Reclaim the Night Perth, 2012

“1978 The first Reclaim the Night march takes place in Australia. Reclaim the Night is an annual march for women held on the last Friday in October to allow women to come together to speak out against violence and to celebrate strength”

- Reclaim the Night Australia

Last night, the 26th of October 2012, a Reclaim the Night (RTN) march and rally was held in Fremantle, Western Australia. This was the first RTN that I have attended that welcomed men to march and rally alongside women and children. This is something that I wholeheartedly disagree with, having been involved in a collective responsible for organising many RTN rallies in the past, I know that including men discourages many women who are survivors of sexual violence – the whole reason for the rally in the first place – from attending.

Despite my misgivings, and instinct telling me not to go, I went down to support my partner a survivor of the very violence the rally was supposedly protesting (yes I’m a woman, yes we are lesbians and yes, I was wary of disclosing this fact as I’m sure a good percentage of people will now disregard this as ‘angry man-hating lesbian rant’). She was livid – having only just found out men were invited to the event – and wanted to go down and see it for herself. This is a woman who has always found RTN events a source of healing and strength. Who has always found RTN a place where women can gather in public, share their stories, fears and triumphs, support one another and make a public demonstration against an issue that affects her, and so so so many other women, to her core.

Last night, Reclaim the Night 2012 destroyed that for her. We were both so sickened at what this event had degenerated into – what we saw and heard as the crowd gathered – that neither of us felt we could participate in the march. This was no longer an event that provided a safe space for survivors of rape and sexual violence. Walking by, you probably wouldn’t even know it was a rally against sexual violence.

Looking out across the crowd we could see dozens of flags representing various unions, banners for the socialist alliance, placards demanding equal pay for women, or proclaiming the plight of refugees in Australia. Whilst I’m sure there were placards and banners demanding an end to – or at least related to – sexual violence against women, these would be easily outnumbered by the sea of propaganda that had absolutely nothing to do with RTN and everything it stands for.

Not long after arriving, we were approached by a young man who was trying to offload copies of a social justice zine to anyone who would take them. My partner got into a heated discussion with him about the relevance of him being there, at which point he stated men had as much right to be there as women. When I pointed out to him that there were women – many of them survivors – who wouldn’t be there tonight because men were attending, he again reiterated that men had a right to be there, and dismissed the history of RTN stating that it was always an event for both men and women.

What upset me most about this interchange wasn’t that this man kept talking about men’s rights in regards to sexual violence against women. What upset me most was overhearing him talking with his group of (male) friends about us and hearing one state ‘you can’t argue with women like that’. You can’t argue with women like that. Women like that being survivors of rape? Women like that being a woman who has run from a group of men late at night after hearing one say ‘grab her’ as she walks past? Women like that being a woman threatened with rape because she doesn’t want to take the man at the bus stop up on his offer to go out on a date with him? Women like that being those told that it’s not rape because he was your boyfriend? This is not the Reclaim the Night that survivors of rape and sexual violence need.

This was not a Reclaim the Night that provided a safe space for all women to demonstrate against the fear and terror that they feel everyday, knowing that rape and sexual violence is so prevalent in our society that there is a very real chance it will happen to them and there is nothing they can do to stop it.

That there is even such contention on the issue of men not being invited to march – an issue faced every year by the groups of women organising RTN events – is proof to me that men should not be there.

Why is it that women’s-only space can not be respected? Why is it that there is such controversy over women gathering in public space without men, to protest sexual violence carried out against them by men?

To have RTN events as women and children only is not to proclaim that all men commit acts of sexual violence against women and children. Neither does it stop men who desperately want to support the cause from organising other events, on any of the other 364 days of the year. It does not stop men from offering their support in helping in the organisation of RTN – like printing flyers, distributing posters, offering venues, or lending equipment. Yet this is not the kind of support we see. Men want centre stage with women, and nothing, not even women like that is going to stop them.

Men are in the best position to combat sexual, nay any, violence against women. They are privy to conversations between men, in groups of men. They are in the position to pull men up when they make off-colour remarks about women. And yet I wonder, how many of the men that were in attendance at RTN last night are actually so outraged by sexual violence against women that they do pull their mates up on it. To open discussion up on how men can change things to stamp out the culture of women-as-sex-object. Or do they think it’s all in fun when they wolf-whistle at lone women walking past? For many women there is nothing more dreaded then having the sexual spotlight turned on them when they are walking alone past a group of men. For me, I think men just don’t get it. And that is why RTN is not for them.

I am angry. I am pissed-off. And whilst I don’t hate men, I think that sometimes if I feel like I do, that’s okay. Being a woman, I think it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and frustrated at the power, the sheer ingrained entitlement, men seem to feel over the world and everything in it. I am furious that every year women have to fight for the right to claim a bit of public space to protest violence that is overwhelming carried out against women – overwhelmingly by men. I am furious that this fight is often with other women who place the ‘inclusivity’ of inviting men (a decision which has the immediate effect of excluding many women who would otherwise be there) over creating a safe space for survivors of rape and sexual violence.

If men genuinely want to support our fight against sexual violence, I welcome it. Fuck, I’ll sing a goddamn song and dance about it. I will be happy to shake hands with the first group of men that organise a strictly men’s-only protest against their own kind committing sexual violence against women. Just as a women’s-only protest says something important about the will of survivors and those that experience fear of sexual violence every day, a men’s-only protest would say something groundbreaking about their own sex’s condemnation and unwillingness to stand for those men that commit acts of sexual violence. Now that would be a fucking news story and a half.