Take Back the Night

I arrived when a Take Back the Night activist was speaking on the steps of Sullivant Hall to an audience outside of the Wexner Center. She was talking about self defense and strategies. She went on talking about how women are not politically organized when it comes to women's rights or anything. When it comes to women and men, women apologize to me a lot. She emphasized how sexual violence is a gender thing and she gave us the thought of how when a male is attacked, suddenly he's feminized. Moreover, she said a single sexual assault can constitute as sexual harassment. I understood the situations behind her statement of saying women can be at fault too. Numerous women are out there accepting drinks that are at large risks and going back to someone's place. She brought up a good point when she said men rarely attack someone they don't know. Men usually think isolation is consent and it would be disappointing if a person agreed under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Lastly, her advice to never be alone with a man hopefully proved to be helpful to everyone out there at the event.

The student group I talked to was called WARR-Women and Allies Rising in Resistance. I talked to their president who gave me a good idea of their group even though it looked like she was overwhelmed with the event. The focus of WARR is ending rape and sexual violence on campus. WARR is not a nationwide organization, but it is however, the oldest feminist organization on campus. With no national help, they established a sexual violence assistance fund. I did not know anything about how if a person gets raped, all your clothes are taken away, etc., therefore this fund helps pay for the replacement items. Up to $500 is accessible for a case to cover not only replacement items but documented medical expenses and emergency housing costs.

The Take Back the Night observations fall into the category of Deviance in sociology.

Norms are known as rules of conduct for sociology and deviance is a violation of these norms. Since rape is a crime, it is a formal deviance. However, social protests such as Take Back the Night are considered as deviant behavior because it is against the norms of going against the norm of completely getting justice for women who get raped.