Isis Smyth, Liverpool Socialist Students
On the 29 November, a ‘Reclaim the Night’ march will be led by student unions across Liverpool. Inspired by the Reclaim the Night movement from 1977 to the 1990s, the march calls for an end to gender-based violence.
Important demands such as the extension of Liverpool’s night bus routes and affordable and safe transport in Liverpool at night have been raised. Liverpool Socialist Students will attend this demonstration, as well as hosting our own event before, putting forward our ideas.
Sexual violence is a problem all too familiar to women. 71% of women have experienced sexual harassment in a public place. This shocking figure rises to 86% of young women. Over one in four women have experienced domestic abuse since they turned 16. One in 30 women in England and Wales are raped or sexually assaulted every year.
Violence against women was put on the back burner by the Tory government. When Sarah Everard was brutally raped and murdered by police officer Wayne Couzens while walking home alone at night, women across the country joined arms to demand something be done, but the protests were met with yet more violence from police – those who are supposed to protect us!
Every “text me when you get home” is a dark reminder of the danger women are constantly in. With the grim understanding that nothing will change under this new Labour government becoming clear, women are left wondering what can be done to protect us.
We have to fight for the services we need, including safe publicly owned, democratically run transport, street lighting, and much more. We have to fight to end sexism and misogyny, and the system that maintains it.
The capitalist system commodifies women, warping our bodies into objects to be taken, used and then discarded. Adverts using women’s bodies to sell their products shown on TV in between news stories of women being attacked, raped, and murdered. Televised trials detailing women’s abuse are sensationalised and made into profitable gossip reels.
We have to fight for a world in which women feel safe and free, where we no longer have to walk home with keys in between our fingers. That means fighting both for the resources we need now, and for wider change in society along socialist lines, without poverty and division, without women being sexualised and dehumanised for profit. This world belongs to the capitalist class, but we fight for a socialist world that would ensure women can reclaim the night.
