three reasons. Two of these are admittedly quibbles, but the last is a serious objection: naming, coherency, and efficiency.

1. Impossible Dreams and Inevitable Nightmares: You can't 'Take Back the Night,' not even in a figurative sense. Danger is the nature of the darkness, and has been since the first of dawn of days. The night was never 'taken' by anyone: it's the natural ally of those who act under the cover of darkness. We may make our cities and our streets safer, surely, but evil deeds will always best be done away from other eyes.

2. When You Say Everything, You Mean Nothing: Of course, the first point is merely an aesthetic reaction. The March could be renamed a "March for Women's Night Safety," if the organizers gave two hoots about my fetish for appropriate names.

But no mere descriptive title can bear the load which the organizers are placing on it. Advertisements around the university blare in bold capital letters that tonight's marchers will be marching because "X percent of young woman have experience date rape" or "Y percentage of men or women were victims of domestic abuse." Because "Z number of transgendered individuals have been assaulted in the last year" or "A% of women are victims of domestic abuse." Indeed, apparently "B number of men report having been abused by their partners." [1] The motivations thus cover violence against both sexes, violence against all ages, and violence which is in no sense limited to the nocturnal.

Again, this is not to trivialize these issues. It's just to point out that if the organizers are to be believed, this is nothing more than a march against violence in general. If we're concerned about men as victims as domestic violence and women being assaulted at night, we might as well be concerned about men victimized under cover of darkness. Here we object to violence in general. And once we've reached that point, we're now marching about something that almost no one--except possibly the irredeemably criminal--disagrees with. If there is a greater message, it has long since passed the point of coherency into some vaguely altruistic blancmange. Which leads us to the final and most significant objection...

3. There is No Point to Pointless Activity: Violence against women is an important subject, doubly so for violence at night: I take seriously the complaint of women that they can feel less confident than I walking the streets after they've been to a bar. But if we're serious about this, there's many effective things we can do. With far fewer people than will be showing up at Barnard this evening, we can start neighborhood watches. Back at Oxford, I volunteered for 'nightwalk' services (men who agreed to stay sober and walk ladies home after dark). Nightbus services can be funded, equipped, and staffed. When it comes to domestic violence, I have nothing but the strongest respect for the people who spend time working on the domestic violence courtroom advocacy projects here at Columbia.

These things require effort and dedication. Those who do them command respect for their self-sacrifice, and to that I'll tip my hat. But marching down a well-lit street in a relatively safe area of New York at night, raising a rucous and thus raising 'consciousness?' Please. First of all, if the Columbia/Barnard crowd were any more 'conscious' we'd explode in a spontaneous burst of enlightenment. Everyone here can sing the words to this old familiar song. Secondly, the 'audience' that might need to hear the message--abusers, muggers, predators of all kinds--are simply not at the march, nor listening. Thus this kind of march becomes a masturbation of virtue, which I'm sure will make the marchers happy with themselves, but accomplishes so remarkably little that it approaches nothing. Indeed, depending on how annoyed onlookers get such 'consciousness raising' on other issues can even be counterproductive.

As I said, whenever the curmudgeon in me can't restrain himself and I write something like this, I brace for impact. Obviously, several hundred people disagree with me as to the usefulness of the endeavor, or they wouldn't be wandering out on a still-chill spring evening so close to finals. [2] And perhaps there will be someone inspired or shamed or in some way changed, and in some intangible and never-to-be-measured sense good will be accomplished and I will be wrong. But the entire thing seems such monumental effort for such slight gains that I have to question if the emperor has any clothing.

UPDATE: Heidi Bond suggests that I've missed one of the points of a Take Back the Night March:

For some marchers, their goal is not to prevent future violence. Their goal is to try and combat feelings of powerlessness and irrational fear harbored by themselves and/or co-marching loved ones. For them, marching is not about saying "I'm walking down the street, raising consciousness about rape in the general population, thus preventing further violence." It's about saying, "tonight, I"m walking down the street at night with no fear. For me, this is a really big step. This is my way of saying there are things I can do to keep the fear at bay. I am no longer powerless: I have this one power tonight, in a crowd, to walk where I could not walk before. I am taking one small step tonight, and maybe tomorrow I will take a larger one, like going to the store at night with a friend and not freaking out."

Heidi's point isn't trivial, but I think it's one of those cases of "what I wish the march had said" as opposed to what it did say. Having spent the better part of the last ten years either in University, living near Universities, or living in University towns, I've seen more than my fair share of them. Indeed, I've observed ('participated in' might imply more sympathy than was there) two of these on "don't criticize what you've not seen" grounds. Any of the admirable aims Heidi mentions above were far outweighed by a mixing of messages that lead to incoherence. Most charitably, it's difficult to see how you get date-rape into this equation, since there's nothing of particular affinity with the night--at least in the sense of the unknown and the fear of the stranger that Heidi is highlighting--in that offense. It's a different evil.

And that's most charitably, since a colorable argument could be made for date rape's inclusion. However, what of the speeches during these marches on pornography, domestic violence (not an incident of 'the night' or the unknown, but quite the opposite), and in one instance the Labour policy for women-only shortlists? Whatever virtues they may have had quickly got diluted into a kind of generic 'women's rights' march. Perhaps other's mileage varies, or the English ones I saw were outliers, and Heidi's seen a well-focused, well-organized therapeutic demo. My experience has led me to concentrate on walking women home from bars when I'm sober, supporting and encouraging nightbus and nightwalk services, and voting for 'tough on crime' politicians, leaving the speechifying to others.

(Indeed, I have my doubts upon Heidi's example. She mentions that her answers are based upon a discussion with a march organizer who excluded men from such functions. But if the march is indeed about opposition to violence, and is indeed about therapeutically telling a woman that the night is a place that is safe for her, surely excluding those men whose presence and support help to make it safe is counterproductive? Certainly we are worrying about the dangers in the darkness, which does not include the entirety of the sex?)

I rather doubt that the Damascene experiences Heidi describes are either that common nor that effective, but even so, I'd wonder if there weren't a way to achieve them at lesser cost. If the event is truly about helping women who've been wounded, a bit more somber an attitude than skipping and blowing of whistles (the racket of the recent night) might be in order. Smaller group outings that don't block traffic nor have the air of a propaganda parade. And of course, the relentless advertising of this Columbia event would be wholly unnecessary if Heidi's reasoning were the focus of the efforts.

Heidi at least grants that I'm trying not to be callous, but even if a Take Back the Night march has such salubrious effect, I can't help thinking that there's more focused, more respectful, and simply better ways to do it. Of course, those don't have the effect of 'consciousness raising'; they don't speak the language of effortless virtue; they simply don't have the air of a political rally. But let's be clear--the aims Heidi's discussing are virtuous and should be supported in a better fashion.

[1]: I'm paraphrasing here, because I don't have time to go around the school getting the quotes precisely right. The range of reasons for marching is accurate, even if the expression isn't exactly correct. Indeed, I've tried to be more charitable.

[2]: Although I'm reminded of the P. J. O'Rourke line that student newspapers never read, "HUNDREDS OF COLUMBIA STUDENTS STAY HOME, EAT PIZZA, GET DRUNK, HAVE SEX, STUDY A BIT."

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Comments

Shockingly, I agree with most of what you say here (!). It's worth noting, though, that sometimes it's psychologically important for people to do SOMETHING, even if the thing in question doesn't have much direct impact. So these kind of marches I tend to regard as a good thing, because they benefit those involved in small ways and are pretty harmless to those not involved.
Now This seems like a better place to use the phrase. Alas, they didn't use it, I guess cause it was already taken.
Indeed, much more appropriate!

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