One of my favourite feminist events is Reclaim the Night. I look forward to going every year. I've marched in the past for many different reasons. I've worked in women's services before where the importance of protesting sexual violence has been so very obvious given the stories presented by clients. I've cried watching the news or reading people's stories of assault. I've been terrified on occasion while I'm out by myself at night, or realised after the fact that I was lucky nothing had happened to me - and it could have. With one in three Australian women experiencing sexual assault, it's a possibility all too real.
This year, I marched for a friend.
A few months ago, my friend Jessie (not her real name) was assaulted. She went out for dinner with friends at a suburban hotel and bistro to celebrate someone's birthday. She had two drinks with dinner. She remembers receiving a text message on her mobile, which came through at around 10pm. The next thing she knew, she was waking up in a stranger's bed, covered in bruises and worse.
Shaken and distressed, she made her way home, where she called her ex-boyfriend, with whom she is still close. He made a few calls and took her to the hospital, where he had been told there was a specialist sexual assault response unit embedded in the emergency department. It was here that her second nightmare began. After waiting over five hours, shaking and visibly upset, in the public waiting room to see somebody, Jess finally managed to talk to a doctor. That doctor listened to her story and then told her it could be another few hours before she was able to see a sexual assault counsellor, that it was too late for her to take emergency contraception, and suggested it was a one-night stand and Jessie was now just suffering from regret so was trying to cast it as an assault. At this last comment, her ex-boyfriend understandably exploded at the doctor and took her home. She left with no emergency contraception, no medical examination, no counselling and no referral to a support service.
When Jessie told me about her experience a few days later, I went from rage to despair to complete disgust. I vowed to have the hospital's head on a plate. And I searched around with Jessie until we found the phone number for a real support service - one that's funded by government but run by women, who are specialists in sexual assault support. That was a few months ago and while she says it has helped her so much to talk to counsellors, she still feels sick in the stomach when she verbalises some of her experiences.
The other thing worth saying: a few days after the assault, she was going through her handbag from that evening and came across a wrapper from chewing gum she didn't remember buying. Puzzled, she mentioned it in passing to the counsellor she was speaking to, who said that after drink-spiking, chewing gum and cigarettes were becoming increasingly common methods of drugging women to make them vulnerable to sexual assault. I felt sick when Jessie told me. As she said to me, scared and confused: 'We know not to take a drink from anybody. We don't even have to think about it. But if you're outside having a cigarette and someone offers you a stick of gum, you're most likely going to take it, aren't you? Because nobody has ever told us this before.'
But why not? My first urge was to tell every woman I knew, tell them to tell everyone they knew, then call the local radio station and ask them to put it over the air. I just couldn't believe that nobody had ever mentioned it. If this happens, and happens so regularly that the sexual assault service was able to diagnose it so quickly, why is it not a matter of public knowledge? Sexual assault is a woman's worse nightmare, and in a way the fear of it happening informs our every move when we're out. Like me, Jessie belongs to a generation who has come to maturity hearing horror stories of drink spiking. As a result, it's instinctive behaviour when we're out: never ever accept a drink from a stranger, never ever put your drink down and come back to it. It's as instinctive as breathing. But the bottom line is, it's not enough. Whatever rules you follow, they're never enough.
When Jess told me she wanted to march in Reclaim the Night this year, I was surprised. She's still feeling very vulnerable after the assault, although she doesn't talk about it much, even to those who are very close to her. But at the same time I knew it was important to her, and I was so proud of my beautiful friend and her bravery. We went together. I watched her holding back tears at the rally before the march, when the names of some of the women who have died in the past year from domestic violence in Queensland were read out. I watched her looking around the crowd at the rally, at women with children and teenagers with glow sticks and placards reading 'sex without consent is a crime' and older women in office attire who had come straight from work. I watched her draw strength from the solidarity and purpose of the women around us as we marched, and watched her hold her head up so high. I watched her nod and smile at me when I asked if she was alright, and felt her squeezing my arm when I put it through hers. I watched her laugh with joy when people along the route of the march spontaneously cheered and clapped us all on, and watched her join with a hundred other women in cheering a group of dudes standing halfway along the march route bearing signs that read 'men against rape'. I felt so humbled by her courage and her strength, and so lucky to be surrounded by so many women who felt the same. The exhilaration of Reclaim the Night gets me every year, but it really hit home last weekend when I watched Jessie draw so much from it.
She sent me a text the next day.
"I just wanted to tell you how amazing last night was. I didn't talk very much because it was such an overwhelming experience…I didn't expect to feel like that. It made me realise how alone and weak I've been feeling and I really shouldn't have been. It made me feel anger towards those men and the hospital for making me feel like that, but also empowered to change myself. It reinforced this idea that I have of helping others to find happiness and strength…I feel this little light inside me starting to glow."
I think that says it all.
Viva la Reclaim the Night.
Image of Reclaim the Night protestors taken from Sally Payne's Flickr account under creative commons licence.
