{"id":2816,"date":"2019-07-23T18:45:15","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T16:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2019-10-14T18:32:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-14T16:32:38","slug":"sexist-anti-feminism-in-the-french-left-1970","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/decasia.org\/academic_culture\/2019\/07\/23\/sexist-anti-feminism-in-the-french-left-1970\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexist anti-feminism in the French Left, 1970"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading lately about the French Women’s Liberation Movement<\/a>, which had its first public event in 1970, at the University of Paris 8, which would become my primary French fieldsite<\/a>. In its early days, the university was called the Centre Universitaire Exp\u00e9rimental de Vincennes<\/em> (Experimental University Center at Vincennes). It was located east of Paris amidst the woods of a major city park. It was notorious for overcrowding. It was notorious for far-left activist “frenzy,” which stemmed from the political movements of 1968.<\/p>\n

I was not surprised to find out that in the 1970s, sexism and rape culture were major problems among the male-dominated French far left. They remain issues on French campuses today.<\/p>\n

But I was nevertheless dismayed by men’s grotesque responses to an early feminist meeting at Vincennes. Men were asked to leave a women-only meeting (accounts differ as to when this request was made). But the men balked at leaving the room, instead attacking the women, insulting their intellects, their politics, their credibility, their sexuality, and their legitimacy.<\/p>\n

The male insults were recorded in a subsequent feminist tract, “Verbal abuse at Vincennes,” which was reproduced in Jean-Michel Djian’s Vincennes: Une aventure de la pens\u00e9e critique<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a><\/p>\n

The context, according to the tract: “On Wednesday June 4 1970 (and not 1870), thirty girls had announced their intention to meet among themselves to talk about their problems.”<\/p>\n

I’ve translated many of the insults that emerged.<\/p>\n