Take back the night
Annual march highlights violence against women
MELISSA HIEBERT, STAFF
“Look around you, into the eyes of the women beside you,” said a speaker into the microphone, standing atop the steps of the legislative building on a rainy evening, just before dusk. “Now, imagine she is the victim of a violent crime. Imagine she is beaten, assaulted, or raped.”
Last Thursday, Sept. 20, hundreds of people congregated in front of the Manitoba Legislature Building to participate in Winnipeg’s annual Take Back the Night march to raise awareness about violence against women and our unsafe streets.
The march that originally started in Belgium in 1976 to draw attention to violence against women is now a worldwide event, drawing thousands of women together each year.
Holding signs bearing phrases like “Save our sisters,” and chanting slogans such as “However we dress, wherever we go, yes means yes, and no means no!” participants marched down Broadway Ave, gaining support from bystanders in the form of clapping and horn honking, and headed towards Wolseley Family Place
“Marching is super important, because not only violence is an issue — there are tons of people, not just who are raped and killed, but assaulted and stuff like that — but on top of that . . . there is just that constant fear in the back of your mind that that could be you,” said Sarah, last year’s co-ordinator of the Womyn’s Centre at the U of M.
“And just the fact that you have to be scared and walk with your fists clenched or keys in your hand because you might have to stab someone with them, just the fact that you have to do that, and be looking around you, that in and of itself is not OK.”
“Nobody should have to live like that,” chimed in Andrea, this year’s co-ordinator. “I wish we could do Take Back the Night more than once a year,” said Andrea, “I think that getting people together and making noise is really effective, it gets them riled up and gets them thinking about bigger issues.”
Sarah also mentioned that at the beginning of the school year she went around introducing the Womyn’s Centre to first-year classes and asked them general questions to encourage participation.
“One of the questions was; how many of you have felt unsafe walking, wherever in the city, in the day or at night?” said Sarah. “For some of the other questions, maybe three people put up their hands. For that question, everyone put up their hands. Well, all the women, anyway; which just goes to show how the fear of violence, the threat of violence, is everywhere.”
The statistics on sexual assault amongst women are startling. Fifty-one per cent of all Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of sexual or physical violence. Aboriginal women are five times more likely to be the victim of a sexual assault. In cases reported to police, 80 per cent of sexual assault survivors knew their abusers. Perhaps one of the most heart-breaking statistics of all, looking around at the 8-year-old girls dutifully handing out whistles to marchers, that 62 per cent of the victims who reported being sexually assaulted in 1998 were under the age of 18.
“I think it’s important, for the very fact, that I was marching 10 or twenty years ago and still the violence goes on,” said Trish, standing inside of the Wolseley Family Place. “So clearly, the problem hasn’t been solved, and we can’t allow it to be forgotten. All of us have to remember all year long, not just on Take Back the Night march.”
She talked about women who work shift work, and have to come home late at night, who are forced to go out on the streets at night and risk their safety. She suggested that simple things like good public transportation and even more payphones would do a lot to help.
“A lot of women can’t afford cellphones,” she said. “Payphones are disappearing, and it’s hard for women to call for help.”
A lot of progress must be made in order to truly reclaim the streets and stop the overwhelming amount of violence against women. By raising awareness, and “Taking Back the Night,” women (and men) join together in order to ensure that violence does not go ignored and that women refuse to be silent.
Or, in the wise words of Keenon, a 13-year-old boy (one of many young girls and boys who were in attendance) who was marching alongside his mother and brother, “Just starting slowly is the only way.”
