08/03/2024
IN 2024, LET'S STAND UP FOR OURSELVES: LET'S DARE!
There's this idea that if a woman is a victim, it's because she didn't know how to deal with her aggressor. However it is NEVER the victim's fault, but still too many men and women think so.
* A woman has been r***d: "But did you see how she was dressed, or how much she'd had to drink?
* A woman gets fired after refusing sexual advances: "Why did she say no? All she had to do was make him believe what he wanted to hear, and she wouldn't have done it."
STOP!!! It is NOT up to the potential victim to find strategies to defend herself from predators. We no longer want to be treated like prey and live in that fear. We no longer want to hide our femininity or our brains to be respected as a human being.
How many women (friends, colleagues, unknowns....) have confessed to me that they have been victims of male violence? I didn’t count but I have the feeling most of the ones I met and with whom I had a private discussion. They were either r***d or molested or harassed, or all together. And in the slim remaining % of women who did not mention it or who explicitly said they never experienced it, I wonder how many really never experienced it, how many hid it because they felt too ashamed and didn’t want to see themselves or be seen as victims, or how many were afraid, when it happened in the work field, of being professionally "burnt out". Probably a very slim % of women never experienced male violence and those might be extremely protected by their status or their family or are living miracles.
In 2024, women who have NOT experienced those violence are still exceptions BUT the ones who have should be exceptions.
NO WOMAN WANTS TO SEE HERSELF AS A VICTIM, but denying it when it's happened helps no one: certainly not the victim, who goes into denial and experiences a cognitive dissonance that can engender later psychological or physical disorders, and not the society either: when it happens, you have to admit it and face up to it, for yourself and to change mentalities, and stop those who abuse. And if it happens in the workplace, you'll only be burned by people you don't want to meet again. Those who respect women will look at the person and her competence, not what is claimed about her: good and intelligent men and women are able to make their own appreciations.
In 3 weeks' time, I'll be in court, pleading against a company that fired and unpaid me, after I'd been subjected to moral harassment by my employer and a sexual harassment by a tv-moderator. That happened a year ago. I’m proud to have found the courage to go in tribunal and I encourage every victim to do it. It’s true that it is still difficult to defend ourselves with the current legal systems. If I win, and I will, it will be through employment law only, because harassment is still little understood by judges and cannot easily be proven. Even r**e is difficult to prove. That's why so many women don't come forward, because the laws are still weak and for a large a part of the unconscious collective, the victim is responsible for her crime and must therefore hide and feel ashamed. THE AGRESSOR ONLY SHOULD BE ASHAMED AND CONDEMNED. THE MORE WE FIGHT, THE MORE RESULTS WE'LL GET.
I WISH… TO OUR INSTITUTIONS:
1. that prevention campaigns, in schools, colleges, universities but also in public places (transport, administrations, gardens, discotheques, etc.) be massively encouraged and financed by governments.
- Those campaigns should be created/organized by diverse production sources and with a variety of forms (TV spots, viral videos, posters, interactive campaigns, courses with role-playing etc.).
- For women: so that they know their rights, their equal status with men, and can easily ask for help (even if they suspect violence),
- For men: to inculcate in them, from an early age, egalitarian civic values towards women, as well as sexuality, so that they can educate themselves, not through violent and submissive po*******hy, and develop relationships of respect and exchange with women. Ideally, those preventive actions/programs should include the parents, where possible, so that what is taught at school is not directly contradicted and ridiculed by parents back home, but subtly includes the parents and helps them to change their mentalities.
2. Create more laws to protect women, especially in the workplace: for example, to join a company or create one, or to go on a film shoot or on a business trip lasting several days with women, men could undergo psychological tests concerning their approach to women and sign a commitment to respecting rules with regard to their female colleagues or staff, such as avoiding sexual remarks and propositions.
3. Extend quotas to as many fields as possible: this is inevitable if de facto equality is to be achieved, before mentalities change;
TO THE BROADCASTERS:
that they commit to combating violence against women in productions, launch a commission for the protection of women and stop all collaboration with companies that allow violence against women at their workplace and in their productions. And this should happen not only if the offence is recognized in court (which often occurs years later), but directly in the moment of doubt or denunciation by a female collaborator claiming to be a victim: those accused of violence should be asked to explain this denunciation, which would already limit the risk of indulging in anything and everything, as they would have the sword of Damocles hanging over them in the event of sexual or violent abuses (including moral harassment).
TO WOMEN:
1. Always more solidarity: your colleague is a victim, defend her before thinking about losing your job: you can't be fired like that, it's forbidden to fire someone without a reason;
2. A total awareness of our right to equality with men: let's stop accepting submission because that's the way the world works and we're nobody to change it. If we all fight, the world will change!
TO "FEMINIST" MEN:
1. Preach the good word for our cause to those of your kind who despise us or make us feel inferior, whenever you witness their misogynistic or violent speeches, or even their attitude towards women.
2. If some men accuse you of being "half-men" because you respect women, don't forget that those men are suffering or have a lower intelligence than you: they are the "half-men"!
TO MISOGYNISTS, PATRIARCHS, RAPISTS, HARASSERS, NARCISSISTICS, WIFE-BEATERS:
1. That you all be taken to court, judged, punished, psychologically treated and regularly monitored;
2. that you disappear from this planet because you're often homophobic and warmongers, and your greed is your suffering and your downfall, but it's contagious and we don't want it anymore.
LONG LIVE WOMEN, LONG LIVE FEMINIST MEN!
