In addition, many men, particularly young boys and gay men, are the victims of violence because they are perceived as being feminine or as being somehow like women.

We cannot remove violence against women from the context of the endemic misogyny which fuels it. Although the recent hate crimes statistic reporting legislation does not include sex or gender as a category relevant to the idea of hate crime, the widespread violence against women is a hate crime. It is a way of enforcing the patriarchal dominance that seeks to control women and limit our access to political and economic resources.

In their dissent, Liam T.A. Ford and Matthew J. McDonald criticize the "monotonous chant-mongers exhorting marchers to '--the patriarchy.'" Yet, at the same time, they say," Strive to stop violence against women." They fail to understand that the dominant patriarchal structure engenders widespread, systematic violence against women.

This same dissent labels Take Back the Night as "a wacko Left ideology-fest" and its organizers as "shrill feminists...with a bizarre political agenda."

Unable to engage our ideas in a serious, critical discussion, they are reduced to calling us names. They float the archaic image of hysterical women in an effort to delegitimize our fight to stop the violence and to reclaim our lives.

They criticize our failure to maintain "ideological neutrality," which strikes us as being both impossible and oxymoronic. We assume that they are accusing us of being partisan or of bowing to some party line.

Take Back the Night is about women refusing to bow down. It is not about being left wing or right wing. Those who commit violence do not make these distinctions, and violence touches all women, regardless of political ideology, party affiliation, race or class.

In taking back the night, we are refusing to accept the rapes, assaults, batteries and murders that are committed against us, because we are women, by those we know and those we do not know every day and every night. Jessye Lapenn '93   Heidi Siedlecki '93   Co-coordinators   Take Back the Night 1992