Reclaim the Night - Friday October 29, 6 - 9.30pm

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Men rape men. Your claims that male-on-male rape is not a global phenomenon, widespread or ancient would be laughable if they weren’t so offensively wrong.

You might need to look up the meaning of phenomenon Woody.

Unless you are suggesting that every crime committed against the person ought to be given equal consideration, for example, that male on male violence or female on male sexual harassment?

If you are, then get organising!

Or is it the fault of women who want to feel safe that violent sexual crimes against men are not given their equal dues?

Can we have a men for violence march? Sometimes it is necessary 😉

I think it is worth reclaiming the night even if only 1 % of women are being sexually attacked.

To me the exactness of the statistical information is not the main point here.

Violence against women exists, and it should not be expected and tolerated.

I think the issues here are power and incidence; the power differential between men and women and the likelihood of a man getting raped.

Men rape men. Your claims that male-on-male rape is not a global phenomenon, widespread or ancient would be laughable if they weren’t so offensively wrong.

Ooh, look – here’s a ‘1 in 5’ stat worth marching about: 20% of sexual assaults against females in the ACT in 2009 were against girls aged 10-14 years.

I’m sure they were all out clubbing in Garema Place. You know – where the march is to reclaim public spaces. After dark. When all the raping goes on.

*returns to nerd computer game and glass of Chimay Red*

Mr Gillespie said :

NEWS FLASH!!!!!

Men get raped and are subjected to violent attacks, too.

Really Mr Gillespie? Really?

I think the issues here are power and incidence; the power differential between men and women and the likelihood of a man getting raped.

Men get raped, sure they do, but it is not a global phenomenon. It is not a widespread, two or three thousand year old problem.

Why doesn’t it happen very often Mr Gillespie? Because there is not a general physical and social power imbalance among men.

If a minuscule rate of women were raped every year, then there would be no need for a “Reclaim the Night”, hence the absence of a male version, i.e. Reclaim the Might?

Snap out of it!

Whoops, my bad – forgot to add ‘relationship to victim not known’. Let’s say they were all strangers. We’re down to less than 1 in 11,000 – but still 2,200 times less than the flier claims.

(And in case anybody says I’m with the ‘what about the men’ crowd? I’m not. Not even close. As JB says, organise your own goddamned march – or better still, stop getting drunk and hitting each other.)

You won’t find the ratio 1 in 5 by looking at official crime statistics because the vast number of sexual and physical assaults against women are never reported to police, or never go to trial or, if they do actually achieve a conviction

…you mean the official crime statistics collated by the ABS that clearly indicate what action the victim took, from reporting it to police through to absolutely nothing at all, but which are counted anyway? You really think the ABS says “well, you say you were assaulted, but you didn’t report it, so we won’t count it?” Of course they don’t. They even give you a nice graph showing what action the victim took – because this is critical for the development of social policy.

We can speculate very safely that some women who were assaulted in the previous 12 months lie about this to the ABS. But to get from the statistics we do have to ‘1 in 5 Australian women are affected by sexual crimes’ has no basis in evidence whatsoever.

So, how may sexual assaults were recorded by the ABS in the ACT in 2009 that occurred outside a residence (on public transport, in the street, in some other community area)? 43. Let’s assume they’re all women. Number of women aged 18 and over in the ACT? About 138,000. Victim prevalence rate? 0.03%. 1 in 3,333. Perpetrator was a stranger? Less than 1 in 5. So if your friends and partners didn’t sexually assault you, you’ve had less than 1 in 16,000 chance of being sexually assaulted in a public place in 2009. Explain to me how you get from there to ‘1 in 5 in 2010’?

Way to nit-pick!

Highlighting the claimed present rationale for the march is nit-picking? A claim which is, even with the most cursory glance, complete and utter bullsh*t? It’s their claim, not mine: “Today, we walk for the same reasons… because sexual violence affects one in five Australian women.” Do you see the ‘because’ part? What they’re doing ‘because’? And it doesn’t worry you that the ‘because’ is a total lie?

This event is about women reclaiming public spaces where sexual and/or violent crimes against women do occur, and where women in general feel unsafe.

The event doesn’t say violent crimes. It says sexual crimes. But even if we talk about all violent crimes, from common assault to sexual assault, we’re nowhere near the vague statistic thrown around here. It’s scaremongering. “OMG”, thinks the woman reading, “any time I’m out in a public space I have a 1 in 5 chance of being raped? Or is it that one in five women have been raped in a public space at some point? I’m not really sure, but I sure do feel unsafe! I’d better march!”

And a battle of semantics in relation to defining violence against women, sexual assault, sexual crime, sexual violence etc., well, it’s not really the point of this event now, is it?

What is the point? Making women believe that they’re in imminent danger of sexual assault in public spaces, when nothing could be further from the truth? Hiding the fact that the most dangerous place for a woman is in her own home, with her partner, and that even this sort of crime is nowhere near the 1 in 5 statistic?

So please, feel free to explain ‘the point’, supported by some accurate statistics: how many women in Canberra were victims of sexual crimes committed in public spaces last year? How does this compare against other forms of violence committed against women in Canberra?

Ref: sexual violence affects one in five Australian women.

WCM said “Do we have a cite for this?”

You won’t find the ratio 1 in 5 by looking at official crime statistics because the vast number of sexual and physical assaults against women are never reported to police, or never go to trial or, if they do actually achieve a conviction. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. A simple google search leads me to the FAHCSIA website:

http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/women/pubs/violence/synthesis_report08/Pages/dom_fam_violrel_homeless.aspx

Which states: “Clearly incidences of domestic and family violence within the community are considerably higher than official statistics indicate and it is only when the threat becomes too much or other chosen options are no longer available (for example staying with friends) that these women and children come to the attention of service providers. Unfortunately some women do not recognise the seriousness of the threat and they and/or their children become victims of domestic homicide.”

More often that not, women suffer in silence until they feel safe enough to talk about it -sometimes years later and only to a counsellor, social worker, doctor, family member or friend. So, to answer your question WCM, to analyse and do “proper statistical treatment” of the data, you are unlikely to find it on the ABS website but more likely to find it buried in a numerous reports compilating other reports from many sources.

It seems that the ABS has not done a Personal Safely Survey since 2006, however FAHCSIA say:

“Domestic and family violence is an issue that affects a significant proportion of Australian women. However, establishing the true extent of domestic and family violence is difficult. Survey data provide an insight but the level of violence recorded is contingent on numerous factors including the definition of domestic and family violence, the timeframe in which the violence occurred and is recorded (i.e. across the lifetime, over the previous 10 years, five years, one year), the method of data collection and variability in the population surveyed. Data from the most recent survey of violence by the ABS – the Personal Safety Survey, on the prevalence of partner violence against women indicates that around one in six adult women (17.0 per cent) have experienced actual or threatened physical or sexual violence perpetrated by a partner since the age of 15 (ABS 2007, p. 201; ABS 2006b). This figure does not include other forms of violence as specified in definition of domestic violence used in this report. It also does not include acts of ‘family’ violence. Findings of the Australian Component of the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) conducted in 2002-03 indicate that over a lifetime 34 per cent of Australian women experience actual or threats of physical violence, sexual violence (including unwanted sexual touching) and psychological violence (controlling behaviour) from a current or former partner (Mouzos & Makkai 2004, p. 44)”.

.

Muffyk said :

Ahh, indeed… the last line. Way to nit-pick! Even if you took those nine words away, the issues associated with Reclaim the Night would still hold true.

And now that I re-read Woody’s statement – I’m not sure why it’s necessary to point out that 1 in 3 women have only experienced one incident of violence… in my opinion, one time is too many.

But violence against men is A-okay going by the deafening silence.

I-filed said :

How about we all also reclaim our sexuality away from the likes of the “Eros” Association, promoting degrading porn as healthy sex. Canberran Melinda Tankard Reist has it right on the ABC’s The Drum:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40310.html

Porn is not compulsory and if you don’t like it don’t look at it (unless you’re Fred Nile who looks at it purely for “research” (cough, cough!)

You’re not safe anywhere, anytime if you fear being attacked by magpies. I was tentatively reclaiming my own little space in the north of Canberra last night when I was attacked by a testosterone driven magpie. The worst part is that I had waited to go for my walk until it was near to dark. But it made no difference at all. Reclaim THAT!

I-filed said :

How about we all also reclaim our sexuality away from the likes of the “Eros” Association, promoting degrading porn as healthy sex. Canberran Melinda Tankard Reist has it right on the ABC’s The Drum:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40310.html

Pffft, it’s entertainment. Don’t like it, don’t go.

How about we all also reclaim our sexuality away from the likes of the “Eros” Association, promoting degrading porn as healthy sex. Canberran Melinda Tankard Reist has it right on the ABC’s The Drum:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40310.html

Ahh, indeed… the last line. Way to nit-pick! Even if you took those nine words away, the issues associated with Reclaim the Night would still hold true.

And now that I re-read Woody’s statement – I’m not sure why it’s necessary to point out that 1 in 3 women have only experienced one incident of violence… in my opinion, one time is too many.

And in relation to whether you are more likely to be assaulted in a private or public space… this isn’t about understanding how statistically likely it is that you might be sexually assaulted in public – it’s about the fact that it still happens, and it is not acceptable.

Muffyk said :

I’m not really sure what you are on about Woody. I don’t see the 1 in 5 statistic quoted anywhere in the event posting.

Try at the bottom of the “A BRIEF HISTORY OF RECLAIM THE NIGHT” section, line beginning with 2010.

I’m not really sure what you are on about Woody. I don’t see the 1 in 5 statistic quoted anywhere in the event posting.

And a battle of semantics in relation to defining violence against women, sexual assault, sexual crime, sexual violence etc., well, it’s not really the point of this event now, is it? This event is about women reclaiming public spaces where sexual and/or violent crimes against women do occur, and where women in general feel unsafe.

@astrojax – You may have a point. I’m not sure women have ever experienced freedom and safety at night. But surely it’s a nice ideal that we can all work towards?

astrojax said :

while i applaud the sentiment and cause here, i always baulk at the ‘reclaim’ bit – like, when exactly did women ever have freedom and safety at night? and when / how did they lose it? serious question – happy to be informed

Under the rule of the Taliban women were pretty safe. So long as they kept the burka done up properly, and didn’t break any of the rules (like going out without a male relative, driving a car, or listening to music).

I am very supportive of this, however often find the statistics infuriating. Not because I think they exaggerate the occurrences of these offences, but because they are presented in very dubious ways, without references, without defining terms and generally I feel that takes away from the impact.

while i applaud the sentiment and cause here, i always baulk at the ‘reclaim’ bit – like, when exactly did women ever have freedom and safety at night? and when / how did they lose it? serious question – happy to be informed

but ‘claim’ the night – all for that!

🙂

sexual violence affects one in five Australian women

Do we have a cite for this? What’s ‘sexual violence’? What does ‘affect’ mean?

The sixth national Australian Bureau of Statistics household survey of crime and safety gives a ‘victim prevalence rate’ (VPR) for sexual assuault of just 0.3% for all adult Australians. Regular assaults vary by state/territory but run around the 5% mark, and half of those are for men. If we expand our coverage to ‘an incident of violence in the past 12 months’, the most recent stats I could find at the ABS (1996) gave a VPR of 7.1% – 1 in 14, not even close to 1 in 5.

If the source is the ABS’ 2006 Personal Safety Survey (and it seems to be a popular cite for similar initiatives , then the stats are more like:

– nearly one in five Australian women have experienced violence by a current or a previous partner _at some point in their lives_ – if this is the stat you’re relying on, then the words ‘are affected’ and ‘sexual crime’ are being used very, very loosely indeed
– for 1 in 3 of these women, this was a single incident
– sexual violence accounted for only 1/5th of this violence – so more like 1 in 25, unless you want to say ‘if a man hits you, it’s a sexual crime’; and
– you are much, much, much more likely to be sexually assaulted by your current or ex-partner partner in your home or his, not some random thug on the street, and definitely not in a ‘public space’.

This is a serious and insidious issue. It deserves proper statistical treatment, not grossly inaccurate soundbytes.

Mr Gillespie said :

NEWS FLASH!!!!!

Men get raped and are subjected to violent attacks, too.

Animals too … and blow-up dolls!!!

Mr Gillespie said :

NEWS FLASH!!!!!

Men get raped and are subjected to violent attacks, too.

I trust you have pommy bastards contact details, you can join his opressed males against the wicked femocracy movement.

Seriously – why did you post that?

NEWS FLASH!!!!!

Men get raped and are subjected to violent attacks, too.

As long as nobody gets out the ol’ mamory glands, or they’ll cause earth quakes.

But I agree. In the civilised society we like to think we live in, both men and women should be equally scared of venturing out into dodgy parts of Canberra at night…

Both Men and Women should not walk down the street with their headphones in for fear of not being able to hear an approaching attacker…

Neither Women or Men should dress provocatively, as those in society who are more closely related to angry baboons than we care to talk about, cannot be expected to control themselves… and by dressing nicely in this day and age, anyone is really just asking to be molested.

In all seriousness though, it is an absolute disgrace that there are still elected officials who as recently as a few years ago have come out with quotes along the lines of, women should not dress provocatively as men can’t be expected to control themselves. As a male I find that offensive. It should be reasonable to expect that in this day and age the vast majority of my male peers posess more sexual control than that of a horny neanderthal.

Why do I get singled out to participate in some girl march, I wanna do something cool like participate in driving an Indy car or something