Fight for streets and minds

" In our area on the streets you can see only men. Not a single woman in a cafe, not a single child in the square. Many of us are afraid to leave home. This should stop! " The other day a petition under the name " Women is a view on the verge of disappearance in the center of Paris " , composed by the residents of the Parisian quarter La Shallal-Pazhol (X and XVIII district), appeared in French networks at the same time as a report on this topic In the newspaper Parisen . This event shocked French social networks and unleashed hot political debates.

"Once quiet and calm, this area has completely changed: narrow sidewalks are occupied by groups of men, migrants, drug dealers, sellers from trays and simply re-entertaining, who literally do not give women passage with their insults, comments in all languages of the world and sexual harassment. Women cannot freely move and visit the route, they cannot dress anymore, they cannot dress anymore. They want their children to go to school calmly.

The petition immediately collected many thousands of signatures, and the reactions were not slow to wait. At the La Shapelle metro station, an activist of Femen movement appeared with the inscription "I will not disappear" on a naked chest. The mayor of Paris Ann Idalgo stated that she knew about the problem and will take up her solution. Other politicians, including the head of the region Il de Franca Valeri Pecress, a member of the Republican Right Party, risking coming to the “Dangerous Quarter”, where she quickly had to hide in one of the entrances, also acted in defense of the inhabitants of La Shape. She was hiding, however, not at all from migrants and drug dealers, but from the representatives of the Association for the Protection of the Rights of Visitors who fell upon her. Similar associations, and a good part of the French, including those living in the quarter itself, very critically reacted to the Parisen report and to the resulting hype. In their opinion, all this scandal is nothing more than a new manifestation of racism and xenophobia addressed to migrants.

In an angry communique, released by the Parisian team for the protection of refugees, it is said to be inadmissible to call aggressors those who are actually victims: “The state and only the state is to blame for the fact that we are so poorly accepted by migrants. You can’t represent visitors as“ dangerous criminals and rapists ”who are trying to“ poverty Western Western women. ” Cultures, not to Western society, we ourselves have a lot of problems with inequality and violence, which are behind such petitions, impersonate the progressives and defenders of women's rights, while all that they want is to incite the hate of the visitors. ”

Many residents of La Shapell-Pazhol, who believe that a real local problem, are not pursuing women, but poverty and abandonment of the area by the authorities, are also echoed to the defenders of migrants. "In 2016, for many months there was a huge tent camp of migrants, right under the bridge of the aboveground metro, and nobody was dealing with it. Then the camp was dispersed, but the migrants are still here. Our area is an accumulation of the poor, cramped, disgrace and a flow of cars from all sides," writes one of the residents in the publication of Nuvel Observator The quarter, according to which women are unpleasant for women here, is unpleasant, but quite safe. In the same vein, many human rights activists and feminists see the situation. So, one of the most prominent French feminists Caroline de Haas believes that the problem can be solved by "expanding the sidewalks and installing more lamps."

All this discussion is very reminiscent of the one that flared up in early 2016 after the news of the numerous acts of sexual violence against women in German Cologne and other cities of Northern Europe, committed on New Year's Eve by groups of men - mostly asylum suppliers from North Africa. Everyone noted how careful and ambiguous the reaction of both the authorities and the public was then. So, the mayor of Cologne Henrietta Rector asked the sockets to adapt her behavior to the new visitors, stay away from them and "not to provoke them." Many French human rights defenders, including feminists, expressed their sympathy - more likely to migrants, and not to German women. The Haas mentioned above said on her twitter: "Let those who tell me that violence in Cologne is associated with migrants, pour their racist shit away from here." And the other left-wing feminist, the very victim of violence, Klentin Oten, expressed this way: "Two million nonsense were raped by soldiers in 1945. Because of Islam?"

How to explain such an ambiguous reaction? According to the philosopher and the older-generation writer Elizabeth Badenter, “when migrants are guilty of violence against women, the priorities of our feminists are immediately changing. They are so afraid of racism accusations that they are not ready to recognize the real sacrifices. Of course, you cannot stigmatize all migrants, but is it worth hiding their heads in the sand?” She asks.

Another feminist agrees with her and the famous political observer Selin Pin: “It is unfair and insulting to represent all migrants as a threat to women. At the same time, why is it so difficult for us to protect our values from unacceptable behavior? Why do our authorities do not take measures? Because the image of an“ absolute victim ”, which is assigned to refugees, paralyzes all objective political assessment and the ability to act.”

The image of the "absolute sacrifice", which was fixed for refugees, paralyzes any objective political assessment

After the Cologne scandal, the famous Algerian writer and journalist Camel Daud, after the Cologne scandal, suggested. Not offering to close the boundaries for migrants, which is the ultra-right movements in different countries of Europe, Daud advises to look at their cultural identity, not ignore the problem of attitude to women in Muslim countries, the problem of sexism and the corresponding mentality of many visitors: “Refugees need to not only provide documents, they need to be actually assimilated, and they intend to the values of countries where they intend live". And although the Algerian Daud is difficult to suspect in racism, because of these words the anger of the public, which accused him of spreading the "most primitive stereotypes", also fell upon his head.

Assimilation of visitors is a long problem for France and Europe. The last wave of migrants, the threats of which are inclined to inflate many media outlets, writing about the "hordes of migrants and terrorists who flooded Europe," is only the most visible and, perhaps, the least dangerous part of the iceberg. The infringement of women's rights in many regions of France has long been known. These are places where the population of immigrant origin prevails, where urban space has long been occupied by men, where female behavior, clothing, status are increasingly encoded and controlled by religious associations, the influence of which is growing steadily. These are the so -called "lost territories of the republic", where the unspoken strict rules of the religious community quickly replace national laws.