Last Friday the Oxford Reclaim the Night march took place….(told from my perspective)

After various incidents I manage to get to the March start point at the Sheldonian theatre (slap bang in the middle of Oxford academic institutions) with my two young daughters, ex-boyfriends mother and her ten year old daughter.  I see a few banners and secretly hope it’s going to be bigger than last year (about 40 women).  It turns out there is over a hundred women there.  I sift through the crowd and find some of the organising committee, namely the awesome Clare Cochrane (who campaigns on many issues) and the irrepressible (femacadem) Suzi stewarding, with baby in sling at the front. Suzi and I engage in banter which goes

Me: Look at me out and about of a Friday night, I’m a single mother what would the Daily Mail say?

Suzi (in big booming middle class voice): Yes , you should be at home , you may steal someone’s husband!

Some of the newbies stare not getting the joke.

Meanwhile , ex-boyfriends Mum starts to get bored but reiterates that she should be here because she was in a Women’s Refuge, my kids tire of standing up, someone passes a comment about me smoking a cigarette in front of the children ( I ain’t gonna hide it) and I get the disapproving vibe about bringing the children from others which makes me even more belligerent.  Then the mood changes…

The always excellent Louise Livesey starts up the chants and gets the march under way and we march towards the High Street.  The kids are on either side of me , the chanting starts whose streets?, our streets!.  Women come to talk to me; a woman named Kate who organises the new Oxford branch of Fawcett; Hannah, a co-ordinator at OSARCC introducing me to other volunteers. I spy a little boy in front of me wearing a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ t-shirt and blowing bubbles and I recognise his mum from  the main Fawcett publicity.  I notice people on the street; the cheers, the jeers and the people who look look at us as if we belong to another era.  But mostly I see the people ahead of me, the chanting and chatting, the smiling  and the banners flapping in the wind.  We block the footpath as we walk down St Aldates, a council rubbish van beeps us again (for the third time), we stop taxis making their way down the small cobbled backlanes (we pull to the footpath to let them pass). We pass the lapdancing club chanting womens bodies should not be sold. We march down New Hall Inn Street chanting  Whatever we wear, wherever we go , yes means yes, no means no.

My youngest gets knackered by this point so I have to perch her on my shoulders as we get to the busy junction, someone presses the crossing button (we have no police escort) half the contingent gets across whilst the other stays on the other side of the road. We wait and chant some more .  We then make our way to the rally point at Ruskin college, a group of young men shout at us ‘we’re gonna chop you into pieces ‘ (apparently this happened on the march too but the stewards took care of it) I ignore them but ex-boyfriends mum chases them down (she knows their Mums).

I get into the familiar settings of Ruskin, sort the kids out with a drink and realise the actual scale of  the march, I hardly know anyone here, but it makes me glad, new people on the march is always a good thing.I have a quick chat with random people, ex-boyfriends Mum takes the kids home and I slip out front for a cigarette.

I’m chatting with the Warden and the awesome Debbie when the two police show up, they address the warden first (of course, he is a bloke) then they talk to me.

Bloke plod:Good evening Miss, what’s going on here then? Do you have a licence?

Me: We don’t need one – you were informed and we have insurance.

Bloke plod: So, any more marching tonight?

Me: No, but thanks so much for your help

Warden: Its a rally and the college is insured

Bloke plod: So whats this all about?

Me: Its called Reclaim the Night , where Women march to be seen and heard at a time when society tells us we should be indoors because of all the nasty things that may happen to us …

Bloke plod:  ohh…

Me: Which we wouldn’t have to do if your institution took women seriously.

Bloke plod: Well goodnight miss *jogs on*

I go in and relate the tale to the organisers and have a good laugh, chat to Suzi and then go home, sadly missing the rally speeches. Its only the second march I’ve been on, but this year was bigger and better all thanks to the women who organized and attended, love and thanks to the Oxford Collective.

The wonderful Anji of “Shut Up, Sit Down” has a brilliant new piece up over on The F Word titled “Why cis attendees of RTN are letting trans women down”. For those of you unfamiliar with the argument, every year London Feminist Network host a Reclaim The Night March, protesting Violence against Women (VW). I’ve been once in 2008, and found it an uplifting experience but one which also left me somewhat uncomfortable after hostility between LFN and members of a Sex Workers Rights group arose.  I’ve also noticed that every year multiple feminist groups call upon LFN to explicitly state that trans women are welcome on the march, and every year LFN fail to state this. It’s a horrific example of transphobia, which I don’t think can or should be ignored any longer. Anji explains why LFN need to be explicit in their welcoming of trans women, and I would urge all feminists, cis or trans, to call on LFN to be explicit in their stataements regarding who is and isn’[t welcome to march with them. I would even go so far as to urge feminists to boycott the London March this year- many cities have RTN marches which welcome all self identifying women- Oxford has one on October 22nd – and so in order to put an end to the hideous transphobia routinely perpetrated by LFN, go to one of the smaller marches. That might seem a bit extreme but we aren’t good feminists or allies if we ignore, and are complicit in the abuse of our trans sisters.

My history of utilising protest as a form of political action is quite frankly pants. It’s only in the last year that I’ve had the confidence to even contemplate going on marches and each time I’ve tried nothing has quite worked – RTN London 07 I was ill and couldn’t march, Million Women Rise 08 I injured my ankle two days before the event and couldn’t walk for three months never mind march, RTN Oxford 08 my friend and I got the date entirely wrong and took our kids to the fireworks display only to turn up the following evening and realise we had the date wrong.

So I was pretty determined to make RTN London 08. And make it I did, and so did the 1,999 other women who gathered in Whitehall Place yesterday evening to remind London that violence against women still happens and it’s still shouldn’t be.

The march was, in a word, amazing!! Everyone was really happy, the chanting was great, there was singing, the public seemed generally supportive and I got to meet some really nice people.The only downsides for me really was the random guy who accused us of ‘demonising gender’ and the conflict between the sex workers rights group and the rest of the marching body.

Whilst I am strongly in favour of sex workers rights and am pro porn I do think that a march which is highlighting the need for an end to VAW is not the place for this conflict to be played out. I don’t know though, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a sex worker and thus have no subjective understanding of the need for sex workers rights, but I am deeply conflicted about where I stand on the tension that occurred on Saturday night.

Ending VAW is a massively important issue. 8 out of 10 women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime¹  and in the UK 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes and on average 2 women are killed a week by their former/current partner. Internationally VAW accounts for between 40- 70% of female homicide victims. This is in comparison to the figure for men which is 4-8% ². These figures for me indicate that this is a serious problem – and it’s something we need to do something about, whether that be by taking part in marches to highlight the issue or by fundraising for women’s shelters, rape crisis centres or otherwise.

On a person al note I’d like to say thanks to Louise and her husband for helping me GET to the march. I have issues with agrophobia- whilst I’m generally quite comfortable travelling on ‘known’ routes around my hometown or with my partner/friends, going to London on my own to places I am unfamiliar with is a real issue for me. Thanks are definately due to Louise and Matt for being supportive by text and for meeting me in Trafalgar Square and showing me where the march was and then introducing me to people so I didnt feel quite so ‘ARGHHHHHHH’ about the whole thing.

I’ll definitely be going to RTN next year…. and other accounts of the march can be found here, here and here .

¹Taken from Liz Kelly’s book ‘Surviving Sexual Violence

²From the Womens Aid website

http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic_violence_topic.asp?section=0001000100220036&sectionTitle=Statistics