Leaflet by Women Office Workers of New York, 1979.
The feminist impact against rape may well have been even greater. For this form of violence the
historical data are even sparser, because for centuries the cost of reporting was trivial for the culprit and
massive for the victim. We learn more by looking at definitions. Before the women’s liberation movement,
the dominant notion of rape was an assault by a stranger on the street, and rape of children was widely
considered a one-in-a-million occurrence, also done by strangers—“dirty old men.” So the women’s
movement had to redefine rape itself: by making people aware not only that the majority of rapes are
perpetrated by people who know the victim, and those of children by male family members, but also that
rape includes marital rape, homosexual rape, and rape without intercourse. As early as 1971, at least four
big cities had rape crisis centers, and soon it was impossible to keep up with the momentum—speakouts,
support groups, hotlines, counseling, training for police and medical personnel. There were some fifteen
hundred antirape projects by 1976.
One feminist tactic against violence was the “Take Back the Night” march. The first one was probably
held in Philadelphia in 1975, sparked by the murder of a young woman walking home from work. That
march “went viral,” even though there was no Internet then. The phrase and the events were picked up the
following year at an international tribunal in Brussels, and soon there were marches across the globe.
These marches repudiated, both symbolically and in practice, the widespread acceptance of the view that
women should not move through a city alone at night, and that it was at least partly their fault if they were
assaulted. “Take Back the Night” represented putting the blame for violence against women where it
belonged: on male assailants.