Cuz she's liable to grow up mean"
- Poe: Control
There was a quiet, rumbling movement arising out of the bricks of Barnard on the 6th. Being first-years, I suppose it wasn't too surprising that many of us didn't know what it was, but it seemed the upperclass girls did. Flyers began appearing on posts showing disturbing statistics about sexual assault and its pervasiveness in American culture. Close to the 6th the entire elevator area on our third floor was covered in black and white paper, each showing some new horrific factoid, and at the top of each sheet were the words: We March Because...
Returning from the gym late Wednesday night I noticed that the bricks on the inside of Barnard's front gates, in front of Barnard Hall where Malcolm X gave his last speech, had been chalked with the huge words Take Back The Night. And on Thursday at dinner some girls were walking around with their hands clenched in the air "to practice"... but what the hell for? They were joking about it. We were at a loss.
The wolf at the doorThat evening Miriam came into our room and asked if we were going to Take Back The Night - the rally, that is. I said I'd go with her. She came back at eight that night to collect on my word.
"They're out there," she said, leaning toward the window.
I peeked with her out my window that overlooks the front gates and Broadway. Indeed, some seventy or eighty girls were gathered in front of the front steps of Barnard Hall, and they were beginning to make noise. I put on shoes and my leather jacket, then headed out with Miriam, both of us vowing that we had lots of work to do and we would only go for a little while - that we were just seeing what was going on, no commitments, no promises... not before we knew what they were saying.
When we arrived I realized how cold it really was, even on a night in April, for open-toed shoes. A girl was reading an empowerment vow from a piece of paper, and after she finished a boy read some message on behalf of Men Against Violence. Yes, there were guys there. A stunning few.
"He must get laid a lot," chided Mir in a low voice. "Oh, I'm so sensitive."
Then their leader said the march would begin, and the first chant was: "Rape is a felony - even with C.U. ID". Mir and I looked at each other, trying not to chuckle. As the crowd drifted out the front gates, Mir and I were caught between going and staying.
We waffled for a few minutes, and then when forced to answer the question, "Are you guys going to march?" Mir suddenly said to me, "Yeah, come on, let's march! Do you want to?"
"Sure... but don't leave me!"
We waved goodbye to the friend who had asked us the question and then ran to join the crowd at its rear. I think realizing that they were going to be marching in the middle of the street - in the middle of Broadway, one of America's most famous avenues, at that - was what drove Mir to decide fervently to march. Girls wearing Take Back The Night shirts were marshalling - holding off traffic with their arms - although being a weeknight, there wasn't much, and we had official security guards along with us as well as a security car. Other TBTNers had handed out red rape whistles that girls blew in time with the chants. We had laughed about those whistles earlier in the year, figuring we're probably the only school in the country that actually gives our students rape whistles along with their orientation packets.
Take Back The Night, 2004Mir and I didn't chant all through "Rape is a felony - even with C.U. ID". We turned the corner onto 116th street as the chant became "Hey hey - ho ho - sexual violence has got to go" and we didn't chant through that either. But as we skipped down the slight hill of 116th street and then turned onto Claremont Avenue, the chant became "Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no" and Mir decided she liked that one. So she started chanting.
I'm naturally afraid to shout because the sound of my own voice, that loud, is strange and foreign to me. Also, once I start shouting I can't stop until I feel all my adrenaline pouring out my lungs. I've discovered this after both the Coldplay concert and all the Nebraska Huskers football games I've gone to. But everyone - goddamn everyone around me was chanting, so I started - just the "yes means yes and no means no" part, and as I foresaw, I was not able to stop until blocks later when my throat had become raw and pained.
"Marching all the way to 120th," Mir whispered. "Radical."
After all, the unofficial rule for first-years is not to go above 120th street. After all, Columbia University's reign of terror ends there and Harlem's begins. As uptown girls we live in a white bread world... and as much as Barnard wants us to be "strong Barnard women" we also have some of the tightest security in campuslife nationwide.
As we turned onto 120th street, the chants turned into strong and loud, ear-piercing whistles. It was so loud. I didn't know what had happened but my attention turned to our left, where a couple cars were honking their horns - and then suddenly I understood. They were showing their support for us. An elderly couple in one of them was waving cheerfully at all of us - Mir and I waved back with the rest of the marchers.
"Okay... that feels good," I murmured.
We got other parcels of support, here and there - some students at Columbia, some students at 116th street as we made another trip around the block, some apartment dwellers. But it was not near enough, in my opinion, for a liberal city and a liberal campus. We paused in front of Columbia President Bollinger's house, on Amsterdam Avenue, screaming "University silence perpetuates the violence!" but he didn't come out and acknowledge us. It figures... it takes the president a long time to meet with any rallying groups around campus, whether their causes are Darfur or eliminating hate crimes. He's more interested in expanding Columbia to make up for our blessing-curse location, crammed and teeming New York City.
BollingerI must admit the most intimidating part of the march was the Columbia campus itself. After all, that's where the hate crimes take place. That's where the rapists on campus are. People sat on the steps of famous Low Library and watched us, their figures mere silhouettes in the dark. Others walked on by, giving us perplexed stares. As we paused for our moment of silence, fists raised in the air (that's what the girls at dinner were practicing for), a recording of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech was playing somewhere in the distance. It was eerie. Someone behind us suggested in passing, "Put down your arms!"
And I thought: No. No. I consider myself a pacifist. I remember getting chills hearing our school choir sing "Lay Down Your Arms" at the city's Holocaust Commemoration in 6th grade. But this is different. This is not a war with innocent casualties or collateral damage. The only casualties here arise out of inaction. So I thought: No. No. I will not put down my arm. Not in this case. This is not the time for compromise.
A night later, I've read up on Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani woman who was ordered to be gang-raped by a local council as payback for her brother's actions, who's since turned into a women's rights advocate, protected by fellow rape victims and continuously threatened by high-ranking government officials. President Musharraf thinks rape victims see crying rape as a money-making enterprise. I was again at the gym pounding away at the Stairmaster when I realized that some things are dealbreakers. And some of my more diehard liberal friends will attest that I am one to compromise for the sake of the greater good. But not on this. I don't really care if Pakistan is a necessary ally in the war on terrorism. Some people say it's traditional values. Other people say honor killings - honor rapes, a seeming contradiction in terms - are Muslim traditon. Bullshit. I grew up in Indonesia. I know all about ridiculous traditions and Muslim traditions alike. None of them include what happened to Mukhtar Mai.
Mukhtar MaiAnd only about five percent of our student population was at Take Back The Night. It's shameful.
Decades have passed since women's emancipation in the U.S. Decades too since women's liberation in the 1960s. And the neocons among us, women and men both, say, "I just hope she's not still pissed..."
But I am. I'm still pissed. The world is forcing me to grow up mean.
