The French

Ally -- would your opinion of the French change if I told you that when I was over there (Summer '95), they had big "Laughing Cow" billboards all over the place? (or, in French, "la vâche qui rire")

I love French vintage ads though. I have 8 of them in my apartment right now.

http://www.demon.co.uk/momus/coppertone.jpeg

Still, great philosophers, pouty actresses, St.Etienne footie club in the 70s, Air & Daft Punk clinch it. They rule.

Hard men of Europe standing up to the Islamic Empire or cheese eating surrender monkeys kowtowing to terrorist threats?

more contrarian than either tbh

Kind of like flag-burning in the U.S., this is really a bullshit issue. How many women in France actually wear burkas?

367.

Great. One more thread I have to stay out of when I'm drunk and cranky.

let's see.. forbidding arab women to cover their faces in public buildings = they stay at home almost entirely! what a great leap forward for modernisation and equality!

(and yes i know muslim =/ arab and also that most muslim women don't cover their faces at all, i.e. what M White said)

tracer kind of otm 'forbidding' them to do this doesn't really seem the way forward.

whatever happened to the liberté part of the equation?? seriously i wonder if french politicians have lost their goddamn minds

laicité in schools is one thing - uniforms promote discipline and minimize class difference, plus they're minors and the whole thing is paid for and run by the state - but full grown adults?? picking their kids up from school or whatever?? what the shitting fuck

fwiw i think kids should be allowed to wear the veil and/or headscarf in school. it's the difference between positive and negative freedom - the freedom FROM religion - or even seeing the ornamental manifestation of religious belief - and freedom FOR religion, i.e. having those ornaments if you want.

i've actually heard that kids basically didn't start giving a shit until it became forbidden - that's when the headscarf started really catching on in school

Tracer, the ruling against the niqab is "in places where ID is required to be shown/personal identification is important". Examples such as post offices and banks, I'm leaning toward "you might have a case".

Examples such as public transportation are pretty ridiculous -- first of all it's no other Joe Citizen's fucking business who you are on PT, and second, that's the time I would MOST want to be hidden from view. Fuck, *I* am tempted to wear a burqua on the subway, it would stop a bunch of sleazy fuckers being sleazy. Plus you don't have to demurely cross legs as no one can see up skirt anyway.

I wonder if any of those women drive. I'm guessing not, but maybe I'm getting my prescriptive rulings confused.

how often is it the case that schoolkids are wearing such items in non-faith schools (or schools where they are in a distinct minority for doing so, which is really a situation to avoid i think) tho? there must be far fewer cases of this than burka wearers - supposedly only around 2000

how often is it the case that schoolkids are wearing such items in non-faith schools

Do you mean, how many girls from Muslim families are enrolled in public schools who have personally chosen or whose families have chosen for them to wear the veil? Seems like that number probably changes every day, tbh.

I happen to think the school ban is BS, tbh.

Sorry, I should specify: schools prohibit any kind of headscarf at all, even if it leaves the face uncovered.

The current French ruling for public places is against the niqab, a veil that covers the lower half of face (everything except the eyes).

laurel is correct (muslim girls don't wear veils anyway i don't think?) so blueski the number of girls that wear the headscarf in school is theoretically nil, since they're forbidden to do so by national law

I am also thinking that I saw a drop-dead gorgeous and extremely stylish Muslim woman on the subway the other day in wide-legged jeans, a long belted coat, and a silk scarf wrapped around head in classic Hepburn/starlet-in-a-convertible style. Make-up and eyebrows were impeccable, personal style was impeccable, obv she had money. Totally gorgeous and modern and still modestly dressed & scarved.

Do not understand who could find the time to object to that, she was a pleasure to behold.

pic or it didn't happen

i just hope they don't ban fever ray from french award shows

That women should be liberated from exaggerated modesty (I don't think there's much modesty in ostentatious modesty, really) and patriarchal control is praiseworthy but to do so by diktat of law is merely to exchange the petty tyranny of enforced social codes for the petty tyranny of the State and the underpinning of this move in France stems pretty transparently (to me, at least) from not only hypocritical (as Tracer points out above) but also racist/nationalist prejudice. It's easy to be tolerant to people who are just like you, less so, apparently, if they're not.

One of my kids' classmates, a student from Algeria, wears a headband rather than a headscarf, and that's considered acceptable by the school (this is just outside Paris).

I've only seen one woman in anything like a full-body covering here in France.

At my kids' school last month, they sang Christmas carols in class, religious ones, not just your "happy holidays" stuff (although they did that too). This is an ordinary public school. I have some Jewish friends who find this offensive. I don't know what the Muslim kids think. I think the French consider this acculturation, since they don't generally profess the faith anymore.

ime lapsed catholicism is the official religion of france

And Marxism

I've only seen one woman in anything like a full-body covering here in France

seriously? this is common enough in ruralish ireland tbh

That women should be liberated from exaggerated modesty (I don't think there's much modesty in ostentatious modesty, really) and patriarchal control is praiseworthy but to do so by diktat of law is merely to exchange the petty tyranny of enforced social codes for the petty tyranny of the State and the underpinning of this move in France stems pretty transparently (to me, at least) from not only hypocritical (as Tracer points out above) but also racist/nationalist prejudice. It's easy to be tolerant to people who are just like you, less so, apparently, if they're not.

― Mit der Kattzheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens (Michael White), Tuesday, January 26, 2010 6:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i basically agree with this, but don't find a conclusion that easy to reach. it's a difficult dilemma for a liberal secularist, because this is a very strange kind of "freedom to". (i think it's evasive to characterize it as such, really -- we're talking about children.)

(i don't agree with all of it. i don't think the state is enforcing a "tyranny" by doing this ffs.)

I read this the other day:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953382,00.html

Now the French Must Prove They're French:

"What a lot of people don't realize is that with the increasingly strict obligation to prove your citizenship, you can walk into a state administration today to have your ID or passport renewed, and walk out virtually a stateless person," says Naulleau, 48, whose family had been posted to Baden-Baden, Germany — about 30 miles from the French border — when he was born in 1961. "The situation is creating a two-class system of citizenship in which French nationals born abroad or to foreign parents are treated as inferior, and forced to prove their worthiness of being French more than others."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953382,00.html#ixzz0do5jbogZ

history mayne you don't think this decision is tyrannical? then what is it?

what do you think of this?

Others will opine that one cannot be a true citizen if one hides one's face, because one is thus refusing human interaction. Yet some people wear dark glasses out of shyness or pure ­obnoxiousness, and nobody would think of denying them their right to humanity. The security-based objection, requiring one to bare one's face in order to have the right to pick up one's children from school, for instance, or if so required by a police patrol, is legitimate in the abstract, but only if one conveniently forgets the fact that in practice, the new generation of women – among the many we have surveyed – do not in fact refuse to comply.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/26/proposed-veil-ban-in-france

from that above link: "Pseudo-feminist rhetoric cannot conceal the fact that it is indeed the voluntary veil which is being fought, and not the imposed article."

yep

as an atheist liberal i still think that believing in whatever wacky comfort blanket gets you thru shd be a basic right, really

and any and all actions arising from that belief? Cos that's the edge that we're treading with this, even if in this case it's a bit of a silly example?

xpost: no, its a case of the French old guard and "intelligentsia" unable to deal with the difference

and any and all actions arising from that belief?

Nah, course not. "Rights" is a tenuous and wobbly notion that is purely metaphysical outside of the realm of enforceable law imo but actions that don't actively harm others ought to be outside of the state's power I think. The chain of logic that would make wearing religious symbols an act of harm is a lot longer than the chain that you could create to argue for lots of other acts that states don't see fit to legislate for.

Just because they ban or frown on scarves in some Muslim countries doesn't mean that it's not racist/islamophobic when they do it in France. The motivations in the two cases are very different.

xp And anyway how is telling people not wear a scarf comparable to making them go to school?

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

for me, they aren't.

Well, now I'm just confused because that's exactly what it appears you were saying.

i've said that calling the move racist or "islamophobic" is wrong, given that in a number of "muslim states" there are either similar laws...

I think it could still be those things though, as well?

Anyone opening this thread and hoping for a discussion on camembert is going to be v. disappointed.

Oops xp - what zelda said, then.

Headscarfs, burqas, chadors - Have Your Say

xp And anyway how is telling people not wear a scarf comparable to making them go to school?

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

for me, they aren't.

Well, now I'm just confused because that's exactly what it appears you were saying.

for some people -- like the taliban, in this instance -- who are pro-covering and anti-school, they are comparable.

but i don't think i was comparing them, though i would say that in the terms of the debate conducted upthread, making children go to school is "tyranny", isn't it? i was saying that comparing the french anti-scarf law with the taliban's pro-burqua law was a bad case of relativism.

I was comparing the Tunisian anti-scarf ban with the taleban's reaction to women not wearing burqas - but yeah, bit over the top I admit.

My understanding is that there's a certain 'rebellious' fashion for ostentatious Muslim modesty that's partly propelled by the pushy secularist injunctions against headscarves etc... I'm not particularly a fan but hten, I'm not a fan of people self-righteously telling other people what to wear. That doesn't make me blind or indifferent to the possibility that people may be socially or familialy coerced it's just that too broad and pat a response legally seems too facile and too categorical. It reminds me of what I think when I see, say, Sarah Palin on the cover of amagazine repping 'for life': 'Great. Good for you. Now why to you want to take the choice away from women instead of trying to persuade them?'

Allez les Bleus imo

It was funny today to hear about how the French are busting up everything in sight to avoid working two more years before retirement and the Brit govmt are promising to get rid of a half million public sector jobs over five years.

I would love UK/Ire to rise up and start blocking fuel depots and airports but its just not us, is it?

xp yeah lol - always funny to see 16 yo high school kids rebelling for their pension rights

The French romance w/revolution/revolt would be merely risible if it weren't so pathetic.

harsh

I would love UK/Ire to rise up and start blocking fuel depots and airports but its just not us, is it?

― cant believe you sb'd me for that (darraghmac), Wednesday, October 20, 2010 6:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

happened in the uk in 2000

It's so superficial, baaderonixx, this glamour of uprising and it betrays an undemocratic spirit one finds at either end of the political spectrum in France. It's also mostly feckless; diverting progressive goals into passionate but irrational demonstrations of what amounts to an essentially impotent tantrum may make people feel empowered but it doesn't really empower them.

I agree that it's undemocratic inasmuch as it eschews the ballot box, but I disagree that that's all democracy boils down to. A precondition of healthy democracy is rational deliberation by would-be voters. In my relations with activism in France (largely amongst academics involved in last year's strikes, but also with less "exalted" people), the people involved spend a lot of time discussing things, & this is what allows for political organization. & political organization through rational deliberation leads to a democracy in which it's not just voting for your team, but because you know the candidate, or have participated in an organization in which she's involved.

have no opinion on this particular fight, but for all the revolt and car-tippings, it seems a much more rule-bound society than the uk

its the scale of it that astounds

yeah, I was blown away when I learned that they have laws regard transport strikes, so that usually when they happen (i.e. every other week) there are limits on how they can go.

holding out for this since I gotta fly to France in 10-ish days.

people involved spend a lot of time discussing things, & this is what allows for political organization. & political organization through rational deliberation leads to a democracy in which it's not just voting for your team, but because you know the candidate, or have participated in an organization in which she's involved.

I agree except for the rational part. My expereince of the French is that they like to think of themselves as so cartesian but they're pretty much like human beings everywhere.

it was funny today to hear about how the French are busting up everything in sight to avoid working two more years before retirement and the Brit govmt are promising to get rid of a half million public sector jobs over five years.

I'm a pretty pro-union, left-leaning guy but I had a similar thought. The French population is aging like the rest of us, right? And they have a comparable life expectancy and health outcomes? Do people really see it as oppressive to have to work past 60? Is there some other context I'm missing? Are they anticipating a whole wave of anti-labour legislation?

To be fair, as is often the case, the majority of the demos are now directed against sarkozy rather than the actual pension reform

I can't think of a single person, off the top of my head, whom I would wish to be President.

*ahem*

slock1, you'd really want to be Presdient of France?!

Eleven people, including several children, were injured when they jumped from the third-story window of a suburban Paris apartment building, an official said.

It wasn't known if they jumped on purpose or were forced, the judicial official said. There was no emergency in the building at the time, such as a fire.

The victims are of African origin, possibly from Angola, and an initial investigation suggested they jumped after one of the women involved became hysterical and started shouting she'd seen the devil, the official said.

Two members of the group - a 30-year-old man and a man with a criminal record who jumped out of the window holding a two-year-old child - have been taken into police custody, the official said.

All 11 victims were taken to hospital with multiple traumas. No life-threatening injuries were reported, although a four-month-old baby has been admitted to a Paris children's hospital in a serious condition, the official said.

The apartment building is located in the Paris suburb of La Verriere.

There's, as the kids say, a LOT going on with this french anti-smoking ad pic.twitter.com/bXddZcH3zN

— 🌎🌵the 🚀🌌cosmist 💣✊insurrection 🏴🚩 (@yungneocon) December 26, 2019

UH

Phenomenal

Been watching some French films lately and I wondered aloud where the directors find these strikingly weird-looking guys to star in their movies, and my partner said that’s just how French guys look. Do French guys really all look like that? Really puts their penchant for caricaturing Jews and Arabs and North Africans in a fresh light.

Never particularly noticed that the French have strikingly weird-looking guys starring in their movies. I think it might be more that Americans have strikingly conventional-looking guys starring in theirs.

^^^ truth bomb

Yup, was gonna say

You'll also have noticed they don't have strikingly weird-looking women starring in their movies. I think the ugly guy/beautiful woman thing is a longstanding cliche of French cinema.

But is it so different from anywhere else? Men are allowed to have 'character'. Lucky men!

An excellent discussion, in English, on laïcité in the wake of Samuel Paty's murder.

Macron wants the children of France’s largest minority to be given ID numbers, he’s dissolved Muslim civil rights groups and wants loyalty vows from religious figures. If you’re silent on this don’t pretend you’re serious about our society learning anything from the last century

— Marcus Barnett (@marcusbarnett_) November 20, 2020

Marshall Petain would be proud of this lad, but at least he defeated Le Pen

this is the point where Fishhook Theory is now an incontrovertible fact

Just so you know, that's a made up 'fact'. See also:

I do unequivocally apologize for the error I made in saying that Macron's bill targets Muslim children.

I do have a responsibility to facts. And I do not want to make anything harder for my colleagues who are doing an amazing job with a difficult story.

— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) November 22, 2020

Doesn’t mean the law will be equally applied, something something rich and poor men sleeping under bridges.

Everyone has a national ID number from birth in France.

Furthermore, collecting ethnic/racial data is illegal since 1978

You don’t have to collect ethnic or racial data to know which neighbourhoods or populations you want to monitor. Nor is the aim of ensuring all children go to school entirely separate from the context previously discussed on the threads.

The worst new policy is the one making it illegal to film police, assuming that’s accurate reporting.

The point is Muslim children aren't being specifically assigned ID numbers. The bill itself provides enough grist for the mill, no need to focus on nonexistent issues.

As for the other policy, it makes it illegal to film police if and only if the video is accompanied by targeted death threats. Sounds like a front.

Thanks for further clearing up/exchanges on this. It's not been that well reported on so I wanted anyone to comment (I do think posting tweets is useful even when inaccurate).

Any time. It's worth remembering that stuff like this does often get lost in translation.

Btw, re: the police bill, I forgot to add that it also prohibits citizens from circulating such material if it is accompanied by death threats. If I were an MC, I'd make a video featuring salient examples of filmed police brutality and rap pointed threats over it. I'd get taken to court, where the case would likely fizzle out as an instance of artistic licence but it would help underscore just how absurd this proposal is in the first place. Oh, and the 'intention of causing harm' clause – whatever the fuck that means from a legal standpoint – was added later, which tells you all you need to know about their intentions.

It's also ridiculous to assume that this bill could in any way shape or form have prevented, say, the 2016 Magnanville stabbing attack.

In other news, Sarkozy's on trial for corruption.

🤞

While it is currently legal to film cops they have no problem pretending otherwise and threaten you or break/steal your gear if you do, so regardless of what this new bill really does I wish good luck to anyone trying to document police misdemeanings after that.

This Onion-like ultimatum from Macron would be hilarious if it didn't convey so much violence pic.twitter.com/Kvwl5Mbucw

— Tarek Younis (@Tarek_Younis_) November 23, 2020