“Why the reinstatement of Adrien Quatennens in the LFI group in the National Assembly does not pass”

2023-05-11 13:00:11

Lhe #metoo shock wave within the framework of the new global feminist dynamic has made visible the extent of gender-based and sexual violence at all levels of society. Left-wing political and trade union organizations have been the scene of a proliferation of recent cases, not so much because they are more concerned than the others, but because they have feminist aspirations. It is the impetus of activists, and more particularly of young activists involved in the current feminist renewal, which pushes to put activist practices in line with principles, at the individual and collective level.

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More than fifty years ago, the Women’s Liberation Movement was born in the wake of revolutionary organizations that emerged from the margins with the May-June 1968 movement. Feminists then affirmed: “Your sexual liberation is not ours” in the face of militants who expected sexual availability from militants. More broadly, they denounced a gendered division of militant labor which made them at best “companions of”, at worst invisible militants, in charge of the secretariat or of all kinds of devalued tasks. What is being played out today further deepens the assertion then made by feminists: “The personal is political. » It is also legitimized by gender studies, which underline all of its ramifications, which, in turn, feeds the dispute.

The power of current feminist protest is such that it produces profound questions about society. It provokes a reactionary moral panic and conservative upheavals. Progressive organizations must therefore face up to both the reaction and the urgency of carrying out a radical transformation of their practices under the impetus of this new generation of activists.

A bitter taste

What is at stake around the reintegration of Adrien Quatennens into the parliamentary group La France insoumise (LFI) cannot be extracted from these elements of context. They probably explain why the reintegration does not pass. Although the vote concerning his reinstatement was carried out in a democratic way within the group, that Adrien Quatennens has followed the training requested and that he has probably reversed his public statements of December 2022 – in which he presented himself as a victim of ‘A “media lynching” − during the parliamentary hearing, his reinstatement posed a problem. For what ?

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