Abuse Survivors Must Speak Out

Before castigating Take Back the Night for its angry, divisive tone, we would solicit the critics to look at a schedule to better comprehend our agenda.

Kelly Bowdren writes in her recent editorial ("Take Your Night and...," April 21, 1994) that "however helpful and self-empowering a rally and march may appear, take Back the Night is not an occasion on which to deal with these issues [violence toward women]."

We question what alternatives Bowdren would proffer in place of a nine day conference which devotes over 24 hours of discussion to the issues of rape and domestic violence.

The infamous rally and march do constitute a powerful eight percent of Take Back the Night's agenda. But the other 92 percent of workshops, panels, and speakers are equally critical to the education surrounding and prevention of violence toward women.

Sexual and domestic violence is a persistent social problem which must remain visible in a culture whose political attention span is exceedingly short. The rally provides an opportunity for survivors to share their stories and make these statistics and discourse a reality.

The rally's objective is not to convince a woman that she was raped, and it was not Bowdren's place (as she admits) or ours to qualify the words of one who chooses to speak.

Thankfully Bowdren's uninformed attack did not deter men from participating in Take Back the Night. Men were welcome and present at all events this past week. Men can work for the prevention of violence. Men are also raped and abused.

But the fact remains that over 95 percent of all rapists and batterers are men--this is not feminist militancy, this is reality. Bowdren mocks the rally's participants for considering "the problem of violence against women lodged in the institution of patriarchy, and for some, just men in general"--how odd.

We welcome Bowdren's call for compassion, but as far as the rally and march go, why and how can we expect survivors of abuse not to express anger at their aggressor?

Rallying behind Bowdren in last Saturday's Crimson, Amy Trent maintains that, "accusations, no matter how justified they may seem to the accuser...never resolve conflicts."

The FBI reports that rape has no higher a rate of false reporting than any other crime in the U.S., though out of every 1,000 rapists, only about three ever serve prison terms. Silence is one strategy we cannot afford. Rebecca del Carmen '95,   Betsy Bradley '95   Annie Decker '95   Jenna McNeill '95   Jessie Cohen '95