I hadn't thought about the attendance of the Take Back the Night marches, but
it's an interesting topic. Usually I am opposed to the idea of excluding
people from marches or meetings, but Raie makes a good point here. I do not
want to disrespect Jake's viewpoint, but I think that women are perceived as
more vulnerable than men, whether gay or otherwise. I personally feel
safer walking with a man, whatever his sexual preference may be. I have
never had 'cat calls' made to me while a man was present. So to have a march
where women are in the streets, trying to change the perception of women as
victims, and empowering themselves, is one of the times where it should be
exclusive. If men had been included at the rally at Virginia Tech, I doubt
there would have been as much verbal harassment when they marched through
campus.
I attended a presentation once on gender and violence where there were
discussion meetings before and after, and one set of the discussion meetings
were all male. This is based on the idea that men will possibly speak out
more about their personal experiences without being judged or threatened, and
then they could take some of the ideas discussed to the larger,
gender-inclusive conference.
I have seen and heard about how *many* men (not to generalize) talk about
women in so-called "locker room" chat, and it is often degrading. It happens
to a lesser extent at work and home. Actually, now this mentality is being
broadcast and promoted in the form of Howard Stern. I think the most
important thing that we all can do is to not stand by and support such talk
because it's "cool" or funny. This goes beyond political correctness.
I saw a documentary on the famous artist (mainly comics - he did the 'Trukin'
guy seen adorning VW vans at Grateful Dead shows) Robert Crumb recently,
where he described one of his controversial comics. In the comic, a guy has
a big crush on this woman, except he doesn't like her attitude. His friend
takes the woman, removes her head (which is the disagreeable part), and
presents it to the guy as a sort of gift. The guy is overjoyed, because now
she is a body with no head and he can do whatever he wants. He puts her
against the wall and has his way. Afterwards he gets curious about the head
and pulls it out of her neck. She doesn't know what had happened at first,
but when she finds out she is very angry and starts chasing him with a knife.
Of course, Crumb rationalized publicizing this comic strip by saying, "this
is real, part of me. should i keep it inside?" my answer is no, but don't
put your ideas in a place where young boys can read it and laugh.
I was watching the Crumb documentary with a black man, who laughed at the
comic strip. It was unbelievable to me. Picture this comic strip with a
black man being lynched instead of a woman being raped. Would it be
tolerated so readily? When he laughed about it, I told him all the reasons
it wasn't funny. He stopped laughing.
In a message dated 9/7/99 6:20:15 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, A. Raie Leith wrote:
>
> > I think perhaps I missed Jake's original posting re: Take Back The Night.
> > But I would like to add or share that it has been my experience that Take
> > Back The Night is more about feeling safe as a womyn walking down the
> street
> > at night, or any time of the day for that matter, than it is about
> > solidarity within the feminist movement between men and womyn. I'm sorry
> > that you've felt excluded Jake, but it is true that it is an entirely
> > different experience to walk down the street with a group of womyn than
it
> > is to walk down the street with men and womyn. I'm sure I'm not getting
> > exactly what I want to get accross here, but these are the basics.
>
> I heard this same argument from the women who were telling me to get on
> the sidewalk. I understand, and respect it. But, as a survivor of
> violence, incest, and rape, I feel that it would be more equitible if all
> people who have experienced such things could empower themselves together.
> I understand women want to be able to walk at night (etc) without the
> protection of a man... but I feel the same way... I want to be safe too...
> and I wasn't trying to participate to show solidarity or to protect
> anyone, I was trying to participate because the same thing happened to me.
>
> jake paisain
