The misogynistic backlash isn’t confined to the Anglosphere. Indeed, a new report from France’s High Council for Equality between Women and Men finds “alarming” levels of sexism in French society, especially among the young.
“Sexism is not retreating in France,” the report concluded.
On the contrary, some of its most violent manifestations are getting worse, and the young generations are the most affected.
The study, which surveyed the opinions of 2,500 people, found that sexist attitudes are widespread in France among both young and older men.
According to rfi.fr,
The report highlighted “masculinist clichés” among the 25-34 age group – around 20 percent said you had to brag about sexual exploits “to be respected as a man” in society, while nearly a quarter of men said they “sometimes had to be violent to gain respect”.
A quarter of all men thought there was too much attention being paid to the issue of sexual violence, and 40 percent thought that women should give up careers to care for children.
These attitudes influence behavior. For example, some 37 percent of French women say they have been pressured into sex they didn’t want, and 22 percent of 18-24-year-old women say they have been outright raped or assaulted.
Among women aged 18-24, 22 percent said they had experienced “psychological control or excessive jealousy” from a partner, with 15 percent saying they had been physically assaulted.
The Council’s president, Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette, told the Guardian (UK). that
it’s not enough to protect women and punish men. If we don’t address the roots of everyday sexism and change the mentality, we will never move forward. … Everyday sexism leads to violent sexism.
Pierre-Brossolette told the radio channel France Inter that young men grow up
bathed in social media, digital [technology], pornography … Young people … are brought up digitally on these scenes of mundane violence, of relations between men and women that are completely of domination and dominated, and that has impregnated society.
Interestingly, the report found that “82% of French people wish to see prevention and the fight against sexism become priority subjects on the agenda of the public authorities.” It’s just that they don’t live up to these ideals in practice.
The Council called for an “emergency plan” to fight “the massive, violent and sometimes lethal consequences” of sexism.
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@Dalillama
I eat spicy enough that it makes my coworker from Cameroon wince… I’m half German and Croatian, but have little contact to the Yugoslavian cuisine and my dad doesn’t like spicy food so we didn’t eat much at home (and I don’t like pepper anyways; chili all the way). But this shows again that stereotypes are bullshit. Besides, what even is “proper food”? Pretty sure everyone defines that differently. Sorry, but that girl was just needlessly rude. Shows that racial stereotypes aren’t just a white thing I guess.
@ dali
Really? Do you have their contact details? I’m blooming starving.
I mean it would be nice to have the OPTION. Like, for everyone of every gender. But funnily enough, 95% of couples have to both work to keep a roof over their heads.
There are also the factors that:
a) PLENTY of misogynists want their partners to 100% take care of them, the house and kids, AND provide for them financially.
b) The type of man who earns enough money to support a SAHM but absolutely insists upon it is not the type of person I’d like to surrender my financial independence to.
@KMB
I mean, yeah, she was being terribly rude, but kids being tactless is a standard genre of comedy, and my cousin found it hilarious. She was apparently unaware of the stereotype of white people eating excessively bland food; her immediate family are Carolina barbecue folk, and most of the white folk she grew up around were travelers or foreign workers of some kind like her dad. Proper food in this context did of course mean local food, yes.
@Alan
They live in Kigali, beyond that I don’t know their direction.
@LollyPop
I agree. However I replaced some words and changed it to;
… and felt some kind of way. I admit that I am one of those women who would not feel comfortable financially supporting a man for a long period of time. How do others here feel about it? I think most women worldwide wouldn’t be ok with it and I wonder why that is.
@Dalillama: Oh, now you’ve got me wanting Carolina BBQ. But I must ask: are your cousin’s people from NC or SC? Sauce makes a difference.
I think the story’s funny too. Teens are not known for their tact, and stereotypes are everywhere. Now the friend can help combat them too.
I used to love spicy food, but the continuing deterioration from my various chronic conditions has now spread to mucus membranes, so… Might be a coincidence, but it seemed to get worse after I got a mild case of Covid. Luckily black pepper is still OK, I guess it’s chili peppers that get me. Though I can still handle the mild ones, and a smidge of Tabasco.
@Love Is: Because all of us women have been socialized that way?
Can we actually not. Do you have any idea how diverse India is? It’s not “a culture”. Don’t even get me started on how wrong most of these claims are.
Misogyny is definitely an issue in India, not to mention Hindutva, but this kind of blanket “their culture” guff is ridiculous.
Seriously cannot believe some of the stuff I’m seeing here lately.
@Love is All We Need
For some reason that doesn’t really bother me personally, although I understand why it may others growing up in our culture. It may be because in the current generation of my social and family group many of the men have, at least in the past, been kind of doing worse than the women (a combination of illness and choosing career paths where it took a long time for them to get financial stability), so it’s not been unusual for them to be supported by their women partners.
I was the sole breadwinner for three years and honestly once my partner was well enough to “keep house” I kind of liked it! Except for the grinding financial pressure of trying to live off one wage, for which I blame capitalism.
@LollyPop
In all honesty. I’m the type of person whose skin starts to crawl from the mere thought of financial dependence. Or any sependence, for that matter… just can’t trust people enough to surrender myself to that degree.
@Dalillama
Maybe I’m not lenient enough here, but I don’t really tend to give kids a pass for things like that, especially older ones who should know better…
@Mish: Who are you quoting there? Control-F doesn’t even find any other occurrence of the word “arranged” on this page …
Probably because the bulk of the comments are on the previous page.
LIAWN is the answer to your question.
Now why am I not surprised?
Well that’s exactly why it bothers me, I suppose. I’ve grown up seeing men absolutely leech off women with impunity. The rest of your comment indicates the men you’ve grown up with were not leeching but were ill or chose career paths that took a while to yield results. That’s entirely different from how I grew up. My demographic is now veering to the opposite extreme and we don’t even want to do 50/50 now because of the collective PTSD of having had to shoulder all responsibility.
There’s a whole discussion waiting to happen (if it hasn’t already happened a thousand times by now) about why ‘white people food’ is oftentimes devoid of spices. Mostly due to classism once many spices became cheap enough for the commoners to enjoy, and partially to mass produced food becoming much more common. Methinks white people need to search their own heritages and reclaim the spicier food recipes from oblivion to enjoy again.
Though speaking of bland food, there is a small stack of cookbooks out there like this one that gives instructions on how to make your food bland on purpose.
https://www.amazon.com/BLAND-DIET-COOKBOOK-ultimate-Recipes/dp/B08HQ69KVT
The intended audience for these books are people with medical conditions like ulcers and other gastronomical illness who can’t even have a touch of salt and pepper in their meals but still want some variety in their meals.
@ redsilkphoenix
It is a bit ironic that English food is so associated with blandness when our national dish is Chicken Tikka Masala.
https://jsec.nato.int/about-us/jsec-cuisine-whats-cooking/the-queens-official-birthday-chicken-tikka-masala-from-the-united-kingdom
@Love is All We Need
Ah yes. That makes sense. I’ve heard of that happening too – blokes who completely check out of every single responsibility in life and have women provide for them in every way.
@Beroli, thanks and yes, that.
@Surplus, previous page. Clearly no-one else cares about it, but I don’t remember this site putting up with casual racism back when I was a regular.
There’s a whole discussion waiting to happen (if it hasn’t already happened a thousand times by now) about why ‘white people food’ is oftentimes devoid of spices. Mostly due to classism once many spices became cheap enough for the commoners to enjoy, and partially to mass produced food becoming much more common.
The Star-Bellied Sneeches phenomenon: oh dear—the rabble all have stars on their bellies now! Let’s flex our class status by emphasizing the optimal freshness and delicate inherent flavor of ingredients, especially now that increasing numbers of people are having to abandon farms for factories.
(And then you’ve got the whole body of Puritanical Anglo-diasporic notions that spicy cookery ignites spicy passions; that way lies Sylvester Graham’s and John Harvey Kellogg’s line of thought, as well as the assumption that those exotic Otherlandians are as free with their favors as with the garlic and cayenne.)
Methinks white people need to search their own heritages and reclaim the spicier food recipes from oblivion to enjoy again.
I’ve been reliably informed that mustard, horseradish, caraway, and coriander can readily be cultivated in northerly latitudes. (I periodically watch the PBS Show New Scandinavian Cooking; one episode showcased salt cod—one of Norway’s major global exports. The host, Andreas Viestad, prepared a classic Mediterranean ceviche—which mildly disappointed me; how might salt cod be combined with other local Norwegian staples—cabbage; mustard; dill; lingonberries; that by-now-global-citizen the potato?)
@ Redsilkphoenix: Jetpack Vixen, Intergalactic Meani
But even though the upper classes abandoned spices in their cooks’ cooking, they still kept a whole array of ways off adding them back at the table in the form of chutneys, sauces, tracklement of all sorts.
@ Mish of the Catlady Ascendency
I’ve been unhappy about some of LIAWN’s comments, but I’m English, and don’t always understand different perspectives from the USA, plus the “separated by a shared language” thing can mean I am not reading a comment correctly. However the cliches about Indian definitely crossed a line.
@Alan: It has often been said that the only spicy/tasty English food came from the people they colonized. India, the Caribbean, etc. I know that caraway grows in the north, mostly because of a lengthy akavit tasting session at a party thrown by Norwegians.
While I can’t have most Capiscums, I am perfectly fine with all the other varieties of spices that exist and have an extensive supply of spices and herbs in the kitchen.
@ gss ex-noob
We’ve been obsessed with spicy food here for centuries.
https://londonist.com/2016/06/the-story-of-london-s-first-indian-restaurant
Al Murray suggested the British immigration test was “What have you got in the way of hot and spicy food or Olympic quality athletes?”
@Jazzlet, cheers. I’m Australian myself, and I think this particular poster is coming from a very very narrow US-centric* view of things, but even so…
The comments about India were revolting, and so was the insistence (a few weeks ago?) that a biracial person must be “actually white”. I don’t care if we’re discussing a cockroach like Andrew Tate, or my own beloved kid, or anyone in between – it’s racist, plain and simple.
Like, this isn’t just bitching over slightly different views, you know?
@Alan: So it was just the spicy food question before 1896?
I’ve a friend who makes good middle of the road chili con carne. He made it once some years ago in Australia for a mixed group of Aussies and Americans of various ethnicities, and put in the bare minimum of, well, chili peppers, to make it legally eligible for the title.
Actually, he made 2 pots. The one for the Aussies was the exceedingly mild one (the kind even us white folks don’t give to anyone who’s old enough to eat solid food), and they were all complaining about how terribly painfully spicy it was, guzzling down water and milk and loading up on crackers and bread. Also he of course put in onions and garlic, which scared many of them.
The Americans were eating regular average chili very happily, although a few of them (Texans, New Mexicans, and other Southwesterners) asked if he’d mind them putting some more peppers or Tabasco in. He didn’t. He ended up putting more flavor into the Aussie leftovers so the Americans could have seconds as the brave, macho, 20-something Aussies went away crying.
(I don’t care what they call it, that stuff they make in Cincinnati isn’t chili. It’s Balkan.)
@GSS ex-noob:
(I don’t care what they call it, that stuff they make in Cincinnati isn’t chili. It’s Balkan.)
Southwestern Ohioan here: Skyline Chili was founded by Greek immigrant Nicholas Lambrinides and Gold Star by the Jordanian-born Daoud brothers (some of whom would anglicize the name to “David”); the runny cinnamon-flavored fine-grained spaghetti/hot dog sauce served there shows an obvious evolutionary descent from things like pastitsio sauce.
(Chili of the Cincinnati school hasn’t enough substance for my liking, but my own taste in chili would equally horrify cowboy purists: beans are de rigeur—all the better if multiple varieties are present—and additional vegetables are fine, but meat is optional.)