La République et la jupe

July 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Les français se pensent-ils libérés avec ce nouveau couple présidentiel hors des institutions du mariage?  La république permissive a pourtant une vue particulière sur les tenues vestimentaires des résidentes de ce pays. Nous avons tous suivi les débats sur le foulard, le hijab, puis le jilbab, mais qu’en est il de la jupe ? Autrefois seule tenue autorisée dans les lieux d’études, elle est devenue taboue.

Lors de la journée de la femme, le 8 mars dernier, le scandale est apparu dans un collège d’une petite bourgade de l’Ain. Le magazine Marianne a même été saisi de l’affaire. Les faits : une trentaine de filles décident d’enfiler une jupe pour, comme elles dirent : « honorer la féminité ».  Le film la journée de la jupe avec Isabelle Adjani avait été leur inspiration. Puis, dès leur arrivée au collège, elles ont été remarquées par des professeurs et par voie de conséquence par le principal adjoint présent au collège ce jour-là. Aussitôt les gamines sont les cibles de quelques insultes : « journée de la jupe, journée de la pute » et surtout la cible des autorités. Elles doivent être mises à l’écart, car elles ont enfreint la loi, mais quelle loi ? Car comme l’affirme le principal, la jupe n’est pas interdite au collège. De même, ce collège est loin des banlieues des grandes villes où, comme le dit la journaliste de Marianne, Marie Huret: « la jupe est réputée échauffer les hormones », ce qui peut être interprété comme une bonne raison pour se couvrir des pieds a la tête si la jeune fille ne veut pas d’ennuis. En effet, comme l’avait signalé Simone de Beauvoir, les filles grandissent dans une autorité virile qui décide, entre autres, de leur apparence acceptable pour la république comme pour la religion, c’est à dire pour l’autorité patriarcale. Il faudra donc qu’elles se soumettent.

Revenons à notre affaire de jupes, après cette journée fatale, il y a eu réunion entre les parents et le principal de l’établissement. Celui-ci n’a pas voulu revenir sur les décisions prises ce jour là. Quand les parents ont demandé des excuses, il n’en était pas question, car il ne faut pas remettre en cause l’autorité.  En cause, un nouveau pouvoir ou bien devrait-on parler du pouvoir qui s’inscrit dans la biopolitique décrite par Michel Foucault qui ne demande pas seulement une domination hiérarchisée, centralisée, et fondée sur la discipline, mais une abnégation et une acceptation au plus profond de soi qui mimique la liberté du choix. Michel Foucault avait omis de rapporter cette description, fort juste par ailleurs, au control du corps de la femme.

Heureusement, les jeunes filles ont trouvé soutien parmi les enseignants, car leur seule demande de reconnaissance et de droit n’aurait pas suffit. L’un d’entre eux explique à la journaliste de Marianne que « cette affaire doit nous permettre d’ouvrir une réflexion collective. Pour l’heure, la priorité c’est de remettre les enfants au travail. » Voilà qui est dit, revenons aux bonnes valeurs, de travail, et pourquoi pas de servitude et celle ci se doit volontaire comme le décrivait déjà La Boétie dans son ouvrage rédigé en 1549.

Effectivement il y a du chemin a faire ou a refaire, car malgré les efforts  comme la parité gouvernementale pour montrer que la condition des femmes est prise en compte, les actes qui touchent de la vie quotidienne des filles, jeunes filles et femmes leur rappellent qu’elles sont a la merci de l’autorité masculine.

 

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Resistances, les femmes, le pouvoir et l’élection

June 18, 2012 by 1 Comment

 

Les électeurs français viennent d’élire un président socialiste, François Hollande. Il a été investi dans ses fonctions le 15 mai dernier et un nouveau gouvernement a été formé dans la foulée. Le changement est de taille pour beaucoup et une source d’espoir pour les femmes et les minorités. Ainsi le nouveau président avait affirmé qu’il appliquerait le principe de parité entre hommes et femmes pour former sa nouvelle équipe ministérielle. Il a pour ainsi dire réussi, 34 ministres dont 17 femmes. Il y a eu passation de pouvoir et à la suite du premier conseil des ministres il y a eu séance de photos et en particulier une photo du président et du premier ministre (Jean-Marc Ayrault) avec les femmes ministres de la parité. « Pourquoi une photo avec les seules femmes ministres?» demande la présidente de l’association des femmes journalistes, Isabelle Germain.

Est-ce un trophée ? Isabelle Germain ajoute qu’il n’y a pas eu de photos avec les hommes, ou les ministres issus de la diversité, elle en conclut que le concept de diversité est plus accepté que la parité politique entre hommes et femmes. Bien que cette décision doive être applaudie, il faut remarquer que la parité joue sur le nombre et non sur l’importance des postes de ministres, et il faut ajouter qu’il n’y a pas de parité parmi les conseillers du président et du premier ministre, comme le déplore Osez le Féminisme.

Toutefois image de progrès, la nomination de Christiane Taubira comme garde des Sceaux (ministre de la justice). D’abord cette nomination rappelle  l’histoire coloniale de la France, en effet, Christiane Taubira, est sénatrice » de Guyane. Elle représente les populations des caraïbes et a commencé sa carrière comme activiste indépendantiste de la Guyane.

Une de ses premières remarques qui mènera à une action rapide concerne la justice des mineurs. Elle a clairement indiquée que l’ère Sarkozy était terminée. Plus question de juger les délinquants récidivistes de 16 ou 17 ans dans des tribunaux correctionnels ordinaires, c’est à dire comme des adultes, cette mesure venait directement de l’exemple américain. Les mineurs seront de nouveau jugés comme des jeunes, ce qui veut dire pas d’incarcération dans les prisons des adultes et plus de programmes d’accompagnement. Bien sur l’ancienne ministre Rachida Dati (UMP) a immédiatement critiqué cette décision la qualifiant  d’ “acte irresponsable”. Rappelons que l’argument de dissuasion avancé en faveur du jugement des mineurs comme adulte, bien connu aux Etats Unis, s’est toujours avéré  erroné. Il est remarquable que Rachida Dati ministre de Sarkozy, elle aussi représentait l’intégration puisqu’elle est issue de l’immigration. Son approche était bien différente de celle de ces nouveaux ministres.

Cela nous mène à la nomination de la ministre des droits de la femme. Ce ministère avait purement et simplement été supprimé par le gouvernement précédent. Il avait été créé par le dernier président socialiste, en 1981 et avait eu un effet bénéfique pour les droits des femmes en France.  La nouvelle nommée Najat Vallaud-Belkacem est née au Maroc de parents marocains, elle refuse la comparaison avec Rachida Dati (elle aussi d’origine nord africaine). Najat Vallaud-Belkacem a aussi montré que les identités peuvent être multiples puisqu’elle a siégé au Conseil de la communauté marocaine à l’étranger (CCME) jusqu’à ce qu’elle s’engage avec François Hollande.  Beaucoup de travail à venir pour elle, notamment avec la loi sur le harcèlement sexuel qui a été invalidée par le Conseil Constitutionnel  récemment, créant ainsi un problème juridique pour les femmes voulant intenter une action en justice. Cette loi doit être repensée et surtout doit apporter une protection nécessaire aux femmes qui sont en France comme ailleurs de plus en plus victimes de violence.

Il est clair qu’après une campagne présidentielle menée par Nicolas Sarkozy sur le thème de la peur de l’étranger et de l’immigration, la formation de ce gouvernement montre une claire démarcation de la ligne ultra de Sarkozy, celui-ci n’avait pas hésité à remettre en cause la laïcité tout en utilisant la peur de la religiosité musulmane comme raison, alors qu’il prônait le retour a la morale chrétienne comme référence. Le débat s’éloignait de la nécessaire remise en cause de la colonisation dans ce moment où la mondialisation néolibérale représente une nouvelle forme de colonisation.

Dans ces temps qui révèlent les effets de l’organisation financière de la mondialisation néolibérale sur la société toute entière et avec les renégociations des accords européens pour instaurer les politiques économiques d’austérité destinées à mettre à genou les populations, le changement, si petit qu’il soit, venu de cette élection est une source d’espoir qu’il ne faut pas laisser échapper.

 

(Photo Credit: Reuters / Guillaume Paumier, Joëlle Dollé)

 

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Let’s hope France does not vote for US-style prisons

May 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment

As France goes to the polls in May, I think of women in prison in France and those in the United States, and I shudder. Consider the following.

These are the rules applied to pregnant women in prison in France, and they are clear:

No restriction of rights and access to Public Health Care during pregnancy.

Women are automatically covered by the health care system, mothers with babies under 18 months of age may receive maternal subsidy in prison the same as any woman in the “free world.”

No surveillance during delivery or at any stay at the public hospital where women who are incarcerated have to go for their regular visits and delivery.

The stay after delivery is the same as for any other, that is to say a minimum of 4 days and for as long as the doctor judges they have to stay.

Mother can be sent to a special section of the prison and keep their infant if they want to. The child is not incarcerated, and so receives all regular subsidies from the state, without restriction, and the mother manages the money, if she so chooses.

The hospital director may ask for surveillance outside the room, if deemed  necessary.

Those are the rules, and they’re a far sight better than those in the United States. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the distances, in France, between conditions as they for women in prison are and the claims made in official documents. Life for pregnant women in prison is difficult and not often talked about.

In France, for instance, there are 64 000 people incarcerated and 2500 are women. Women in prison often complain that because they are so few, their conditions are not taken seriously. There are political women prisoners, the majority of whom are Basque activists. Women may have private visits with their spouses, so it is possible, within the rules, for a woman prisoner to become pregnant.

Take the much-publicized story of Véronique Le Gall.

Véronique Le Gall was in jail for having killed and stored her newborn baby in a freezer. That was most likely a case of post-partum depression. At any rate, while in prison, she became pregnant. The authorities didn’t know and so only at the last instance was she sent to the hospital to give birth.

The point of the story of Véronique Le Gall is that it’s not unusual. It’s not unusual for women prisoners in France to become pregnant. There are several, formally sanctioned ways to get pregnant in prison. If a couple is incarcerated in the same institution, they have access to an internal visiting room. Women prisoners may be released on weekends. Finally, women can meet their family for 6 to 72 hours in a unité de vie familiale, or family life unit, which are small private apartments.

From one perspective, the standards in prisons in France are much better than those in the United States, but that’s not saying much.

What remains an issue is the prison environment in which a no-exception rule reigns. Pregnant women are trapped in this no-exception rules situation. Their parental right is not going to be compromised but their parenting is. Women prisoners in France can become parents, but they can’t be parents. They can’t act as parents, because they can’t make autonomous decisions about their children.

The last few years has seen both an improvement and a degradation of detention conditions. Recently, both the Controleur General des Lieux de Privation de Liberté, Jean Marie Delarue, and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment have identified disturbing, new elements: increased use of force, lack of training among wardens, increased use of solitary confinement, inadequate food provided by outsourced provisioners, slow psychiatric response to needed attention, and increased use of hand cuffs, especially for male prisoners. In France, doctors oppose the use of any restraints on medical grounds.

The International Observatory of Prisons sent a letter to both President Nicolas Sarkozy and to his main election contender Francois Holland. Neither said much. Hollande declared that French prisons should remain in conformity with principles of dignity. His chargé d’affaires explained that they wanted to render prison “useful” and work to decrease the rate of repeat offenses. As for Nicolas Sarkozy, he announced that he wanted to add 24 000 beds to the 56 000 already in place, and to rework the sentencing reduction program in place as a kind of zero tolerance program. He calls this “reinforcing the authority of justice”.

Prisons reflect as they participate in the evolution of the political economy of a society. That has certainly been the case in France. Let’s hope that the May 6th election marks a positive turn that keeps France’s prisons distant from those of the United States.

 

(Photo Credit: Robin des Lois)

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In the capital of the greatest incarcerating country in the world

April 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

 

On March 28, Ruth Wilson Gilmore gave the annual Yulee Endowed Lecture, hosted by the Women’s Studies Program at the George Washington University. Her talk opened with a slide showing an NAACP billboard that said, against the Statue of Liberty as background,

Welcome to America home to
5% of the world’s people &
25% of the world’s prisoners.

This is the same America that is home to 5% of the world’s population and produces 27.8% of the world’s greenhouse gases from fossil fuel, according to the National Environment Trust.

Pollution and incarceration reveal a dreadful, man-made reality. For both prison and pollution, the United States tries to change its image rather than face up to the reality. The United States is the primary source of world pollution and of prison practices. A prison binge has been built on the disregard of women, of people of color, of the poor. High levels of pollution have been built on absurd consumerism passed off as a social good. Meanwhile, for many, these add up to a cruel reality.

United States administration after administration has produced more laws to incarcerate more people and more “Acts” to cover up the high level of emission of Green House gases and other pollutants. Images of poor people, especially of women of color, abusing the welfare became as visible as the images of the destruction of the “Commons” became invisible. What one hand giveth, the other taketh away.

In her lecture, Ruth Wilson Gilmore talked about the reality of incarceration.  Her book, The Golden Gulag Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, started as a community project: a research for Mothers ROC (Mothers Reclaiming Our Children) in California, women who know too well the reality of and reasons for incarceration. They needed “a non-lawyer activist with research skills, access to university libraries, and a big vocabulary, to help them.” Gilmore fit the bill perfectly.

In her book, Gilmore relocates the two laws that sent the Mothers’ children to prison—the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act and the “three strikes and you’re out” law—into their historical political economic context. Ruthie, as everyone calls her, presented on the particular history of capitalism in the United States, the story of opportunity fertilized with inequality and racism. Her lecture was called “What Would Harriet Do? Unfinished Liberation or the Dangers of Innocence”.

Harriet is Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman’s story exemplifies the root of the social and racial American construction. For Gilmore, Tubman was a designer and a political artist. Tubman’s story of unwavering determination to bring slaves of the south to freedom speaks directly to today’s “zero tolerance.” As the false stories told of African and African-derived people helped to justify the slavery of thousands of women, men and children of African descent, so today’s false story of “zero tolerance” attacks African Americans. 65 million people are currently banned from employment because of previous convictions, and those people live in the communities that most need steady employment.

The following day Ruth Wilson Gilmore continued the conversation in Dan Moshenberg’s Seminar, “Women In and Beyond the Global Prison.”

Again, the discussion focused on the construction of images, from the witch-hunt that put women back in the “domus,” to the “Reaganomic” image of the welfare-queen that re-segregated poor and working African American women, thereby legitimating the re-appropriation of power and global capital. Welfare-queen became pathology. To unpack that pathology, we must learn to study “the genealogy of the phrase,” and thereby reinforce the importance of historical consciousness.

Gilmore brings to light the reality of the political economic project that requires mass incarceration. That project is genocidal, and that project of mass incarceration speaks directly to the situation of health care and reproductive rights in the United States.

Slavoj Žižek recently argued, “one of the strategies of totalitarian regimes is to have legal regulations (criminal laws) so severe that, if taken literally, everyone is guilty of something. But then their full enforcement is withdrawn… At the same time the regime wields the permanent threat of disciplining its subjects.”

I am not saying that we live in a true totalitarian regime. That is not the question. The question is whether we understand that these ‘all-guilty’ laws work to control and subjugate certain sections of the population, such as the African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and also women. Of course, women intersect with the other “guilty” populations. In many states, laws limiting women’s reproductive rights are blossoming, and punishment and incarceration await the women who try to secure or wield their rights. At the same time, the story of Trayvon Martin’s assassination fits this framework of being eternally guilty. His corpse was tested for drugs and alcohol. His shooter never had to be tested and is still alive and free.

There are many other stories that show that the current rule of law is an active political-economic tool. Ben Saperstein and May Young, two activists from North Carolina, attended the seminar with Gilmore and Moshenberg. They were there to learn and exchange ideas for their own struggle. They are involved with the Greensboro Legal Fund, which works to bring to light the fate of members of a Latino organization that has been wrongfully accused of racketeering, and has been incarcerated for political reasons.

The exchanges among activists and scholars from North Carolina, Washington, New York and beyond showed the importance of research working with activism. In this time of neoliberal surge, as Žižek remarked, “what unites us is the same struggle”. In this struggle, Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s inspirational work reminds us of the importance of excellent scholarship as a means of resistance.

(Image Credit: NAACP)

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Expose the attacks on the undocumented and on women in France

March 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment


While in the United States, attempts to hurt, reduce and constrain women’s bodies are multiplying (as the recent bill in Virginia to impose vaginal sonogram on women who seek an abortion demonstrates), two recent developments in France show that the politics of constraint and control of the body and in particular of women’s bodies are also expanding in Europe.

In France, undocumented immigrants, “les sans-papiers” have access to health care, through “l’aide medicale d’Etat” or AME (State Medical Aid), if they have been in France for at least 3 months. While this seems to be better than many other places in the western world, some barriers that have been erected to divide and control immigrants and residents.

For example, it used to be that in order to register, people could go to any regular center of the national health coverage “les caisses d’assurance maladie,” and there were many of them. Recently, new rules have been introduced. Since the end of 2011, in Paris only two centers have been processing applications to be registered in AME. After two months, the Observatory of Foreigners’ Right to Health, ODSE, has reported a series of problems. These include long waiting lines, starting in the middle of the night, summary selection of applications, loss of applications, mounting administrative red tape. All these difficulties contribute to delaying indispensable coverage and access to health care for people who are already among the most vulnerable.

Another recent development directly affects women’s health and well being. In 2001, a bill was passed that gave women’s reproductive rights a great boost. The new law includes provisions for anonymous access to contraceptive and abortion services for minors and without parental consent. It also provides for an ambitious sexual education program, lately the distribution of money to enforce this law has been problematic. Recent reports have shown the importance of sexual education through school as well as free and easy access to centers where women and men can access information on the various questions related to sexuality.

The law itself is beyond repeal, but that does not mean it is safe from dilution. Although officially budgeted for the 2012 fiscal year and voted by the parliament, apparently, 500 000 Euros slotted sex ed programs has disappeared. The Sarkozy administration must have misplaced it!

So how are these two issues related? Both are about creating barriers for some women to access services that allow full social participation and meaningful exercise of their rights. They are about relegating to the back seat some selected populations who are excluded through constraining policies on their bodies, which are, thus, made invisible in body politics of the nation. The reshaping of existing social advances concerning reproductive rights, health care for all, has become the priority of neoliberal governments. It follows the pattern that has already been developed for emerging countries, cutting public services. It is important to identify policies that follow this pattern. It is important to expose them in order to lessen the impact of the US neoliberal transformation anywhere it is being exported.

(Photo Credit: Femmes En Lutte 93)

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