The start of the 2020 school year will have definitely been punctuated by debates on women's outfits: crop top, veil, shorts, cleavage … What is this hallucinating sequence the sign of? Straightforward response from political scientist and sociologist Virginie Martin.
Since the beginning of September, the controversies over women's clothing have not ended: Jeanne "too low-cut" to enter the Musée d'Orsay, Maryam Pougetoux stigmatized during a parliamentary committee, teens banned from entering, September 14, in their school because of crop tops or shorts too short… Tuesday September 30, it is an Ifop poll on the outfits of schoolgirls and high school girls that restarted the machine. We replay the film alongside Virginie Martin, political scientist and sociologist at Kedge Business School and President of the Scientific Council of the Political and Parliamentary Review.
For the past month, controversies relating to women's clothing have continued to erupt. Why ?
This sequence is part of a sort of backlash concerning women's rights and, more generally, representations of feminism. In the 1990s, feminist author Susan Faludi titled her essay Backlash, in other words, "backlash". This is what we see emerging today. The conservative-populists have spread very anti-feminist speeches in the media; this part of opinion, represented for example by Eric Zemmour, Michel Onfray or even Elisabeth Badinter, has a very important media force.
Their anti-feminist rhetoric is sometimes subtle: of course they agree with equal rights between women and men, BUT – and it's all in, BUT – they feel that we should not "be in" war against men "," being too radical "," claiming to be a feminist "," being an activist "," following examples such as the elected feminist and lesbian Alice Coffin "…
In other words, women can work, drive a car, have a salary and even take the pill, BUT they should not be loudly claiming it or having their bodies fully owned. Patriarchal society believes it still has something to say to women, about women. We come back, from this point of view, to that famous backlash about which Susan Faludi spoke.
With the unworthy Ifop survey commissioned by Marianne magazine, we dive deep into the culture of rape, a concept that denotes the trivialization of rape and the reversal of responsibilities, the victim being presented as guilty of what happens to him. The survey questions fall exactly within this rape culture: girls, if they do not want to be sexually assaulted, should hold their bodies… otherwise the fault will be on them and not on the abuser.
"The female body is subject to the gaze of politics"
What does this footage reveal about society's view of women's bodies?
Beyond that, the female body is subject to the gaze of politics. It belongs to the public space in every sense of the word: it is overexposed, photographed, triturated by surgery, modified, prostituted, sexualized, displayed … It is in the heart of cities, made available on bus shelters. Whether he is modest or hypersexual, he is everywhere.
And there is the paradox: while this body is put to the test, we ask the women themselves to control their daily staging! Do we ask Youporn to stop child crime? To limit its access? No ! Are we asking brands to definitely stop sexualizing little girls to give them the appearance of women? No ! Do we ask fashion magazines to take a critical look at their front pages? No ! On the other hand, girls and women are asked to control what they decide to show of themselves. The paradoxical injunction comes crashing down on the individual woman, while the patriarchal structure does not question anything. What a tasty paradox …
"The veil or the navel are the same thing: the body of women belongs to patriarchal society."
What links can we establish between the case of girls and women who are accused of wearing the veil and the case of those who are criticized for their cleavage, navel or thighs in the air?
This link is always the same: the body of women is a political object, and politicians play on it. Take for example the seriousness of Eric Dupond-Moretti's comments about #MeToo. Today he is promoted to Minister of Justice. Gérald Darmanin, accused of exchanging political favors for sex, is currently the Minister of the Interior. Women's bodies are just nothing except to be available, consent being secondary.
In this logic, the veil or the navel come under the same thing: the body of women belongs to society and its patriarchal structure.
In the same month as all these controversies, a man was sentenced for hitting a stranger in the street, whose dress he considered too short. Can we make a connection between public debate on the one hand and physical violence of this type on the other?
Again, it's the same logic. The body of women being a public good, the man, the men, but also the women who have integrated the patriarchal culture, dispose of it: to rape it, to seduce it or to control it and hit it.
"Correct dress", "common sense", "republican dress", the terms used by politicians are actually quite vague … What is it revealing?
First of all, we must remember that girls, high school girls, students never confuse a schoolyard, meetings between students and, for example, an oral exam, or an interview to enter a school. So the "dress code" argument doesn't hold; girls do not go to interviews and oral exams like they go to classes all year round. Like the boys, by the way. Then, the patriarchal society is confirmed via these declarations, consolidated, reinforced, and masculinist discourses have a bright future ahead of them.
"The government could have stopped the chain of rape culture."
The government’s feminist culture is extremely poor, and the fact that these terms are used at the highest level of government is concerning. On the one hand, they confirm that this quinquennium will definitely never be "feminist". But above all, it is a confirmation, through institutions, that the body of women is a public object. But the politician had an unprecedented card to play: he could have seized the opportunity to "stop" the chain of rape culture. By declaring that girls had the right to have full control over their bodies, like boys, he would have helped girls and women considerably.
The people who currently defend this control of the body of women assure that the rules apply to everyone, that their approach is universalist ("against religious symbols whatever they are", "for everyone, girls and boys "), what is your take on this argument?
Anti-feminist discourse is still a Trojan horse. First, it allows politics to gain broad support at a lower cost. Then, behind each anti-feminist, there is a whole panoply of ideas: the speech is immediately accompanied by anti-Muslim, homophobic, anti-green and more generally, very universalizing speeches.
The range of people defending this line is wide: it goes from a certain left, embodied for example by the former minister Manuel Valls, to the extreme right, for whom these speeches are a classic, through the traditionalist right. , not to mention the current government.
In short, we see how anti-feminism is a concept that runs deep in our society. A sort of Pandora's box, the contents of which are systematically poured out without their consent on the backs of women.