For Emily

Women marched through the streets of Halifax on Friday night for Take Back the Night. (Annie Burns-Pieper Photo)

Each person had their own story and their own reason to march.

Halifax’s annual Take Back the Night rally was held last Friday night, put on by the Dalhousie Women’s Centre. This event originated in Belgium in 1976 with women attending the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women to protest sexual violence, domestic violence, and violence against children and women. Since then, events all over the world are held in the fall, to protest the endemic violence against women that permeates every corner of the globe.

This annual event has different significance for every woman, man or child involved. We don’t have to look far to find a family member, friend, colleague or acquaintance that has been a victim of sexual or gender-based violence.

In my own case, I marched for my cousin Emily, a 24-year old student at the time when she was brutally murdered by a male friend when she refused his sexual advances, while her four-year-old son slept in the same house. In attendance at the rally were women who themselves had been raped or victims of sexual abuse, women whose mothers had been attacked, children who marched for themselves and their mothers, and people who marched as part of collectives of women: black women, aboriginal women, sex workers, transgendered people, people from gay or lesbian communities, and women with disabilities.

Listening to the speakers at the rally and marching alongside the other women, I felt uncomfortable and separated. It's tough to acknowledge that one in two Canadian women will be victim to some form of sexual violence in her lifetime, while fewer than 10 per cent of these crimes are reported. Many of the women around me were holding this kind of knowledge inside them. We are afraid and our fear is justified: we aren’t safe as women, in relationships, on the street, from family members and in university residences.

To me, Take Back the Night is an opportunity for every person to face their fears, for themselves and people that they love regardless of gender and to acknowledge how far we have to go and how much work still needs to be done. 

For Emily.