Le Figaro Lyon
“Sexist city”
,
“Where are the women?”
.
The traditional Conscript Festival in Villefranche-sur-Saône was targeted, as it has been for three years, by some feminist activists pointing out a misogynistic tradition.
Signs have sprung up in the city, criticizing the absence of women during the Wave, the famous parade which brings together several thousand spectators in Rue Nationale on the last Sunday in January.
The Conscript Festival dates back to the Second Empire, when the Jourdan law of 1798 imposed conscription on young men aged 20 to 25.
A fateful date transformed over the years into an alibi for celebrating before potentially leaving for several years of military service (read below).
This masculine tradition was even recognized by the Ministry of Culture, which listed the festival as French intangible cultural heritage in 2020.
In the surrounding towns, which are less populated, conscript parades are mixed, as highlighted by the Nouvelle vague collective, which attacks a
“sexist tradition”
.
This collective was launched in 2022 with the support of Mylène Dune, political opponent of the mayor and LFI candidate in the last legislative elections.
The Facebook account currently has around a hundred subscribers.
This Sunday, activists once again put up signs, particularly on the conscript roundabout.
Against military tradition, activists have opposed the opening of the army to women since 1939. Their demands were taken up in an online video published by lawyer Violaine De Filippis Abate.
She threatens the mayor with a
“formal notice”
so that the 2025 party is mixed.
“Sterile controversy”
The city supports the organization of the festival by providing rooms and logistical support, but it is not the organizer, specifies Guillaume Ducray, president of the general interclass.
It is the interclasses, in the name of the decades, “in 4” for 2024, who are in charge.
They are organized as an association under the law of 1901.
In tradition, the municipality hands over the keys to the city to the 20-year-old class on Friday.
“ Honors
”
of which the Nouvelle vague collective deplores the exclusion of women.
The conscripts, who are given a bouquet of flowers by their conscript, were nevertheless numerous in front of the town hall this Friday, assures Guillaume Ducray.
“It’s a sterile and irrelevant controversy
,” he fumes.
It is wrong, arch-false, to consider that women are excluded.
This year, 180 conscripts are participating in the celebration and, on a daily basis, they are members of the associations, although not paying contributions.
They are fully integrated and do not ask for anything
.
As for the
“subsidies”
mentioned by the signs, the city says it has no trace of them.
Guillaume Ducray mentions a check for 1500 euros for the general interclass.
“Not much compared to the 1.5 million euros injected into the Calado economy by the various class activities,”
he says
.
Not to mention the activity for restaurateurs, especially on holidays
.
This Sunday, according to the organizers, there were 15,000 who came to see the wave of years in 4. It will end with an intergenerational buffet on Wednesday, in the presence of the conscripts.
Before the young men return the keys to the city to the mayor.
The origin of the Wave
The Conscript Festival dates from the Second Empire, which imposed, in the name of the Jourdan law of 1798, conscription on young men aged 20.
In 1850, faced with this draw involving five years of their lives, two young Caladois (the gentiles from Villefranche) presented themselves at their barracks in black clothes overlooked by a gibus.
A solemnity imitated the following year by all young people their age.
Under the Third Republic,
“the men of 41 years joined forces with them to celebrate the anniversary of their draft”
, recalls the very solemn Charter of conscripts.
The other
“classes”
followed, with torchlight processions first and then banquets.
In 1894, the president of the 41-year-old class took the mayor and the sub-prefect under the arm at the end of the meal.
And rushed them to rue Nationale, swaying from one sidewalk to another in the famous Wave movement, since institutionalized.
A wave reserved for men therefore, in the name of its military origin.