Confessions of an Iconoclast

As many are well aware, during the recent "Take Back the Night" rally, a young man stood at the open microphone a monologue involving anti-feminist japes. The Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) Quadrangle was a tough crowd that night--before the man reached the punchline of his first joke, two women rushed up and asked him to leave. I was that young man.

Since that time, I have been accused of being everything from immature to pro-rape to unprintable other objections. Not expecting to convince the extremists, I would the like to set the record straight for those who actually appreciate rational argument.

My intention was not to belittle rape victims or make light of the crime of violence against women, as many have charged. The rally, by attaching itself to a woefully misguided political agenda, makes a mockery of rape without any help from me. I was ridiculing the rally itself, which purporting to advance the cause of women's safety, in fact does no such thing.

The rally over the years had always been colored by political rhetoric, talk of "empowerment" and diatribes against patriarchy. The march that followed this year's rally included chants of "Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! the Peninsula has got to go!" and, more ad hominem, "Hey, Hey! HO, Ho! Kelly Bowdren's got to go!" I fail to see how these dismal dithryambs serve the cause of women's safety.

My most vehement attackers deny that the "Take Back the Night" rally is a political event." But what is "empowerment," but a code-word for abortion rights, universalized day care and the celebration of "liberated mothers" and their bastard children? Even taken at its simplest meaning--that of helping women to feel more secure about themselves--"empowerment" has nothing to do with actually preventing women from being beaten or raped.

Some say that the point of the "Take Back the Night" rally is to make men more "aware" of or "sensitive" to the desires of women, so as to discourage them from committing as foul a violation as date rape. I daresay, though, that the kind of man who would rape a woman is not the sort to attend a "Take Back the Night" rally,. If such a miscreant were in the audience, the presentations are as likely to encourage his flagitious schemes as to dissuade him from them. To a rapist, the women's stories nothing but case studies, illustrating of a woman. If awareness is the object, then "Take Back the Night" perhaps does more harm than good--just as many of the country's sex education programs have resulted not in lower but higher rates of illegitimacy and teenage pregnancy.

Perhaps by "awareness" my critics mean making the rest of the community aware of the incidence and horror of rape. My critic are thereby admitting that the rally is an act of shameless exploitation, manipulating victimized women for the sake of an article in the press or a mention in the nightly newscast.

Other defenders of the rally criticize my mode of expression. How dare I tell jokes at such a serious event" First, as I have made clear already, the event should not be taken seriously. It is scarcely imaginable that had I not offered my 30 seconds of humor one fewer act of violence against women would have occurred.

Secondly, objections to the rally over the last three years have been voiced through the pages of Peninsula and The Crimson. These arguments, however, have been met with little in the way of rational discourse Deborah Wexler explained that, in considering whether to write a letter about Peninsula's response to campus feminism, she "decided not to stoop to the level." But what is our level--complete English sentences? Kelly Bowdren's editorial, which appeared in The Crimson on the day of the rally ("Take You Night and..." April 21, 1994) led to the bacchanalian couplet mentioned above.

While I welcome an honest debate on the event's merits, the "Take Back the Night" rally organizer have through the years proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of engaging in a reasonable discussion. Meanwhile, the rally has become only more egregious in its exploitation of those whose interests it purports to advance. That night, I intended my action to be provocative, for had I limited myself to refined argument, I would have been playing into the hands of the rally's feminist organizers, who have only too easily ignored intelligent criticism in the past.

Harvard. with its rationalist spirit, has long encouraged students question even the most sacred or traditions. For having been bold enough to challenge the sanctity of this rite of modern paganism, the Harvard community should not censure but thank me. You're welcome.