"Look at that bitch in a skirt."
The violent words and the aggression denounced by Élisabeth, a 22-year-old student from Strasbourg, sparked a wave of indignation.
With her face still swollen, the young woman told
France Bleu Alsace
on Monday that
she was insulted and beaten in Strasbourg on Friday afternoon, in the middle of the street, by three men in their twenties while she was wearing a skirt.
“One said, 'Look at that bitch in a skirt,'
she said.
I allow myself to answer: "Pardon?"
(…) There, one answers me: “Shut up, bitch, and you lower your eyes and you shut up.”
Two each grab me by one arm and the third punch me in the face. "
According to the young woman, none of the witnesses of the attack offered her help or called for help.
"As if no one has seen anything."
Read also:
Domestic violence: 146 women killed by their partner or ex-spouse in 2019
His testimony revives the debate on the fight against harassment and sexist and sexual assault.
On Wednesday, the Minister Delegate for Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, went to the European capital to meet the mayor, the police and the gendarmes.
She announced the recruitment by the Ministry of the Interior of 80 additional social workers by the end of 2021 to
"strengthen the support"
of women victims of this violence.
The former Secretary of State for Equality between Men and Women also took stock of the sexist contempt offense, created in 2018 to verbalize street harassment.
1,831 fines have been distributed since the enactment of the text.
"The low number of tickets can be explained in large part by the mobilization and training of actors in the field"
, commented on the Chancellery.
A figure also qualified as
"low"
by feminist associations in view of the scale of the phenomenon.
"It does not correspond to all the facts of sexist outrages, which are much more numerous,"
admitted Marlène Schiappa before declaring that she wanted
"to double the number of verbalizations of sexist outrage".
"Absolute conviction"
With this in mind, she entrusted a mission to the director of the police and the national gendarmerie to
"identify all the concrete obstacles on the ground to the verbalization of street harassment".
This fine had emerged after the rise of the debate on street harassment, in spring 2017, with a petition from residents of the Parisian district of Chapelle-Pajol, targets of incessant remarks from men in their neighborhood.
Read also:
How to react when you witness street harassment?
On Wednesday, the government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, also expressed the
"absolute condemnation"
of this aggression by the executive.
“In France, we must be able to go out dressed in the street as we want (…).
We cannot accept that today a woman feels in danger, either harassed, threatened or hit because of her outfit, ”
he reacted to leaving the Council of Ministers.
An immense effort to raise awareness and educate all of society and professionals likely to receive victims remains to be done.
Agnès, one of the members of the Stop street harassment association
The Departmental Directorate of Public Security (DDSP) of Bas-Rhin announced the opening of an investigation following the complaint filed by the student.
The municipality of Strasbourg estimated that less than 10% of women victims of street harassment and sexist attacks dared to file a complaint.
"Many women do not do it because they think that the police will do nothing, that these attackers will be difficult to find and that their complaint will end in the trash"
, underlines Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of the Women's Foundation.
“Is the public space mixed enough? Can women walk the streets and dress as they like, without fear? A case like that of Strasbourg shows that this is not the case. The perpetrators of this attack wanted to sanction the presence of this student in public space, as a woman who wears a skirt
, points out Agnès, one of the members of the association Stop street harassment.
It is a form of control which aims to objectify the body of women and which is exercised through violence.
An immense effort to raise awareness and educate all of society and professionals likely to receive victims remains to be done. ”
Isabelle Adjani: "These young girls will be perpetually outraged"
“The problems related to secularism and gender-based and sexual violence are not changing.
(…) It should come as no surprise that the struggle of women is becoming radicalized! ”
, emphasizes Isabelle Adjani.
REGIS DUVIGNAU / REUTERS
The actress played, in 2009, in
The Day of the skirt
, the role of a teacher in a suburban college, exasperated by the machismo of her students.
She recalls that at the time some had found the situation described in the film exaggerated.
"Many of us then realized the extent of social denial."
LE FIGARO.
- The recent assault on a student in Strasbourg, struck by three men because they accused her of wearing a skirt, strangely resonates with the film
La Journée de la skirt
, in which you played.
Does reality join fiction?
Isabelle ADJANI.
-
The title of the film by Jean-Paul Lilienfeld has become the name of high school committees that have been organizing this “day” for several years so that girls can wear skirts, even mini, in order to avoid harassment, insults, all aggressions, particularly physical, intolerable because they destroy the life of the one who is attacked.
An accomplished, successful fiction is always inspired by an existing reality, even if it is sometimes still unknown to part of the population.
When some may have called the catastrophic situation depicted in the film
Skirt Day
"exaggeration"
, many of us realized the extent of social denial.
I would like to pay tribute to the sagacity of Jean-Paul Lilienfeld, who wrote and filmed this story which today looks almost like a docu-fiction, alas.
Read also:
The World is Yours
: Isabelle Adjani confides in
Le Figaro
In the film, the French teacher whom I play "goes crazy" because she realizes that these young girls, women in the making, will be perpetually outraged, belittled by these boys, future men whom they will not become with dignity, if we don't educate them to stop setting themselves up as dominant.
These boys, these men, act in cowardly and dangerous ways: Clearly, the issues of secularism and gender and sexual violence are not changing - this new assault is just one of the many proofs of that.
So, in fact, we should not be surprised that the struggle of women is radicalized!
The Minister Delegate for Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, visited Strasbourg on Tuesday and announced the recruitment of social workers in police stations.
Is it sufficient?
First question to ask: are the laws supposed to protect them being applied as we are entitled to expect them to be?
As if it were a scoop, here we see that women feel threatened and can find themselves lynched at any street corner, in broad daylight, facing people paralyzed by what is happening. , often refusing to testify, surely out of fear… but nothing new in that!
Social workers, mediators, yes, that's very good.
But we must repeat, becoming voiceless, that we must start at school to integrate these questions into education and also into police training.
All the more so if at home this is unfortunately not the case.
“The problems related to secularism and gender-based and sexual violence are not changing.
(…) It should come as no surprise that the struggle of women is becoming radicalized! ”
, emphasizes Isabelle Adjani.
