FEMINISM, a scary word?.
Feminism: the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
This article was written with the wonderful contribution of what you may call “une vieille”. As not all grand-mothers are born knitting on their sofas and have a lot of things to say. If you do not understand, her point of view is in yellow not MINE. I’m not 70, I was not born yet in the sixties. I’m just a student of Pontonniers, and there is few Pontonniers’ students of 70 years old.
Hysterical and lesbian: that’s two of the numerous terms used to designate feminists. As women and men are equal in the eyes of the law, the feminist movement is often qualified as useless, and people think that feminism is all about establishing women’s domination over men.
Maybe you think the same, but have you read the dictionary? For the Oxford dictionaries, feminism is “the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.” And equality is “the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities”. Which part is either definition is about submitting to men? That is one of the strongest preconception about this movement. Feminist are just asking for equality: they don’t want people to be conditioned by the presence or not of a uterus in their bodies.
Feminism didn’t exist when I was a teenager. I think it really began in the sixties, especially with May 1968. We were still under our parents’ responsibility until we became adult, at 21. I was happy when the movement began, but I didn’t approve of everything. I don’t consider myself as a feminist, but I was for the liberation of women. I didn’t seen the point of feminism, because I already considered myself as free and the place of women in society wasn’t a problem for me.
How many times have you heard “don’t say swear words, it‘s not pretty for a girl” or even “don’t cry like girl”? Because if feminism is, at first for women, it could also work for men as well. Why can’t women be rude and why can’t men cry? Why can’t women drive trucks and men dance? It seems as though, even though women have felt free since the 60’s, different roles have been assigned to men and women.
I wasn’t educated in a really different way from my brother. But the fact is, I had one brother and four sisters. Although cleaning was only for us, my brother did cook sometimes.
As women and men are equal in the eyes of the law, the fight for women’s rights seems to be a bit has been/ dated in France. Yet mentalities aren’t changing so fast. In their professional lives, women are confronted with what’s called the “crystal roof”. They can’t get powerful jobs and are stopped in their careers. Furthermore, women are still 27 % less well paid than men. If the government tries to struggle against this discrimination by imposing quotas and financial penalties, some firms would rather pay taxes than hire more women or pay them correctly. Why? The most frequent reason is that women want to get pregnant and to have family. Of course. In people’s mind, being a woman means being a mother. Our society firmly believes one day or another, every woman is meant to feel an irrepressible envy to make her ovaries work, to have five children and to stay at home to educate them. And she will be happy as a housewife dependant on her husband who, of course, loves to spend his entire day at work, without seeing his children grow up. At home, and even if it slightly changing thanks to the idea of gender equality, women still do 80% of the housework. In advertising, it’s almost always the female character who is wondering how to wash children clothes or how to make the perfect meal for her husband.
When I was young, the economic situation was not the same as today. There was a lot of women working in factories, or as housemaids. Women did not have access to some kind of jobs, as pilots or industry employees. I often heard that the women should stay at home, but the girls didn’t agree with that anymore. They didn’t want to stay at house anymore. I think the turning point in their mentalities was thanks to the evening classes given by the religious institutions. They learned a lot of things and so were more educated. The right to vote, given by Charles de Gaulle in 1949, was another big turning point in their lives. With a better understanding of things and a right to express their opinions, they felt stronger.
Let’s talk about rape.
Rape is a crime, but yet quite accepted in our society. You don’t believe me? How do you explain that 70 000 women are victims of sexual assault each year and that out of these 70 000 women, 90% don’t report their assault? One, only 2% of people accused of rape are condemned. 2%, out the 10% of the 70 000 women who have been raped. It’s huge… 1 girl out of 10 has been or will be raped in her life.
To fight against these statistics, an hashtag has been created on twitter : ididnotreport, where people, men or women, can write anonymously or not why they did not report their rape : because it’s too late, because we don’t believe them, because we said that it was their fault… Yet event to talk about the fault is horrible because does anyone have the right to rape a girl, destroy her life, because she was wearing short skirt?
Rape is not really something sexual, but a desire to dominate over the other, as their body was not their own anymore.
I think one of the most important moments in feminism in France was when the Veil law was voted, when the abortion was allowed and when access to contraception was given to teenagers. I remember big manifestations for these rights, and it was a subject of a lot of conflicts between the pro and the anti. At home too, we talked a lot about that.
Still not convinced of the importance of feminism?
Here some website or videos, in French or in English (Please take a look or a dinosaur will come and eat your family). And remember, it is not because you don’t agree100% with the people who wrote these articles that you can’t be feminist. If feminism is hard to defined, it’s because it’s different for everybody:
www.osezlefeminisme.fr www.whoneedsfeminism.tumblr.com
www.chiennesdegarde.com www.viedemeuf.fr
www.bitchmagazine.org www.feminist.com
www.feministfrequency.com
And, of course, Ryan Gosling is just awesome:

I remember one of the strongest arguments between my mother and my father was about my older sisters’ right to have the driving license. My mother did not agree, because driving was for the men or the “trashy girls”. As girls, we had to be careful about our reputation.
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