[Anarchafeminists] Feminism can save France from Islam: that's the real message of Majorité Opprimée

[nina]

Hi,

Seen the Majorité Opprimée film that's making the rounds?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A

-- and seen this response (pasted below)?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/13/feminism-france-islam-majorite-opprimee-racism

-- curiously from a man, accusing it of "class bigotry, racism and
misogyny"?

What do you think?
cheers,
nina
----------------------------------
Feminism can save France from Islam: that's the real message of Majorité
Opprimée
The gender role reversal video purports to target sexism and homophobia.
But its essence is class bigotry, racism and misogyny

    Richard Seymour
        Richard Seymour	
        theguardian.com, Thursday 13 February 2014 17.45 GMT	

Sexism and homophobia in modern culture is like a "black tide",
according to Eléonore Pourriat, the director of the short film Majorité
Opprimée, which went viral this week. The 10-minute video explores life
as it might be for men if gender roles were reversed.

Much of this is instantly recognisable. In the film, Pierre – a
middle-class French man – is patronised, sexually harassed and belittled
by women. However, this is familiar to the point of potentially being
quite cliched. On its own, it is unlikely that such material would have
made the film go viral, and result in being acclaimed as "Swiftian". But
the emotional core of the film. The essence of the film, what makes it
really compelling viewing, is its class bigotry, racism and – ironically
– palpable misogyny. These are the real contents of the "black tide" of
which Pourriat speaks.

The first gripping moment is the exchange between Pierre and a Muslim
male babysitter, the latter wearing a balaclava clearly intended to
resemble a hijab. The white, middle-class Pierre tries to rescue him
with an intervention. "Don't you feel more and more trapped? First you
shaved your moustache, then your whiskers … I'm afraid you look more and
more like a child … You don't belong to anyone you understand?"

The actor playing the Muslim man hams up expressions of idiocy, quiet
deference and submission. He smiles politely, anxiously, and grimaces.
"It is the law, you know. So God is protecting me …" He is what the hard
right's Islamophobic smears say Muslim women are: children, without
agency, needing to be saved. In the logic of the video, this is evidence
of the downtrodden stupidity of the Muslim man; not of the racial
condescension of his supposed saviour. Pierre says "You are a man"; but
what he actually communicates is "You are a child". This is the film's
literal translation of Islamophobic misogyny.

However, the crux of the film, its most horrifyingly instructive moment,
is the scene in which Pierre is sexually assaulted by a street gang. One
of them is called "Samia" and it seems clear the film-maker is nudging
us to think of them as north African. The young women are represented as
every bit the feral youths, the sneering, snarling, micturating, violent
racaille that Nicolas Sarkozy once referred to in the context of the
banlieue riots.

They spit sexually aggressive remarks at him. He attempts, with the
composure and authority of his class, to send them off. But they lack
discipline: they do not respond at all well to his dignified telling
off. Instead, they put a knife to his throat and sexually assault him,
biting him on the penis and making him humiliate himself: "Say your dick
is small or I'll cut off your precious jewels."

The follow-up is just as significant as the assault. Pierre reports it
to the police, but the response of the police officer, who implies that
he has made the whole thing up, leaves him even more shell-shocked. In
physical agony and emotionally battered, he is then collected from the
station by his wife. The sympathy she extends is almost perfunctory, and
immediately interrupted by her own crowing about her work achievements.
She then shames him for dressing immodestly, in revealing shorts and
flip-flops, telling him that if he chooses to dress like this, then
"don't you dare complain". Pierre asks, in frustration: "You want me to
wear a balaclava?"

What has happened here? The decision to frame the issue of sexual
assault in terms of street gangs is telling, as is the fact that most of
those who harass and attack Pierre, such as the bellowing homeless
woman, are of a lower social class. In the real world, the great
majority of sexual assaults, including the most serious, are carried out
by a partner, an ex-partner, a family member, or someone else known to
the victim. Approximately 10% of serious sexual assaults are carried out
by strangers. It is not a stretch to say that in France the proportion
of sexual assaults involving random north African street gangs would be
puny.

Yet the film has chosen to set up a scenario in which a middle-class,
"good" French person is assaulted, and let down by the police, who in so
doing let the racaille get away with it. The wife, letting down her
husband, risks turning him into the worst possible thing, a
balaclava-wearing Muslim simpleton. This is the clincher, as far as the
film is concerned: civilised France risks being Islamicised if it does
not embrace the kind of curiously misogynistic feminism of Pourriat's film.

That's why it went viral.


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