Asked about the Harvey Weinstein story during his October 15th long interview on the TF1 channel, Emmanuel Macron shed a perfunctory tear about the daily violence experienced by women. In a surge of political courage, he is about to… cancel Weinstein’s legion of honour. This really must frighten all the rapists in the world… With a friend like Macron, women need no enemies!
Police everywhere, justice nowhere
Macron was forced into promising a new law on sexual harassment for 2018. He used this to sneak in the long planned “daily safety police”. But who will believe there will be less harassment in the street simply with more cops in the subway? Even if it was possible to catch gender-based abuse in the act – not very likely – what will the police do? Recall that the police often refuse to file rape complaints and, sometimes, cops are the rapists.
And guess what, Macron considers that most of the harassment happens in “the roughest neighbourhoods” … that’s wrong! It happens everywhere, and to our knowledge, Harvey Weinstein did not operate in Los Angeles ghettos! Recent news and all studies show that harassment and sexual abuse happens in all social circles. Macron insults women victims by using harassment for security and racist purposes, to reinforce racial profiling and questioning.
#ExposeYourBoss
Macron conveniently ignored that 25% of sexual violence happen in the workplace. One in five women is a victim of harassment during her professional life. This is being revealed following the Weinstein story, at least on social media with the Twitter thread #MeToo. Even in France, with #BalanceTonPorc, which translates into #ExposeYourPig. A powerful counter strike, whereby women denounce abuse and sexual harassment at work, usually from a supervisor or a boss. They have to fight daily obscene words or behaviours, even aggression… facing management, threats, and even job loss.
The government is being quite hypocritical. Officially it is going to war against sexual harassment, but at the same time it just got rid of one of the few weak legal mechanisms that help fight harassment: the health, safety and working conditions committee. Behind a feminist mask, successive governments have been responsible in large part for women’s wages being 24% less than men’s, for abortion rights being threatened by the closing of many family planning centres, and for less than 2% of rape cases leading to a conviction.
In France, in the 21st century, 84,000 women are raped each year and sexual violence is part of their daily life. The capitalist society relies on this subjugation of women. It uses it to divide the oppressed, the workers, so in the final analysis it organises it, with support from all religions, which have always seen women as responsible for sins… and today sees them as responsible for men’s sexuality.
Women are neither preys for the lustful, nor trophies for the powerful to collect. It is time to defend ourselves collectively against these men who use the power given to them by this exploitative society. It is time to fight, as women and as workers, against this system that is made to enslave us. This is a fight for the whole working class!
