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Take the recent gang rape of a 15-year-old in California (and the onlookers who did nothing to stop it), add the heated debate over Roman Polanski’s arrest for a decades-old rape case, and you get an inkling of the chilling ambiguity that still surrounds sexualized violence—what people mean when they talk about “rape culture.” Gray rape, date rape, stranger rape, statutory rape—first we treat it as grist for abstract, hairsplitting, tedious debate. Then we decide precisely how bad we think this particular rape really is—after all, maybe she was drinking, or perhaps he made interesting films 30 years ago. That’s all the more reason why Take Back the Night remains critical. Still going strong some 40 years after its launch by second-wave feminists—you know, the ones who put sexual harassment laws on the books and launched the fight for equal pay—the event advances a radical notion: By verbalizing the horrors of assault and asserting their humanity, survivors reclaim what the rapist means to silence and the culture at large often refuses to hear: the victims’ voice.
Tue., Nov. 17, 6 p.m., 2009
Tue., Nov. 17, 6 p.m., 2009
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