How Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest awoke a dormant anger in the heart of France's women

Life is busy for Magali de Haas – perhaps the busiest it has been since she co-founded her feminist action group almost two years ago. There was the launch of the blog Vie de Meuf ("a chick's life"), on which French women were encouraged to vent their fury over everyday sexism. And then the anti-rape campaign, through which de Haas and her colleagues at Osez le Féminisme ("dare to be feminist") hoped to raise awareness of sex crimes in France.

But last week saw France enter its most vigorous examination of gender relations for years after the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Khan – the man whom many on the French left believed would become the country's next president – on charges of sexual assault and attempted rape.

"The manner in which the saga has been dealt with in France, by the media and also by political figures, really shines a light on what we already knew was there: unfettered sexism," said de Haas, one of several feminists to find her voice just as France's reaction to the Affaire DSK looked like settling into lachrymose tributes to an alleged attacker and scorn for an alleged victim.

Suddenly, as their indignation grew, the terrain was ripe for all kinds of things to be debated in public: not only sexual assault but also promiscuity, harassment and any other feature of the often fraught relationship between Gallic men and women. The moment was seized; an agenda was set. And, by this weekend, a campaign that had started with the intention of defending the rights of one woman had become an impassioned cry to improve the lot of many more.

Last Sunday France awoke to the news that Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and leading light of the Socialist party, had been arrested on board a plane and charged with sexually assaulting and attempting to rape a chambermaid in his room at a Sofitel in New York. He denied the allegations "with the greatest of firmness". For the world, it was shocking enough; for much of Paris, it was insupportable – especially after pictures emerged of Strauss-Kahn, unshaven and forlorn, handcuffed in court.

In the hours and days that followed the arrest, a string of friends and Socialist allies stepped forward to defend a man they insisted could not have done such a thing. Jean-François Kahn, a well-known journalist, said he was "practically certain" that what had taken place had not been an attempted rape, but "an imprudence… the skirt-lifting of a domestic". Jack Lang, a former Socialist culture minister, wondered why, when "no man had died", Strauss-Kahn had not been released on bail immediately. Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, meanwhile, raged against a legal system that had treated DSK like "any other person". "Everybody," declared the philosopher, "is not everybody!"

Away from the cameras, much of the French public seemed to have sought solace in the belief – held by almost two-thirds of the population, according to a poll – that the entire affair was a set-up. And also in humour: social networks were awash with jokes, while a sketch on France Inter, the equivalent of BBC Radio 4, consisted of a male comedian imagining Strauss-Kahn's internal dialogue moments before the alleged attack. "Put away the merguez [sausage], mate," said one voice. "Whip out the tools, mate," countered another.

After several days of this, Osez le Féminisme decided enough was enough. In a powerful statement, it declared that the way in which the chambermaid's account had been dismissed showed how difficult it was for victims of sexual assault to come forward. The levity with which her allegations were treated by some, it added, showed "to what extent violence against women is still underestimated". Of the estimated 75,000 women who are raped in France each year, it is said only 10% file an official complaint with the police.

In the pristine quarters of Paris, where a privileged elite work, dine and often sleep together, this machismo wears a sophisticated face. From the double life of François Mitterrand to the years of Jacques Chirac ("three minutes, shower included", the rumour goes), France has long shrugged its shoulders at its leaders' private indiscretions. Moreover, say some, it has tacitly encouraged them. When asked in 2006 about her husband's "passion for women", Strauss-Kahn's third wife, Anne Sinclair, told L'Express magazine: "I'm proud of it! It's important for a politician to be able to seduce."

The question of Strauss-Kahn's mode de séduction has now been pored over by the French media in minute detail, including the claim by Tristane Banon, a writer, that Strauss-Kahn had attempted to force her into sex, too, and a rather apologetic shrug from the all-knowing Paris elite. Strauss-Kahn vehemently denies Banon's account.

Even last week, as the extent of DSK's wandering eye became clear, the vast majority of French people remained convinced that the private sphere should remain off-limits to public scrutiny. Regurgitated reports of DSK's alleged visits to an exclusive swingers' club in central Paris, Les Chandelles, may have raised eyebrows in Britain, but in France they were merely a sign of an individual's right to sexual freedom.

"It's something going on in his private life. It's not a practice forbidden by the law," said Charles Morin, a writer who frequented the club from the age of 18 and describes it as a place "where you can have a drink, watch people make love… Lots of people do it. It's not the first time that a politician has done something like that."

Straightforward libertinism, it was agreed, was nothing to worry about. But weren't there other, more disturbing, reports? Why, asked some critics, when she made her allegations on a television show several years ago, was Banon not questioned further about her memorable tale of "a rutting chimpanzee"? Why, when journalists knew that the Socialist MP Aurélie Filipetti made arrangements never to be "left alone in a room with him", was nothing more ever said?

"It feels like France is just beginning to wake up to the concept of sexual harassment," wrote the France-based British author Lucy Wadham on her blog last week, referring to the debate over the difference between seduction and the kind of "very heavy, very persistent" onslaught that Filipetti attributes to Strauss-Kahn. Criticising the rush to treat DSK as a victim, Wadham added: "Wilfully unreconstructed, France is a society in which women collude in a continued phallocracy."

Simon Jackson, an English historian at Sciences Po, the elite political studies institute in Paris, shares the view that, in France, male attitudes to sex lag behind Britain in terms of equality. "I think that's in large part the product of serious and continuing deficits in the opportunities women enjoy professionally, educationally and socially in France, which is one of the least gender-equal countries in the EU." Figures for 2011 lay bare those deficits: women make up 18.5% of MPs and 85% of casual workers. In the gender pay gap survey released at Davos, France came 46th. Britain was 15th.

This view of France as a stalled feminist project is not just one held by Anglo-Saxons; many French feel it, too. In the Nouvel Observateur magazine last week, editor Laurent Joffrin wrote that an "indulgence of overly insistent advances, which end up as affronts to the dignity of women, are a French archaism which is broadly spread across all [political] parties and all milieus".

Stepping into the fray came the formidable Gisèle Halimi, a women's rights activist and lawyer, who, at the age of 84, declared in an interview she was "convinced" that "if this [DSK] business had occurred in France, we would have known nothing about it". The US legal system, she said, reaffirms women's dignity and the protection of the weakest. "It has to be said, it's a victory for American feminists who, for years, have worked to show that sexual harassment and rape were serious crimes."

Some observers believe that the stereotypical grand séducteur image of the Gallic male is becoming outmoded among a younger generation. "There is a whole wave of these older guys, who cheat on their wives, who have a bit of power, who are over 50 and are proud of seducing these girls. But I don't see it at all with younger men – they have been more globalised, more influenced by feminism," said Paul Ackermann, the Swiss author of Masculins Singuliers, an exploration of contemporary male identity.

Others, including de Haas, are not so optimistic. The road ahead would be "long and tough", she warned – and if last week's debate had done anything, it was to highlight how big the problem of sexism remains. (It also, however, proved that effective lobbying could force women's rights onto the agenda; by the end of last week the tone of debate had mellowed, and Kahn, for one, had admitted his words had been "unacceptable".)

Today, beside the Pompidou Centre, a "rally against sexism" will be held and a petition handed round that already has more than 1,500 signatories. Female representation in the public sphere; workplace harassment; increased recognition of women's sexual freedom – all are on the feminist agenda, and none of them will be easy to attain. But at least, it seems, there will be company along the way.

"We are seeing a fresh enthusiasm," said de Haas. "We have lots and lots of girls coming to meetings, we get loads of emails and people wanting to know how to create similar organisations abroad. So I'm optimistic for a feminist reawakening, but I don't think it's the DSK affair that's going to do it for us. We need much more than that."
ELYSÉE SECRETS

Mitterrand's second family

In 1974, seven years before he became president, François Mitterrand had a child with his long-term mistress, Anne Pingeot. The pair continued their affair throughout his 14-year presidency and the existence of both Pingeot and their daughter, Mazarine, was known to many, but never alluded to in the media until Paris Match put them on its cover in November 1994. A year later, Mitterrand died. At his funeral, Anne and Mazarine stood close to Danielle, his wife, by the graveside. The affair provoked real scandal only when it emerged that "the second family" had been housed at the taxpayer's expense for years.

Chirac's 'discretion'

The French public knew that Jacques Chirac had married Bernadette Chodron de Courcel in 1956. Insiders, however, knew the president's love life was rather different. Members of his circle now admit he was a prolific seducer of party members, journalists and secretaries. But the press printed nothing, and it was not until 2007, three months before he left office, that he admitted: "There have been women I have loved a lot, as discreetly as possible."

Giscard d'Estaing's drives

France's debonair leader between 1974 and 1981 was, by comparison, a less legendary extra-marital lover, but his affairs were nonetheless known to, and studiously ignored by, the media – except, of course, the night in his first year in power when, having borrowed the Ferrari of his film director friend Roger Vadim, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing crashed into a milk float on his way back to the Elysée Palace. That incident was picked up in the press – and "VGE's" poll ratings shot up.





source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

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