Talk:Take Back the Night (organization)

Information loss

This page used to be a more general page about Take back the night / Reclaim the night actions, but after some changes this page is now focused on the organization also called Take Back The Night. Some information was moved to Reclaim the Night. However, that page has also been changed to focus on British Reclaim the night actions. As a result, some information has been removed which seems a vital piece of history.

E.g. an older version of this page contained

" The term "Take Back the Night" came from the title of a 1977 memorial read by Anne Pride at an anti-violence rally in Pittsburgh [1].

The first "Reclaim the Night" march was held in Belgium in 1976 by the women attending the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women. [2] They marched together holding candles to protest the ways in which violence permeates the lives of women worldwide. Other marches were held in Rome in 1976 as a reaction to recently released rape statistics, in West Germany in 1977 demanding "the right to move freely in their communities at day and night without harassment and sexual assault," and in 11 towns in England later in 1977 in response to the "Ripper Murders" in Leeds. "

The information about the Reclaim the night march in Belgium was first moved to the reclaim the night page and then removed. It is now gone, as is the information about marches in Rome and West Germany. The reclaim the night page is now focused solely on the UK, starting with "Reclaim the Night is a movement started in Leeds in 1977".

I know of 20+ marches in Belgium and The Netherlands which were sometimes called Take Back The Night, sometimes Reclaim the Night. None of them under the umbrella of the TBTN organization.

In short, there seems to be no page now for a general history of these kinds of actions worldwide, not necessarily under the umbrella of an organization.

A proposal to solve this would be to add e.g. Take Back The Night (action) or Take Back The Night (demonstration) as an additional page to the Take Back the Night disambiguation page. Of course, more in general we could raise the question what the difference is between Reclaim the night and Take back the night.

--ElviSavi (talk) 10:26, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

General issues

Just put the piece into paragraphs to look a little better, and italicised the quote. TheOncomingStorm 21:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI I took the liberty of deleting a bit of minor vandalism interjected into one of the sentences EthanAY 15:30, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion about focus

hey there- this phrase is untrue:

"While the march began as a way to protest the violence that women, primarily prostitutes, experienced while walking in public at night"

Prostitutes are NOT the focus of take back the night. Rather women are trying to keep all women from being raped. The marchers are usually RAPE victims or supporters. Not prostitutes.

--12.202.60.227 23:23, 29 January 2006 (UTC)survivor

"The march has since spread to many locales. There is even a presence in rural New Hampshire, where women (and men) stage their annual "Take Back the Night March" throughout the campus." What campus? New Hampshire's not a campus.

The first poster is right that TBTN is not focused on prostitutes today, but the quote is not completely untrue. The fist US TBTN march was down pornography strip in San Francisco and featured a speech from Andrea Dworkin, an anti-pornography and prostitution activist.

Pancho 02:17, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Why is the the first external link called "Prostitutes are not the focus of take back the night. Rape victims are. Not the same, are they?" when it's really a link to JMU's take back the night site? I'm supposing it was a mistake and fixing it. Brutallittlebroad 20:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

New Hampshire is not a campus, but i think the sentence/paragraph was just poorly worded, as many many take back the night rallys and marches are held on campuses all over the world.

Criticism section

Some noob posted this on the front page. put it on the talk page where it belongs. Dear noob, if you want to put your infos on the page, wikify it. Other wise, stay off my internets. "A criticism of the "Criticism": Sexual violence against women happens at an alarming rate. For exact statistics, see the US Government's Center for Disease Control Sexual Violence webpage: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/svfacts.htm. While I am certain that at some point in history, someone somewhere has lied about being raped, the prevalence of actual sexual assaults still demands our vigilant attention. The suggestion that an act of sexual violence can be "exaggerated" belies the taboo that is still in place in our society regarding sexual violence. No matter how dramatically or undramatically a story of rape is told, sexual assault is a kind of violence that has deep and long-lasting effects on a person. These effects detract not only from the quality of her life and her sense of mental well-being, but also detract from the larger society, as well. The time a woman spends healing from sexual assault is time not spent doing other things." Gtorell 01:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the "Criticism" section should be deleted. There are zero references to back up any claims it makes -- it sounds like an individual speculating and ranting. Either somebody needs to seriously clean it up or it should be gone.

• I completely agree---and it is done.--Pinko1977 12:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

• • Should there be a section describing the claim to "Reclaim the night"? I'm not sure the night was ever a safe time to walk around town, so it should be more appropriately called "Claim the night"

Source of quote about freedom of movement and speech

The second quote about freedom of movement being a condition for freedom of speech: the "source" link seems not to be working at the moment. Also, I recognize this as part of a speech by Andrea Dworkin, which is fully available at the link below, shouldn't we cite/link her properly? http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIb.html -- Evie 13:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Since there are no reactions, and the link still does not work, I'm replacing the non-working credits "– Source, Timmins and Area Women in Crisis Website" ( http://crisis.vianet.on.ca/march.htm ) with the correct link to the speech from Andrea Dworkin "Take back the night - The Night and Danger" at http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIb.html

And to further confuse matters, I'm not sure about the exact quote (yes, can you spell beginner?). The text cited here is

"Women are often told to be extra careful and take precautions when going out at night. In some parts of the world, even today, women are not allowed out at night. So when women struggle for freedom, we must start at the beginning by fighting for freedom of movement, which we have not had and do not now have. We must recognize that freedom of movement is a precondition for anything else. It comes before freedom of speech in importance because without it freedom of speech cannot in fact exist."

What Andrea Dworkin says in her speech, The Night and Danger, is:

"(...) We must recognize that freedom of movement is a precondition for freedom of anything else. It comes before freedom of speech in importance because without it freedom of speech cannot in fact exist. So when we women struggle for freedom, we must begin at the beginning and fight for freedom of movement, which we have not had and do not now have. In reality, we are not allowed out after dark. In some parts of the world, women are not allowed out at all but we, in this exemplary democracy, are permitted to totter around, half crippled, during the day, and for this, of course, we must be grateful."

I have found the exact quote currently on this article page at http://section15.ca/features/ideas/1998/09/25/take_back_the_night/ but it doesn't properly mention where exactly Andrea Dworkin said those words. The text of "The Night and Danger" is so close however, perhaps the exact quote was changed through various years/websites/texts?

-- Evie 22:29, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

link spam?

I have removed recent new additions to this article, which read like link spam to me. I am happy to be corrected if there is something I'm missing. My rationale is as follows:
The claim that an organisation is "the official online headquarters" is, as far as I can see, taking ownership of an international, widely used, concept. Isn't it a bit like setting up a website as "the official online headquarters of Easter/ Christmas"?
The claim that "events from all over the world are posted at (the website)" is bogus- the only events I could see were North American (mainly US, some Canada). (I may have missed one- it's a long list).
Whois.com tells me that the www.takebackthenight.org domain started in 2004, not 2000, as claimed.
That said, the link resources look useful, and have been left in the links list. WotherspoonSmith (talk) 11:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

History

The Obituary for Lillian Willoughby http://www.philly.com/dailynews/obituaries/20090120_Lillian_Willoughby__Quaker_activist__dies_at_93.html Makes a claim that a group she was involved in, the Philadelphia based Movement for A New Society held the first Take Back the Night Rally.. it also mentions a 1980 article which if someone can track down, may be able to provide a more verifyable reference. Centerone (talk) 09:45, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

removal of Miliatry Sexual Trauma line

I have removed the new edit, saying that; "In 2009 the University of Massachusetts Boston censored a survivor of Military Sexual Trauma from speaking out about her experience of rape in the military. They have not felt that veterans or military stories should be shared." While it may be true, it is not backed up with citations and is not relevant to this topic. It really does not belong in this article.WotherspoonSmith (talk) 11:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Take Back the Night which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 03:44, 22 July 2013 (UTC)