20 years of Reclaim the Night
By Marina Carman and Jennifer Thompson
The number of brutal attacks on women in recent weeks serves as another reminder of the sexism that not only encourages individual men to lash out, but which permeates all aspects of society.
In April, a WA woman committed suicide 10 days after she was held captive for 16 hours by a bikie gang and repeatedly raped. She wrote in her suicide note that she would be forgotten "in a short time".
On October 22, a Super League footballer in Canberra was acquitted of assaulting his wife and two other women after an 11-hour drinking binge. He was judged "too drunk" to be responsible for his actions.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that almost four in 10 women have been assaulted or threatened during their adult life. Seven per cent of all women had experienced violence in the previous 12 months, and one in five women aged 18-24.
Going public
In Australia, the first Reclaim the Night marches were held in 1978. Abortion and contraception rights emerged from women's private experience to become key demands of the women's liberation movement. Rather than quietly accepting the emotional and physical anguish of rape and coercion, women around the world began to fight back collectively, and in an unexpectedly explosive way.
In Rome in April 1977, 20,000 women mobilised in solidarity with Claudia Caputi, a young woman viciously gang-raped by 16 men, and subjected to further violence when she brought the case to trial. When police refused to do so, feminists mounted continuous guards to prevent further threats on her life.
In Bombay in March 1978, 2500 women and 500 men marched through the slums in protest at the gang-rape of a pregnant woman. In May 1978, in Aix-En Provence in southern France, pickets and demonstrations supported two women raped in 1974 in bringing the rapists to trial. In October 1978, in Dublin, 2500 women marched at night to protest against rape, verbal abuse and intimidation.
Inspired by marches by German women, RTN marches took place simultaneously in 11 cities in Britain in 1977 in response to the "Ripper " murders — from Leeds to Manchester to Soho.
The following year, marches were held in the US, more than 5000 women from 30 states marching through the San Francisco red light district.
This was also the year of the first RTN marches in Sydney and Perth. Melbourne's first march was organised in 1979 by volunteers connected to Melbourne's first Rape Crisis Centre.
The politics and organisation of RTN had their origin in the emerging separatist views, and a division developed with the broader women's liberation movement. The debate centred on whether violence against women was caused by the social system which relegated women to second-class status or whether society itself was a male system of control of women — the patriarchy.
According to Joyce Stevens' History of International Women's Day, in Adelaide in 1978, nearly 1000 women marched against rape the night before a similar-sized march for IWD at which the rights of Aboriginal and migrant women were featured. The following year in Sydney, 2000 women attended an IWD march and 150 a Reclaim the Night on the same day.
The common ground between the two views was acknowledged in a 1982 IWD broadsheet produced in Sydney, which included demands on state and federal governments to acknowledge the extent and effect of sexual assault on women and children, the need for laws which place responsibility on criminals not victims, and the need for adequate services for the survivors.
During the 1983 IWD march and afterward, "There was a dispute over the placing of a banner 'Dead Men Don't Rape' directly behind the IWD banner, giving the impression that this was the main theme for the day", wrote Stevens.
Over the years many RTN collectives began to compile a list of demands on government — dismissed by some as a "male" approach. However, the problems of an exclusive focus on "patriarchy" and male violence were revealed in disputes over whether it was appropriate to call for increased police powers to deal with violence. Aboriginal women, migrants and young women often disagreed with this demand because of the victimisation and harassment they suffered from police.
The women's movement of the 1970s succeeded in winning more enlightened laws to deal with violence against women, and a degree of funding for women's services. However, funding cuts and the problems with implementing these laws in the interests of women highlight how much more needs to be changed.
Young women
Over the last few years, the increasing involvement of a new generation of young women in many cities has brought a new lease of life to the annual march. Many collectives once consisted exclusively of women involved in rape crisis centres. Women had to apply to join. Now, where meetings are advertised, the collectives have grown.
As more women have become active, there has been a lot of debate about the focus of RTN today, and how feminists should relate to its separatist history. This includes whether the march should include men and focus more broadly on women's liberation.
A member of the Melbourne RTN collective, Rachel Evans, told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly: "Some women have argued that RTN has always been women only and should remain so. Some argued that women who've been raped don't feel comfortable around men and that RTN should be about women feeling strong and comfortable about walking the streets.
"Others argued that RTN should also be a political event and that it should seek to help build a movement which could ultimately end violence against all women. For this to happen, large numbers will have to be involved, men included. Of course, women will still need to lead the movement, but only if it is broad and inclusive and involves men will be come anywhere near eliminating violence against women."
Sarah Chidgery, women's officer at the Australian National University and Canberra collective member, argues that RTN is about proving that violence against women is not an individual or isolated phenomenon. "The solidarity of RTN empowers women to act collectively and on their own behalf against male violence. Acts of violence against women must be viewed as part of the systematic subjugation of women."
However, Evans disagreed: "We are fighting the structures that create and feed sexism — government, the judiciary, the media — not individual men.
"We debated whether we should make demands on the government. Should we attack the Labor Party as well as the Liberals? They have both attacked women, and this shows that the only way to get away from a focus on individual men is to look at the social causes of violence against women's rights."
Long-term feminist activist Jill Hickson believes that blaming men exclusively for violence against women alienates many women. "At one march in Sydney, the organisers insisted that women with young male children leave them with the Men Against Sexual Assault contingent during the march. Many mothers left. Separatism also doesn't wash with many young women radicalising now in response to direct government attacks on women's rights", she told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly.
"The march itself was always very inspiring — taking over the streets, chanting, feeling that solidarity. It is also inspiring to hear about women who have suffered violence and survived. But it can also become disempowering to listen to story after terrible story, with no direction on what to do about it. In the early 1990s in Sydney, the almost exclusive focus on male violence and female victims turned many women off."
A number of the collectives have this year decided to allow men to attend the rally and hear the speakers, but not to join the march. Many also began to move towards a broader focus.
Evans explains: "Violence is funding cuts to women's services and attacks on women's reproductive rights. It's racism, the Liberals' 'profits-first' foreign policy in places like East Timor, and it's enterprise bargaining, where women are losing out."
A Resistance activist in the Canberra collective, Natalie Zirngast, said, "Cuts to child-care, education, health and welfare all disproportionately affect women. They hamper women's ability to escape violent relationships, and constitute violence against women's right to economic and personal independence.
"Racism and homophobia, which also affect women, indicate the various ways that people are divided and scapegoated under the current system. Our theme this year is 'Reclaim the Night — Reclaim your freedom!'."
Sarah Stephen, a Resistance activist and member of the Hobart collective, told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳,"Some women seemed to feel uncomfortable with the idea of going beyond the original aims of RTN, arguing that we couldn't transform it to better relate to the needs of the movement today.
"This assumes that activists from the '70s got everything right! We can learn from the mistakes of separatism, which excluded many women, heaped all the blame for women's oppression on men, and began to view women's services and centres as ends in themselves rather than work for the complete abolition of sexism."
Many collective members are hoping to encourage more women to get active in campaigns for women's rights. Sarah Lantz, a collective member in Melbourne, said, "RTN should be about enthusing more women about getting active in changing the sexist status quo and other feminist campaigns such as International Women's Day. It should be about involving more women in the anti-racism campaign, against the privatisation of prisons and for independence for East Timor."