.: Les dernières brèves : > This ancient blog is currently being reactivated within a new technical and legal frame under www.topicsandroses.org... (Le Monday 25 August) Glad to welcome you here, please indulge many modifications in the next period until the autumn 2009. Welcome, read, share... and enjoy! - > Main dans la main contre le mariage forcé, campagne européenne. A Saint-Denis en région parisienne le 7 juin (Le Saturday 7 June)

Dans le cadre de la Campagne Européenne « Main dans la Main contre les mariages forcés » Le Centre Culturel TAWHID en partenariat avec SPIOR organise une conférence/débat soutenue par la municipalité de Saint-Denis.

Samedi 7 juin à 14h00 à la Bourse du Travail de Saint-Denis 11, rue Genin 93200 Saint-Denis Métro Porte de Paris (ligne 13) Entrée libre

Intervenants :

- Marianne VORTHOREN, représentante de la ville de ROTTERDAM, membre de SPIOR.

- Hamida BEN SADIA, militante associative.

- Fabienne SOULAS, maire adjointe de Saint- Denis déléguée aux droits des femmes.

- Yacob MAHI, docteur en sociologie.

- > Femmes Palestiniennes entre souffrances et résistances (Charleroi, Belgique) (Le Sunday 6 April)

Dans le prolongement de la Journée internationale de la femme,

les associations «Marianne» et «Femmes Musulmanes de

Belgique» mettent à l’honneur la femme palestinienne.

Femmes Palestiniennes

entre souffrances et résistances

Dimanche 6 avril 2008 à 15 h

Accueil dès 14 h.

Salle «La braise», rue Zénobe Gramme, 21 à 6000 Charleroi

INFOS: 0473/286 375 - 0486/721426 fmbcharleroi@yahoo.com

Stand de livres - Salon de thé

Intervenantes:

Marianne Blume, enseignante à Gaza durant 10 ans. Auteur du livre «Gaza dans mes yeux.»

Dominique Waroquiez, membre de l’Association belgo-palestinienne à Bruxelles.

Renée Mousset, Présidente de l’Association belgo-palestinienne de Liège

Exposition des photographies de Véronique Vercheval évoquant la vie quotidienne en PALESTINE.

- > 14 mars : “RACISME, IDEOLOGIE POST - COLONIALE ... ET LES FEMMES DANS TOUT CELA?” (Bruxelles) (Le Sunday 9 March)

DANS LE CADRE DE LA SEMAINE D ACTIONS CONTRE LE RACISME COORDONNE PAR LE MRAX

Il y a une nécessité, aujourd’hui, de mener une réflexion concernant la question de « l’idéologie post - coloniale » dans notre société. En effet, c’est à travers un « imaginaire colonial » et des stéréotypes faussés que sont appréhendés les « immigrés post coloniaux », que l’on continue de considérer comme des « sous citoyens », et qui subissent chaque jour une exclusion économique, sociale et politique. Par ailleurs et dans une perspective féminine, il s’agira de mettre en évidence l’instrumentalisation de la question du genre et plus particulièrement de la "femme arabe, musulmane, immigrée", à des fins soi disant féministes, tout en questionnant l’attitude d’un certain « féminisme hégémonique » qui place la femme "blanche", "occidentale" dans un rapport de domination avec les femmes « racisées» [1], et qui dessert la cause de celles qu’il prétend libérer, comme le soulignent les tenantes d’un féminisme postcolonial.

En tant qu’association féminine, cette forme de « racisme » nous interpelle puisqu’elle rend compte d’un mécanisme de domination : l’enfermement des dominés dans leurs "différences" et qui produit de multiples formes de discriminations dans la société belge. C’est dans cette perspective que L’association Femmes Musulmanes de Belgique [2] , en partenariat avec l’association Loqman organisent une rencontre :

“RACISME, IDEOLOGIE POST - COLONIALE ... ET LES FEMMES DANS TOUT CELA?” Le vendredi 14 mars 2008 à 19h30

Aux Facultés Universitaires St Louis Auditoire 1 Boulevard du Botanique 43,1000 Bruxelles

Avec :

- Nadine PLATEAU (Membre de SOPHIA et militante féministe)

- Houria BOUTELDJA (Porte parole du Mouvement des Indigènes de la République)

- Tariq RAMADAN (Professeur d’islamologie à Oxford, professeur invité à Rotterdam et Senior Research Fellow au Japon et à la Lokahi Foundation à Londres)

- Radouane BOUHLAL (Président du MRAX) Le débat sera modéré par Sophie LEONARD (Commission Islam et Laïcité)

- > Resisting Women vous Propose JEUDI 31 JANVIER 08 une Rencontre autour du Livre "Le Coran et les femmes : Une lecture de libération" d’Asma Lamrabet (Le Thursday 31 January)

La problématique de la "femme musulmane" est depuis longtemps prise en otage entre deux perceptions extrêmes… Celle d’une approche islamique conservatrice très rigide et celle d’une approche occidentale, ethnocentrique et islamophobe. En réponse à cela, se dessine parmi une partie des croyantes musulmanes un nouveau mouvement qui entreprend une relecture du Coran à partir d’une perspective féminine et qui se donne pour objectif de retrouver une véritable dynamique de libération de l’intérieur même de la sphère islamique, dans la perspective d’une "revalorisation" du statut de la femme musulmane.

Dans le cadre du Réseau Resisting Women – Femmes En Résistance et du site www.resistingwomen.net

Vous êtes invité-e-s à une rencontre autour du livre

Le Coran et les femmes : Une lecture de libération

Jeudi 31 JANVIER 2008 de 20H00 à 22H30 Au CEDETIM - 21ter rue

Voltaire - 75011 PARIS (France)

Entrée Libre

Pour tout renseignement, veuillez nous contacter au 06.62.73.78.79

Avec la participation de :

- Asma Lamrabet : Médecin et intellectuelle engagée sur la question de la femme en Islam. Ouvrage le plus récent : Le Coran et les femmes : Une lecture de libération (2007)

- Nadia Oulehri : Avocate au Barreau de Rabat et Présidente de l’association « Action Femmes Juristes ».

-             .: Articles récemment publiés : > MEXICO : MUJERES EN RESISTENCIA, DECLARACIÓN DE OAXACA () - > Why "Topics&Roses"? (2007) - > La longue marche des femmes en Iran (1 February 2007) -

Women in Resistance to the feminine ideal

Tuesday 12 June 2007

Version imprimable de cet article Version imprimable
Every year since 2003, a feminist film festival is being organised in the outskirts of Paris in Arcueil, whose name ist just the same like us : "Femmes en Résistance", which means "resisting women", of course. The 2006 edition of this Festival was dedicated to "Women in Resistance to the feminine ideal"... This is the introducing text, that we would like to share with you...

Original web page : ->http://www.resistancesdefemmes.org/English.htm]

Ideal : 1: a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence. 2: one regarded as exemplifying an ideal and often taken as a model for imitation. 3: an ultimate object or aim of endeavor. Websters

Ideal, idealized, THE Woman, who sacrifices herself and is rewarded with a medal for the family, care-giving, devotion, purity, for being veiled, the good little girl, the top model, the sex bomb, the perfect assistant, mother courage, the sister, the virgin...She is ideal, therefore unreal. She is the reflection in a mirror, the retouched image on the magazine cover.

Subjugated to this image, she is idolized.

Imprisoned in these deceptive roles, in what the others wish, dispossessed of herself, woman is worshiped in her subjugated roles, for the beauty of her body.

If she strays just slightly from this ideal reflection, she passes through the looking glass and becomes the bitch, the slut, the bad mother... the one who deviates from the norm (the witch), who breaks away, who ‘loses it’ (hysterical), who says no, who refuses, who turns down (the lesbian)...

Caught between these two sides of this distorting mirror, how can women assert their individuality, their will, their desire...? What possibilities are there for resistance to these mechanisms, as manipulative as they are devastating?

How is one no longer a role-model, but becomes a being whose ideas, art, activism impact society?

It’s true that the role-models of the mother and the whore might seem obsolete to us today, no longer valid. They have in fact lost some of their validity thanks to the struggles of feminists and to the progress of women. Certain societies have changed with women having the right to education, to vote, to work without the permission of the husband, the possibility of contraception and abortion, to control one’s body.... and destiny.

But aren’t the old models still active, perhaps less visible but still in place, and now coming back in force in the hands of patriarchal religions and societies.... as well as in the hands of marketing, for the economy and advertising?

The sexism of language and the hypocrisy of the ‘male gaze’ define us. Fairytales and song lyrics, movies, job orientation, institutions, religions or psychoanalysis... don’t they all continue harping on the familiar sexist models, using the same old clichés?

Each society promotes whichever idealized model of the woman that they need to be in power, to control, to impose their ideology or to make profits.

Here the motivation is economical. The new super-woman of capitalist societies is a beautiful, active, perfect mother, and she’s necessarily thin and always young, this unattainable model fuels a constant market of new products as ‘ordinary’ women try to reach this ideal, becoming compulsive buyers in this futile pursuit. While the new whore shown on glossy pages gives men free license to their fantasies, with the offer to sublimate these in redemptive consumerism. What used to be the (un)dressed slut in satin has now become the current sex symbol (un)covered in latex... “Progress” in our societies pushes women to leave their stuffy homes, to come out in the limelight and display themselves across the billboards of our cities, and to consume more actively to fuel the economy.

If women are uncovering themselves in one place, others are covering themselves up somewhere else... A fabric that is becoming heavier and darker transforms women into ghost-like silhouettes grazing the dilapidated walls... to the benefit of whom? How does this ideal of purety, as inaccessible as the others, benefit women? In all cases, their being idealized, shuns women aside... Of course the rational is to protect them... protect their purety, their fragile nerves, these weaker beings that society must protect... protecting her against society itself and its propensity to vice...protecting women to remain women.

What bigger shame is there than to lose one’s feminine identity, one’s sweet, pure self! The recent commentaries regarding the torturer Lynndie England were not so much appalled by her crimes against humanity but by the inconceivable fact that these were actually committed by a woman. Violence is conceivable, and in certain cases rewarded, when it is done by men. But a woman committing violence is unimaginable. The woman is no longer a women, but a monster. This is just an extreme example of how women are confined by society’s roles and clichés. To idealize women to render them invisible, to infantilize women to subjugate them: to make their diversity and individuality disappear...

Though it has been fo ages women have been resisting and transgressing: they wanted to learn, to work, to protest, to drive a car or navigate a plane, wear pants, be athletic, make films and be political... to be who they want to be and asserting themselves. Real, not idealized, women have died in their struggle. For example, Olympe de Gouges, who was guillotined shortly after the revolution for defending the cause of women prohibited to participate in public assemblies and being forced back into the sphere of the home; or another example is Emily Davisson, the suffragist, who threw herself in kamikaze under the hooves of royal carriage horses in the name of women’s rights... all these women in resistance have been ridiculed, and put down by society... Giving women the right to vote could lead to their downfall and the dissolution of the family. The same tune again during feminist movement in the ‘70s: hysterical bitches, witches, not real women.

Resistance here, resistance in other places.... Women have always done it, asserting their individuality and their diversity that society dismisses; and taking the risk of no longer being considered a woman. This year, the festival will explore, through different times and places, to discover the hidden and tortuous paths women have taken to affirm thelselves.

Whether women are struggling against sexist publicity or religious bans, resisting the beauty norms of the sex bomb, resisting in all different ways, from visible radical activism to subtle subversion in the private sphere...the artistic expressions of resistance against the feminine ideal are numerous... one just has to look outside the mainstream circuits, to see differently, to look unencumbered by society’s norms.. importantly not to believe when told we’re no longer at that point (?!)...

.... two steps forwards, three steps backwards is the pace that society is moving along on the issue....

Copyright Festival Femmes en Résistance.

Festival Website www.resistancesdefemmes.org.


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