December 1, 1988
My name is Linda Hooper. I work at UCSC and graduated in 1984. I am a lesbian and a radical feminist.
I want to say one thing that is great about a Take Back the Night March. For many women it's the first time they demonstrate in public that they care about themselves and other women. And they don't apologize for it. This was my experience, and I treasure it. But afterward I was still afraid of the night.
I have lived or worked on the Santa Cruz campus since 1981. I often walk here at night by myself. I am not afraid now. I have taken the mental leap of "taking back the night" in my own heart: yes, the night belongs to me; I utterly refuse to be enslaved by fear. I am not afraid of men any more. But I am still not safe.
Unless you can walk out your front door on any night of the week knowing you are not safe, yet nevertheless not be restricted by fear, you have not taken back the night. And if this "practice" walk tonight helps you do so, then great. If you feel a sisterhood here tonight for the first, or the fiftieth time, then great, aren't women, women powerful, just fabulous? But it's not going to change men, and men are killing us. Face facts. As women we are not safe.
I don't believe Take Back the Night Marches make the night any safer. Being safe is entirely different from living without fear. We will not be safe until men change. And we can't change them. But we can not--we must not--live in fear if we are to be a free people. A march will not make us safe--but it can catalyze a change in our souls--we will not live in fear, nor will we allow other people to assume that we do. I believe our fear belongs to us. It comes from inside us in response to the awful violence that men do to our bodies, our minds, our spirits. Unexamined, my fear of the night controlled me; once I faced my fear, I realized what I was really afraid of. And it wasn't the stranger in the dark woods.
The REAL perpetrators of violence against women are not crazy guys lurking in the redwoods. Most women have known the men who beat up, maimed, and killed them, and knew them intimately. The myth of the stranger in the bushes denies the culpability of the men who know us. The night will not be safe until our kitchens, bedrooms, automobiles, examination rooms, and professors' offices are safe.
Now, you know this. You know this because you know women who have been beaten, maimed and killed. You also know that sometimes women are hurt by strangers, and I know that too. But mostly, mostly, we are hurt by men we know. Maybe even the men standing amongst us right now. Not all the men here are rapists, but most of them are silent.
I know that if the men we knew would stop killing us, we wouldn't have to worry about the strangers in the dark.
Men--that is, Patriarchy if you will--would have us believe that we are in danger when we walk in the woods alone. And it's true, to a certain degree of probability that it is possible that there is a crazy guy waiting for us in the woods tonight. Patriarchy tells us that we are safer if we are alone with a man "we trust." But I would rather take on a stranger on a path with a knife, even to the point of being raped; than to be violated in any way by a man I had once invited to my dinnertable or my bed.
We've been lied to. The Abstract Killer in the Shadows that Take Back the Night Marches are "against" is a lie. That "crazy guy" is waiting in the shadows of men's minds--not in these magic forests.
But we cannot take the shadow out of men's minds. Crazy men do not live in the woods waiting for us to walk out unchaparoned. They live among us and very, very few of them are doing anything to make our lives safer. They may come to a march to show their support. They may even volunteer for or give money to a women's organization. But men--and I'm generalizing here to make my point--aren't doing anything to educate men about the violence they do to us. How many men's organizations can you think of? Sports teams, hobbyists groups, fraternal organizations, business organizations, scholarly organizations. Are they teaching men about how many men rape and kill women each day? Are they trying to change the conditions under which women must live as we live and die among men? Don't you think it strange that the organizations that are educating people about the violence men do to us are run by and supported by women? Why aren't men doing the education? Why aren't men's organizations educating each other about date rapes and daughter rapes and wife beating? You'd think they cared more about little bunnies in the laboratory than they do about their own sisters, lovers, mothers, friends.
And then the horrifying question few women can ask: Why do men care so little about us that they call this war on women a "Women's issue?" Why do they deny that men are beating, maiming, and killing women who trust them as you read this tonight? And why are there men and women reading this who are getting mad at me, instead of the men who kill women?
I don't expect that a demonstration demanding safety for women will have any effect on the men we live with. I don't think any request of men to make women's lives safer will come to effect. If it would, don't you think it would have by now? Do you think that women haven't been begging men for centuries to just be a little kinder, to stop raping their daughters, stop getting drunk with a bunch of their friends and raping the seventeen-year-old who stayed too late at the kegger? If women's demonstrations and demands could make us safer we wouldn't be here tonight. Asking and demanding and demonstrating still assumes that there is someone in authority who can grant these requests.
I think it's time that men organized Take Back the Night Marches and walked in them. Or did something. I would be suprised if they did anythingon any statewide or nationwide scale. If there are men in the world who want to stop rape and murder of women, then they need to show that to each other--not to us.
Violence against women is a men's issue. Let men react to their own violence--women, let us think of each other. Think of what we could be doing tonight and every night, if men truly cared about our safety?
And as a woman, and a lover of women, I would rather spend my time celebrating what women are, how we love, how we sing, how we create the universe--And yes, how we heal from our past, present, and future hurts. I would like all of us to just stop thinking about men for a while and discover what women are and what women can be. I know there are a thousand other things we could do together while celebrating our power and alliances--as we are tonight. We'll have to leave our burning desire for safety behind us--in the hands of those who can do something about it. We will go on with our lives, fearless.