MEN AT THE MARCH: FEMINIST MOVEMENT BOUNDARIES AND MEN’S PARTICIPATION IN TAKE BACK THE NIGHT AND SLUTWALK * Kelsy Kretschmer and Kristen Barber † In this article, we examine newspaper coverage of Take Back the Night and SlutWalk sexual assault protests to assess how boundaries around men’s participation in feminist events have changed over time, as well as how these changes shape movement messages in the press. Our analysis of Take Back the Night reveals that organizers are more likely to insist on boun- daries excluding men’s participation, and the coverage often focuses on the public contro- versy this choice generates. This controversy, however, often provides an unanticipated opportunity for activists to achieve standing and air demands in the press. In a postfeminist political era, there are fewer boundaries for men’s participation in SlutWalk and Take Back the Night marches, and reporters and editors focus on a wider array of participants, including those men who are less committed to the feminist purpose of the marches. In these cases, feminist antiassault demands are more likely to get buried. Scholars and activists have long struggled with whether and how to incorporate men into feminist movements. Take Back the Night and SlutWalk marches are both feminist campaigns protesting sexual assaults on women and society’s tendency to blame the victim. However, both campaigns tend to embrace different tactical and organizational strategies for managing men’s participation. Born out of the North American women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Take Back the Night marches have frequently closed their boundaries completely or limited men’s participation as a way to emphasize their claims for women’s autonomy. In contrast, the more recent SlutWalk marches have decidedly open boundaries, allowing men to participate freely and to include their experiences as a central part of the event (SlutWalk Toronto 2014). These protest marches have spread globally and ignited popular discussions on women’s rights to safety and sexual expression, becoming two of the most important and understudied forms of feminist collective action in recent decades. They highlight interrelated issues about how feminist movements have changed over time, the consequences of closed and open boundaries for movement messages, and how protest events are covered in the media. In this article, we address two central questions: first, how have men been incorporated in or excluded from these feminist events over time; and second, how have these boundary decisions shaped the media coverage? By “boundaries,” we mean the ways organizers ex- plicitly or implicitly mark who counts as a movement insider, or “us,” and who is a movement outsider, or “them” (Lamont and Molnár 2012). Movement boundaries matter for protest events because they shape the issues and problems that receive attention from activists, as well as whose experiences the media spotlight. But boundaries are rarely static or absolute; they are often challenged by insiders looking to redefine or expand the movement’s agenda, and by outsiders looking to have their experiences represented. Insiders and outsiders struggle over the movement boundaries of Take Back the Night and SlutWalk because the events attract * An early draft of this article was presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in San Francisco. We gratefully acknowledge Yurino Kawashima for her research assistance in collecting data for this project. We would also like to thank Freeden Ouer, Jo Reger, and Mike Messner for their thoughtful insights into this project. † Kelsy Kretschmer is Assistant Professor of Sociology, School of Public Policy, Oregon State University, 300 Fairbanks Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331. Kristen Barber is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901. Direct correspondence to Kelsy.Kretschmer@oregonstate.edu. © 2016 Mobilization: An International Quarterly 21(3): 283-300 DOI 10.17813/1086-671X-20-3-283