Take Back the Night

History

While U.S. women have long been involved in public protests in support of feminist as well as other goals, the late 1960s and 1970s saw an increase in specifically feminist organizing. One strand of this activism focused on sexual assault and the sexual exploitation of women in the pornography industry. Maria Bevacqua traces the concept of Take Back the Night to a pamphlet titled Stop Rape published in 1971 by Women Against Rape (WAR) in Detroit, Michigan. A few years later, a prominent anthology called Take Back the Night dedicated to “the thousands of women in this country and abroad who recognize the hatefulness and harmfulness of pornography, and who are organizing to stop it now” emerged chronicling the movement. For its editor Laura Lederer and many other 1970s organizers, taking back the night meant demanding that women be safe not only from sexual assault but also from prostitution and other forms of sex work that they linked to violence against women.

In 1976, a group called Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media (WAVPM) was formed. The San Francisco-based group's first action was a march down Broadway, a recognized porn strip, to protest pornography and live sex shows. Six hundred women attended the march. Marches continued throughout the early 1980s, eventually moving from the impoverished Tenderloin district to North Beach, an area attracting a wealthier clientele.

In 1978, they sponsored a conference called “Feminist Perspectives on Pornography,” including a Take Back the Night March sometimes described as the first. However, archival documents identify marches in Boston, Denver, Philadelphia, and London in October 1978, prior to WAVPM's November 18, 1978, event. Bevacqua also identifies a 1977 memorial speech called “Take Back the Night” given by Anne Pride at a march sponsored by the Pittsburgh Alliance Against Rape. These events may have been modeled after international protests that began in Belgium in 1976 during the International Tribunal on Crimes [Page 1435]Against Women. Since 1977, events called Take Back the Night or Reclaim the Night have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Italy, Germany, Canada, and the United States.

Like other institutions stemming from the women's liberation movement including consciousness-raising groups, music festivals, rape crisis centers, and feminist bookstores, Take Back the Night was designed to provide a place for women to speak the truths of their lives in a culture privileging male perspectives and experiences. Central aspects of Take Back the Night marches include a nighttime procession temporarily taking streets often unsafe for women, speak-out sessions, speakers and musicians addressing violence against women, information about services, and on-sight support for those in need.

Other U.S. marches during the 1970s also targeted sexual violence and sometimes addressed other forms of social exclusion. On April 28, 1979, in response to the murders of 11 black women in the Boston area, between 400 and 500 people, mostly women, marched from Boston Common to then-mayor Kevin White's home in Mount Vernon Square. The event was organized by a coalition including the Combahee River Collective and other women of color organizations and emphasized the confluence of racism and sexism much more than most early Take Back the Night marches in the United States.

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