I attended my only Take Back the Night three years ago as a freshman. One of the speakers thanked all the men there for attending, prompting applause from the crowd.
And then while the drones continued to clap, she thanked the men there for not beating, assaulting, hitting or raping women.
Call me sheltered, but I had always assumed that us non-women-abusers made up the vast majority of the male population. Receiving a standing ovation for being a regular guy was not my idea of a constructive time, and I vowed not to return.
Kat Macfarlane, a Weinberg junior and TBTN’s co-chairwoman, said my attitude is not uncommon at NU. Last Thursday, she spent two hours taping TBTN flyers to the ground by The Rock. By Friday morning, three-fourths of them had been removed.
“I have friends who won’t even sign the TBTN petition,” she said. “Their attitude was, ‘Who wouldn’t want to be against sexual assault?”
It is insulting that I have to march to prove my anti-sexual assault credentials are bona fide – almost as insulting as being thanked for not assaulting women. But that seems to be the case at NU. Attending TBTN has become fashionable, a charade where fraternities head south for barbecues in the sorority quads so everyone knows the Greek system is united against the assault of women.
(The irony here is that the only other time frats head to the sororities en masse is to drunkenly serenade them on Gone Greek Night, give girls roses and hopefully hook up later.)
The march itself is bothersome as well. Protests are inherently symbolic, which is why so many of the memorable ones have been held on the National Mall, surrounded by symbols of freedom and adjacent to this nation’s seats of power.
I cannot decide if the symbolism of marching around campus is too scary to grapple with or something that I just do not buy into.
TBTN’s association with Women’s Coalition has also soured me. Any group that can muster outrage over a fraternity advertising one of its Rush Week events as a “male chauvinist’s dream” and then puts on a Vagina Carnival complete with a “menstrual hut” needs a reality check.
The truth is Women’s Co and TBTN organizers walk a fine line between acknowledging the truth about sexual assault – that it is typically a man-on-woman crime – and not using hyperbole to ostracize the men who do come. It is a line the event has crossed in the past.
“You can’t alienate people,” Macfarlane said. “We are always trying to make it more inclusive. We are not getting anywhere if we don’t make men feel included.”
I hope students who go tonight have a different experience than mine, and that the speakers remember this: The men in attendance want to be part of the solution, are not part of the problem and that most men share this sentiment. So don’t thank us for it.
