Pitches

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Having attended the "Take Back the Night" rally on Thursday night, we would like to address a specific incident and comment on the larger issues raised by such a gathering. While we applaud the efforts of all who participated, we find it unfortunate that the performance of the Radcliffe Pitches only served to reinforce a message which contributes to the infantilization of women. In their emphasis on dependence and protection, the lyrics of the songs chosen chould not be more incongruous with the message of "Take Back the Night." Such a dubious choice of songs, moreover, attests to the insidiousness of the socialization we all experience within a patriarchal culture: despite the Pitches' good intentions, they inadvertently "reproduced" the very messages which "Take Back the Night" was designed to counteract.

The Pitches opened their performance with a tune from the Eurythmics entitled "Right By Your Side," the lyrics of which begin, "Give me two strong arms to proteact myself...I need to be right by your side." Many of us consider our own arms to be quite sufficient; were we to take too seriously, however, the images of women that we are inundated with daily, we might suspect that we have no arms--women's bodies, as we all know, are repeatedly dismembered and objectified by the media. Lest we be alarmed by this or any other matter, the song goes on to reassure us, "Nothing seems to hurt me when I'm close to you." We imagine that the rape victims supported at the march might have a different view of "closeness" with men! Furthermore, the message "Give me so much love that I forget myself" is hardly a message which empowers women. Since violence against women is precisely an act of "forgetting," or negating, the existence of another to advocate the "forgetting" of oneself through love, at least in this context, is to point up a central feature of patriarchal culture: the required self effacement, we would like to stress, is systematically linked to the effacement of women in rape: both are results of a culture which condones the subjugation of women.

Finally, if "Taking Back the Night" is about "saying no"--to rape, to harassment, to the psychological and physical abuse of women--it is also about saying "YES." At "Take Back the Night" we do more than decry violence against women; we claim our right to be ourselves--on our own initiative, with our own strength. We don't need to go running to someone else's arms and we don't need, as the Pitches' closing lullaby suggests, to go to sleep. We need to wake up--NOW. Carloyn Greaves '86-7   Alison Rader '86-7