On a working day night, between the coronavirus lockdown and the curfew, Camille, Natasha, and Cindy went out with a bucket of bright yellow glue, two large brushes, and a stack of A4 paper, each covered with paper With a letter.
These women are in their 20s and parked on the main road in the outskirts of Paris, next to a wall that looked like an old bank.
“It’s good,” Camille said. This is a carefully choreographed signal: Natacha glue; Camille patted each paper with letters on it; Cindy pasted it.
They stepped back. The message in black and white is clear: “secondTop street harassment” (Stop street harassment).
Another wall, another message. Outside the municipal swimming pool is mud, slap, mud:”RiseAgree is not an option“(Agreement is not optional). On the pavilion under the awning of the local market, paste, tap, and paste: “Soptimal Feminism”.
If caught by the police, it will leave there to avoid a fine of 68 euros. Another successful, although illegal, hit-and-run poster is pasted.
In the past two years, similar messages have appeared on the walls of Paris, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Poitiers, Lyon and other French cities.Their job is Academic – Glueers – Feminist activists who have found a simple, cheap and effective way to make women’s voices heard.
Camille Lextre became glue After being particularly cruel Murder a young woman September 2019 . Her partner denied murdering her.
“Her name is Salome, and she was only 21 years old when she was beaten to death. She had already called the police, but they treated it as a writer’s work and did nothing. Later, they found her body under a pile of rubbish. Ying At her mother’s request, we made a collage on the anniversary of her death,” Lextray said.
The idea of street posters highlighting female killings was proposed by Marguerite Stern, a former member of the feminist activist organization FEMEN. Stern was living in Marseille at the time and was deeply shocked by the 2019 murder. Julie DuibAt the age of 34, she was the mother of two children. She was shot and killed by her abusive ex-partner at home. The latter was tried in June and denied murder.
Duib reported to the police five times before his death, but did not take any action. Stern began posting posters condemning Marseille’s violence against women, and later moved to Paris, where she formed a collage group.
In the early days, they were called “Collage against Female killing“(A collage against the killing of women), some groups put the names of women killed by their current or former partners. Street action attracted the imagination of women everywhere and spread it to farther places France.
“Suddenly, we have people contacting us everywhere.” Camille said. “According to the last statistics, more than 200 cities, towns and villages in France have collage groups in London and more than 15 countries in the world.”
“Anyone can participate. It takes 10 minutes to write a slogan on a piece of paper and does not require a lot of money or resources. This is very important for women. This is about daring to occupy public space, and about women leaving themselves in public. Imprint.
“A mother suffered marital violence. She drew this information on her young son, and then went out and posted it. It is regaining control of our lives, it is liberating. There are no more secrets, no more Shame, no more silence. We have established our own media platform. This is our speaker.”
France has one of the highest rates of killing women in the world EuropeIn 2019, 146 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners in France. More than 40% of the victims have experienced violence from their partners, and nearly half of them have reported to the police.
The term female murder is sometimes defined as the murder of a woman by a man, but in France it usually refers to the murder of a woman by a partner, ex-partner or family member.
In 2020, the number of killings of women in France fell to 90-the lowest level since such statistics began to be compiled 15 years ago. But Caroline De Haas, who founded the feminist group NousToutes in 2018, said that even if the number drops, “nearly 100 deaths have no reason to be celebrated”.
Natacha said that it is estimated that about 200,000 women in France suffer domestic violence each year, but less than one-fifth of them go to the police, and the problem got worse during the Covid-19 lockdown.
The government’s hotline for women victims of violence received 45,000 calls During the first three months of last year’s blockade.
“No one is prepared for the blockade,” Natasha said. “We insist [posters] For ourselves and the victims, and to raise this issue to a wider audience. In doing so, we hope to educate people about violence against women and ethnic minorities and create an atmosphere of change. “
The organization strongly criticized the Macron government’s verbal commitment on this issue. “We are hopeful: they say they will oppose sexism and make it a major cause. But this is just rhetoric and inaction, nothing has changed,” Natasha said. “We have lost faith in politicians. We are discouraged. We must change the mentality of patriarchy.”
The government responded to the shocking outcry of the killing of women in 2019. The new legislation includes 40 emergency measures, such as Electronic bracelet Prevent the violent abuser from approaching the victim.
Critics say that these rules came into effect in July last year, but the speed of implementation was too slow.
The Junior Minister of the Interior Marlène Schiappa served as the country’s Minister of Equality. She told the Guardian that combating violence against women is a government priority.
“Of course, France has made progress on women’s rights. The subject remains a government priority. As long as violence exists, we must always do more,” Schiapa said.
The 2017 data collected by Eurostat showed that Romania and Northern Ireland had the highest percentage of women killed by their partners in the total population. But in terms of overall female killings, Eurostat found that Germany and France have the worst records.According to the UK Census of Female KillingsEvery four days, a woman is killed by a man who was or was her intimate partner. Since the organization began monitoring in 2009, the incidence of fatal violence against women in the UK has shown no signs of declining.
Finland, Often hailed as a country that protects equality, The murder rate of women is also high, which shows that the values expressed in the public sphere do not always match in private life.
De Haas warned against making comparisons across the country, because different definitions of female killing can produce misleading images.
Eurostat is coordinating an EU-wide survey of gender-based violence, which is expected to produce results in 2023.
De Haas welcomed the French police’s signs of more intervention in violence against women during the lockdown: “Even if a woman is killed, there will be too many women, but I’m optimistic,” she said. “In every sense, things have never developed so quickly. Society is moving. There is resistance, but fewer and fewer people are resisting.”
Recent NousToutes Polls 100,000 women in heterosexual relationships found that eight in ten women said they had experienced physical or psychological violence during sex, and more than half said they had been forced to have at least one sexual act. Three quarters of the people who answered are under 35 and almost half are under 25.
One EU-wide investigations In 2014, the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (the EU’s first such agency) placed France at the same level as the United Kingdom, and 44% of female respondents said they had experienced physical or sexual violence.
Last year, after Stern co-authored an article defending the concept of physical gender, the collage movement broke up. Death threats followed, and Stern left the organization she founded.
Camille is one of Stern’s main opponents. “Margaret Stern is no longer part of the movement. Today, we have expanded our theme to protest violence against minorities and women, against racism, homophobia, transphobia, and immigration. “she says.
De Haas said that patriarchy is the root of all social violence. “We not only need to combat violence against women and children inherent in the economic, social and political systems. All violence has the same root: male rule: patriarchy.”
“The main victims of gender discrimination and sexual violence are women and children, but there are other victims. We are a dominant society: men vs. women, white vs. blacks, rich vs. poor. This inequality leads to violence.
“There are many reasons why France is lagging behind in this regard, but … wherever it happens, the violence suffered by women and children is shit.”
Among the many different posters on the street highlighting the French victims of female killings, there is often a particularly chilling message: “We are the spokespersons for women who no longer have.”
This article was revised on March 24, 2021, stating that Margaret Stern has left the collage group she founded. The earlier version stated that she had been excluded.
In the UK, please call National Domestic Abuse Hotline 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s aid. In Australia, National Domestic Violence Counseling Service It is 1800 737 732. In the U.S, Domestic Violence Hotline It is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).Other international help lines can be found in the following ways www.befrienders.org
