All the right-hand side and right-wing candidates extreme to the presidential election seem particularly worried by the freedom of the women and develop a quasi obsessional sensitivity and an attention with the equality of the sexes.

Does all occur as if the condition of the women had become, as by magic, a matter national priority… of social justice? Not, of “immigration”. Jean-Marie Le Pen, Nicolas Sarkozy, Philippe de Villiers, mainly, do not have of cease to point out to us that the equality of the sexes is a principle constitutive of “our” nation and “our” culture, even a distinctive feature of “our” civilization, Christian woman if it is. That the women “on our premises” are treated like the equal ones of the men, that they enjoy all the rights like all privileges. Also, from now on, one of the admission requirements on “our” territory of the immigrant populations will be the unconditional respect what concerns, to hear them, of the gasoline of the Occident: equality of the sexes. For some, the candidates with immigration in France will have to sign a pact in which they are committed respecting what is presented like a “habit” well of on our premises: the respect of the women. With the image of the Netherlands, one will diffuse vidéos to them naked women, centres on the beaches of the two man or Riviera, embracing itself tenderly on the mouth, to test their tolerance with modernity.
The French presidential campaign is made here the echo of a process started already well. All started with Afghanistan and the declared war of Bush against the Talibans in the name of the women's right [2], genuine mask sex of a crusade imperialist, that continued with the constitution project European, in which one could read that the equality of the men and the women was a principle constitutive of the culture and European history without in so far as it is followed concrete and ambitious constitutional measurements on the matter [3].
One thus attends the racialisation of a political principle, that of the equality of the sexes and, to a lesser extent, sexualities: the equality of the men and the women became a cultural feature even an genetic inheritance inherited the race of the Francs or the Gallic ones. The most nationalist policies and sedentary are done in the name of the women. However, this racist collecting of the historical feminist combat, our movements, our fights, our victories has three major effects. Firstly, it aims at instrumentaliser feminism within the framework of a rhetoric to the service of a more or less declared racist speech. When Marine Le Pen is made the herald of the cause of the women, it allures with few expenses a feminine vote traditionally less inclined to vote for the FN, it consequently recovers the proposals for a its program which aim at supporting the massive return to the house of the workers, to limit the right to the abortion drastiquement, to support a policy familialist giving the priority to the “French mothers”. Secondly, collecting by the right parties of this speech to the feminist perfume results in to completely occult the reality of the inequalities, discriminations and violences whose make always the object the women, but also all the other minorities sexual (gay, lesbians, transsexuals), “on our premises”. For this reason, the case of violences sexists, homophobes, lesbophobes or transphobes is paradigmatic. The nearly exclusive focusing of the policies on “exotic” violences, such as lapidation, the immolation, the excision… causes to make us believe that violence sexist, in particular, is the prerogative of the “Arab boy” [4], who haunts the halls and the cellars of cities HLM to the pay of Al-Qaida, of “the African immigrant” polygamous and follower of voodoo, of “West-Indian alcoholic and jovial rmist”; that only from now on the black women, downward of colonial immigration, migrant or refugees “owe” émanciper by releasing “their” men. However, the sociological surveys carried out for several years have not ceased pointing out it [5]: sexual violence (contact, rape, harassing, etc) has neither color, nor origin; it is transverse with all the social classes. Marital violence kills a woman every three days in France - should it be pointed out, Bertrand Cantat did not come from the city of the 4000. And, if the women are more exposed to verbal or physical violence in public space when they live in great precariousness, it does not remain about it less than there is no facial angle of the sexism, as at the good old day of the racist anthropometry of the XIXe century. Thirdly, the catch as an hostage of certain feminist topics by the right parties causes of racialiser feminism itself, by orchestrating a shock of civilizations between the veil and the string, cut of any part. Thus, when the FN launches to the autumn a 2006 posting campaign, it chooses, inter alia, a young person “beurette” hair released, short tee-shirt, low-waisted trousers, piercing, to incarnate the slogan frontist. It is exhiber a female figure of the assimilation clearly opposed to that of the “veiled young girl”, considered hostile with the alleged republican secularity, stigmatized like henchman with the male domination.
With believing the right parties of them, feminism is thus consubstantial in the “Occident”. But about which feminism does one speak? Of this same feminism in which the French Army was draped in Algeria at the end it XIXe century to go “to civilize” these “Arab barbarians” who sequestered and veiled their wives and their daughters? They are the same soldiers, policies and administrators colonial who wanted to release the women of “their culture” and which, “of return in their “motherland” […] were the most enthusiastic opponents with the feminist fights of the first wave” [6], for the civil laws and civic of the women. Opposite, in “the East”, exactly the same right parties néoconservatrice answer today of TAC TAC that the dignity of the women is each day ridiculed as much in “Occident”, as testifies to it, according to them, publicity or the pornography. The problem is obviously not civilisationnel, or even cultural, one will have included/understood it, but quite political. We know that on many engagements, these lines of the whole world advance hand in the hand against the claims of the feminist movements, gay and lesbians; that there are not better allies that Benoît XVI, Bush, Le Pen or Ahmadinejad on the questions of abortion or homosexual marriage [7].
However, the political effects of these speeches of hatred are catastrophic for feminism itself, because, as one recently saw on “the business of the veil”, they mortgage the coalitions, as well international as national, between the various movements of the women, by insufflating in his rows the suspicion of ethnocentrism - the “French” feminists would not have to give lessons of emancipation if this one is summarized with the right to wear a mini skirt; conversely, the “buckled” feminists would not be “true” feminists - nor even of “true” Frenchwomen, according to their detractors, because they exhibent a subjected image of the women. To leave this infernal aporia, it is initially to refuse this antagonism ethnicisant and fallacious which opposes the “white ones” and the others, the “Western ones” or the “Frenchwomen” and the “Moslem women”…, it is initially to decolonize a certain French feminism which was let allure by this pseudo speech victimaire of right-hand side and refuse that the fight against the sexism makes the bed of racism and hunting for the immigrant. It is thus a question of refusing to think the Women's Liberation in the same terms as impose the extreme line to us, and than it imposes on the public stage, while denouncing what in fact is contradictory with any feminist project: national identity.
That being, if the rhetoric of the right-hand side lepenist or sarkozyste on the equality of the men and the women profits from such an audience, it is that she also exploits the excuses of the majority left. To a certain extent, parallel to diffusion in company of certain conscience feminist - even if the latter is not identified with historical feminism -, the setting in minority of a radical feminist engagement on the left allowed that a feminism of masquerade emerges on the right. In 2007, qu ' in is application of the nth version of the law Roudy which, in its initial version of 1983, ratified a principle of justice for which the feminist movements are mobilized since more than one century already: with equal work, equal wages? What is it concrete measures of fight against the ceiling of glass? What is it installation of a true policy of collective guard to the national scales, when so much of women do not find a place in crib for their child? What is it of a true solidarity with the women of the South who precisely come to look after “our” interiors, “our” kids, “our” old men and “our” patients? What is it of a sex education worthy of this name to the college? What is it of an effective policy of fight against the sexism proposing, for example, with the large manufacturers of toys a charter of the equality of the sexes and sexualities, so that they cease flooding the stores of necessary to pink household for small model housewife? What is it “deprived” parity, when 80% of the house work is always reserved for the women? What is it rescue of the speciality of medical gynaecology and revalorization of the career of the doctors practitioner the IVG? What is it refunding of the pill? What is it access not only to the adoption, but to the procreation médicalement assisted for the gay couples, lesbians, but also transsexuals? What is it precisely of the die-psychiatrisation of the trans identities, when one knows that the “transsexualism” still appears in the classification of the WHO of the mental diseases?
To make counterweight with rhetoric feminist of right parties, which barbarisent social groups or people in the name of the women, who decide which is civilized and which is the unciviized ones, the empathic femininity of such or such candidate will not be enough: a real engagement anti-sexist and antiracist are more than necessary within the framework of a true project of left and, here and now, in the countryside, to prevent that a policy retrogresses of social exclusion does not make on our behalf.
Elsa Dorlin*