Take Back the Night

To the Editors of the Crimson,

On Saturday night, November 8th, a group of women and their supporters will march to "take back the night". This effort is an expression of women's anger at the rape and other forms of violence which daily threaten their lives. Every woman is a victim of rape, because every woman must structure her life so as to avoid it. The powerlessness which women feel when walking alone at night reflects the powerlessness which women experience in every aspect of our society.

Women are not the only people who cannot safelywalk the streets of Boston and Cambridge. The elderly (most of whom are women) remain behind locked doors knowing that not even there are they safe from attack. The growing tide of racial tension in Boston, and a national increase in white racial terror threatens every Black person in this city. The wave of murders of gay men in Boston this summer makes me personally fear for my own safety.

On Saturday night, November 1st, I went to Brighams with a group of gay male students after the finish of a Halloween dance. An intoxicated man reacted with hostility to the fact that two of our group were dressed in cross-gender attire. Before being removed by a policeman who happened to walk in, he struck two people and reinforced in many others the belief that it is important to avoid at all costs "appearing gay" in public. We were all reminded that anyone who is identified as gay is extremely vulnerable to attack. Walking home--in a group, for safety's sake--I was more aware than ever that the closet which supposedly protects gay people is nothing more than a glorified prison.

I find it ironic, in the land of battered wives, the Ku Klux Klan, and the neutron bomb, that gay people are called immoral and unnatural. If anything is "deviant", it is the aggressive male machismo which dominates our society.

There is something terribly wrong with our priorities, and if we are ever going to take back the night we are going to have to do it in the middle of the day. Our inconsistencies do not lurk in the shadows, but stand openly in broad daylight. They exist not only "out there" on a national level, but right here at Harvard as well. Why does a University which expends so much energy recruiting MidWesterners, football players, and alumni children fail to meet affirmative action guidelines? Why do we spend $40,000 on afunctional "kiosks" when we do not have a Third World Center? Is it surprising that a University which has no female deans or department heads insists that the study of women from a women's perspective is not a "valid discipline"?

I urge all students to attend the "Take Back the Night" rally this Saturday. It is time we stop hiding behind our individual issues and see the connection between them all. Women's issues affect every single one of us, and demand our full support. Benjamin Schatz   President   Harvard-Radcliffe Gay Students' Association