To celebrate the month of the woman, the city of Nantes stuck a poster highlighting a veiled woman, but this one created a controversy.
LR elected officials quickly pointed to “an attack on secularism”, as explained by Laurence Garnier, speaker of Valérie Pécresse, on Twitter. She has also published a photo of the said poster which reveals “the faces of Nantes women”.
Women’s Month: the city of #Nantes puts forward a veiled woman, then withdraws the poster in disaster. Promoting the veil is a political mistake, an attack on secularism. Thanks to whistleblowers! Not one euro of public money should serve communitarianism. pic.twitter.com/3eoL3U63yp
— Laurence Garnier ن (@LGarnier44) February 17, 2022
It is this publication that launched the controversy on social networks. Other LR elected officials also denounced this poster. “What a rout, what a moral defeat to celebrate women in enslavement, inferiorization,” wrote Valérie Boyer, Senator LR from Bouches-du-Rhône, on Twitter.
Internet users have also seized on this controversy by asking the Nantes town hall to explain this choice.
A poster quickly removed
Faced with the rise of the controversy, the poster was withdrawn. According to the town hall, contacted by our colleagues from 20 Minutes, it would be an “internal error, of a technical nature”. The panel on which it was displayed is usually reserved for associative projects subsidized by the town hall.
“Visages des Nantaises” is a photographic project carried out since last year, but which is not supported by the town hall. Moreover, it does not appear in the events of the March 2022 program in Nantes, aimed at highlighting women and their rights. “We receive and study hundreds of grant applications, and this one was not clear,” Bassem Asseh, first deputy mayor, told 20 Minutes.
Annoyed by the comments of right-wing elected officials, the deputy mayor did not hesitate to throw a stone into the pond. “While waiting for a better understanding of how this error could have occurred, we have no lesson to receive on secularism, and certainly not from elected officials who supported the Manif pour tous. Can a community promote a religious sign? Of course not.”