FILE. “My mother fought, I'm waiting for facts”: in Narbonne, Nîmes, Montpellier… feminists tell their stories

Les Simones, chorale féministe nîmoise, lors de la répétition du 10 décembre dernier. Midi Libre – MiKAEL ANISSET

Will the Mazan rape trial be a turning point in the history of feminism?? The verdict is expected this week, before December 20, and Gisèle Pélicot has already become an icon. At a time when Donald Trump is once again becoming President of the United States, in a post-MeToo society where almost daily accusations are debunking the stars of yesterday, PPDA, Depardieu, P. Diddy, etc., where the Iranian Ahou Daryaei defies Islamic law in her underwear, in the streets of Tehran, where two-thirds of French women say they have experienced sexism at work, etc. what is it like to be a feminist in 2024 ? In Narbonne, in Minervois, in Nîmes, in Montpellier, committed women testify.

“We are abolitionists, against prostitution, and against pornography”: for the international day against violence against women, Sonia Salami, president of “Osez le féminisme 34”, poses the debate in the tight timing of the demonstration organized on the Place de la Comédie in Montpellier.

What is feminism today, a few days before the verdict in the emblematic Pelicot trial in Avignon, with Donald Trump's return to power, in the post-MeToo era, with almost daily accusations that debunk the stars of yesterday, PPDA, Depardieu, P. Diddy… while the frail figure of Iranian Ahou Daryaei, in her underwear in the streets of Tehran, defies Islamic law, and a French woman employed in the private sector earns, on average, 24% less than a man ?

On this November 25, OLF 34 activists recite the first names of the 88 women killed by their spouse, husband, ex-husband, in 2024: Montpellier resident Marie-Pierre, 66, killed on February 20, Noélie, 22, from Clapiers…

On the Place de la Comédie in Montpellier, on May 25, demonstration by Osez le féminisme: a die-in symbolizes women killed by their spouse or husband. Midi Libre – S.G.

A week later, Cécile Schutz, 50, a general practitioner in Castelnau-le-Lez, Manon (1), 28, in business creation, Marion Noal, 41, a former teacher in retraining, members of OLF, talk openly about their feminism.

Heirs of the American Rosies

A week earlier, a meeting had been arranged with Magali Chomette and Barbara Garcia, from the Collectif des féministes narbonnaises. They are “Rosies”, heirs of “Rosie the Riveter”, the American icon whose image is taken up by Attac activists.

The next day, the Simones speak in a back room of the Bar du Midi, in Nîmes, a PMU café that has become the headquarters of the feminist choir. And on December 4, Nathalie Ramos and Catherine Jauffred talk about their committed ecofeminism rooted in rurality. They live in Minervois.

December 3 is the day of the AGM at the Bar du Midi. That evening, we don't rehearse the repertoire: “Bella ciao”, an Italian song of revolt, “Cancion sin miedo”, the “song without fear” of Mexican women, “Debout les femmes”, the anthem of the MLF (Women's Liberation Movement) in the early 70s, taken up by the choir in Avignon on December 14 “in homage to Gisèle (Pelicot) and all victims of gender violence”.

Les Simones: “Getting your voice out without fighting to speak to men”

“We are not just a women's choir”, explains the founder Annik Depoues, “feminist” from childhood, then activist in the Mlac (Movement for the Freedom of Abortion and Contraception) in the 70s, who became a nurse “to help women who wanted to have an abortion”.

The choir was created in September 2021, at the end of the lockdown. “It is not insignificant to get your voice out, work on it, open up…” “Without fighting to speak to men”, adds a “Simone”. “By learning to listen to ourselves”, “by getting out of a patriarchal culture that we reproduce”.

“Being a feminist means making yourself heard!”, reacts spontaneously Michèle, 81 years old, the oldest member of the group.

“Fighting against violence, without being in a victims' fight”, adds her neighbor, who has “always felt the weight of being a girl”: “Everything it cost me… but I had a place to take”.

Being a feminist means “breaking out of the androcentric model (Editor's note: a relationship with the world that favors the masculine point of view) and patriarchal”, for Christine Cortès, 61 years old.

“Equal pay for equal work, it's crazy that we is not there”, furious Cathy Cheval, who works in social work. Mother “of three young adults around whom the question of transidentity, of gender awareness” has arisen, she has “always been a woman activist… for humanity”, she says.

To the question “Who has already been a victim of violence ?”, eleven hands are raised, unanimously by those present.

MeToo was an explosion ? Silence. “Yes, we can hear “We can't say that anymore”, we've taken a step forward… physical violence is no longer trivialized”, notes Agathe, 50, with a changing feminism, “I'm not the same person I was thirty years ago, society is changing”.

“I grew up in the Depardieu years, with the playmette from the Collarococoshow”

“At the age of 13, when I joined feminist groups, I really annoyed boys… When I became the mother of two girls and two boys, I tried not to “gender education”, testifies Christine Cortes, 61 years old, former childminder. She is also “an environmental activist”. And“cannot dissociate the feminist fight from anti-capitalism”.

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“Anti-capitalism”, “transactivism”, “intersectionality”, “radicality”, “abolitionism”… Cécile Schutz, Marion Noal and Manon, activists at “Osez le féminisme 34” who “speak in (their) name, not that of the association”, scroll through the words that stick to their feminism.

Feminisms, there are so many interpretations. And, sometimes, confrontations. Manon “radical” and “intersectional”, talks about how feminism can trigger hate on social media.

“We don't all agree. And our common bond is not the feminine stereotype that we were taught”, confides Cécile Schutz, “stunned”to hear her patients’ confidences, since she took a training course on screening for sexual violence.“I wasn’t really an activist, it’s an intellectual reflection started years ago that led to this. I told myself that I had missed something, I hadn’t noticed anything. I grew up in the Depardieu years, with the Playmette from the Collarococoshow. We are so drowned in the stereotypes of a patriarchal society that we have to deconstruct, it’s indoctrination”, she believes.

“They tell me that I can do what I want… I can’t listen that”

“They tell me that I have the right to vote, that I work, that I do what I want… I can't listen to that because I know that nothing is a given, we have all experienced sexist or sexual violence, and rape culture is still there”, notes Cécile Schutz.

“My mother was a feminist, she had three children, she worked, she experienced domestic violence, she fought to get out of it, she evolved professionally… my generation expects facts”, explains Marion Noal, who grew up in what she considers to be the “hollow” of activism, the years 75-2000.

Today, she “reads, listens, educates herself… being a feminist is something you learn”. And can't stand it when her male interlocutor worries: “You want to crush us”.

“They tell us they want to emasculate men, but no!”

“The time of feminisms” by Michelle Perrot, “Devirilizing the world” by Céline Piques, “A decolonial feminism” by Françoise Vergès, “The Power of mothers” by Fatima Ouassak, the essays of Mona Chollet and Camille Froidevaux-Metterie… Magali Chomette and Barbara Garcia, from the Collectif des féministes narbonnaises, created in 2021, give a list of writings “in agreement with (our) demands”. The association has made babies: a festival of “feminist films on fire” was organized for the first time last March.

The “Rosies” of Narbonne, during an action in front of the courthouse. DR

A history and geography teacher in a vocational high school, the first, “union activist”, devoted her student thesis to “the place of women in French textbooks”. “Being a feminist means being courageous”, says Monique Chomette, who defines “a basis: equal rights”. Even if she notes that “the issue of sexual and sexist violence has taken over”. “They tell us that we want to emasculate men, but no! We want to be listened to when we speak.”

Barbara Garcia, a vocational training advisor, is secretary of the local group of the Human Rights League, which she would prefer “human rights” and of Amnesty International: “Being a feminist means being aware of gender inequality, it means fighting against all forms of power and domination.” Violence, of course, because there are “114,000 victims of sexual violence per year.” During a brief stint on a dating site, where she showed herself with her fist raised, “a lot of men” told her “that I was going to have to change.”

“Something happened with the Pelicot trial”, they note. But “we are in a world at war, led by very virile men”. And they are worried about the young people : “We just did an intervention in the third year of law, there were six students. They didn't know that November 25 is the day to fight against violence against women”..

“Speculum parties” in Minervois

About thirty kilometers from Narbonne, Nathalie Ramos, living in Azillanet, and Catherine Jauffred, from Cesseras, villages in Minervois, feminism is still described as a breath, powerful and reforming.

Like this violent wind that blew on the candles lined up in tribute to the victims of feminicides, on the steps of the Opéra Comédie in Montpellier, on November 25th.

The“call for air” created by an informal ecofeminist collective born four and a half years ago, which today brings together 90 women, “wine workers, retirees… all types of women but not all women”, led to the creation of an association for the prevention and support of women victims of violence, “Frangines”, in January 2024, explains Nathalie Ramos, manager of an environmental foundation.

She combines her interest in the cause of women, and her fears for the state of the planet, “in the same reading of dominations, the capitalist system exploits women and nature in the same way”. A very left-wing commitment to political thought, for a public that is not always politicized, on a clear line: “I am against liberal feminism, like Elisabeth Badinter, who wants women to also become bosses at the CAC 40.”

Catherine Jauffred, who arrived from Marseille, “jumped into this momentum with enormous relief”, to see “standing women reappropriating the word feminism”.

Every first Sunday of the month, a meeting is offered at the rural center of Azillanet, a former convent, “in popular education mode”, based on writing and very concrete, workshops “in relation to the body” to talk about “sexuality”, “patriarchy”, “domestic work”… “We even had a “speculum party”, we observed our cervixes”, says Nathalie Ramos, who sees “the word being freed”, around “the intimate”.

“My 18-year-old daughter has already suffered sexist and sexual violence. We choose feminism because it's our lives, not theory. We need “glasses” to understand that it's not because we were unlucky”.

Some couples have not survived the questioning, says Nathalie Ramos. She advances “hand in hand” with her spouse.

(1) 91 to December 2. (2) Last names are not given at the request of the interviewees.

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