They pose in silence, all dressed in black, their faces crossed out with a hand painted red to symbolize the silence to which victims of rape or sexual assault are forced. And more generally gender-based violence.
This happening was organized today, Saturday, place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville (IVe), by the collective #NousToutes. An action called “One in seven”, for one in seven women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape during her life. “How many of us have ever been in the company of seven women without imagining the sexual violence suffered by at least one of them? asks the collective, which has decided to give life to this reality, embodied in front of the Hôtel-de-Ville.
Divided into two groups of seven, therefore, the activists each brandished a sign on which a large question mark was drawn in black marker.
“We really visualize there. We wonder which of them”, comment two women, who stopped to take a picture of the group and read the leaflet that the collective distributes to passers-by, explaining the symbolism of the happening. And the reasons for the action: “To demand that gender violence become a subject of struggle for the whole of society. But also the rapid adoption of a framework law against patriarchal violence, the only solution to put an end to it definitively. »
Activists want ambitious law
The objective is to “impose for all to see the reality of sexual violence, the reality of a woman’s life today in France and to arouse the indignation and mobilization of all to bring about a profound change in mentalities” .
A law that the activists want to be ambitious, endowed with a permanent annual budget of 2 billion euros, and which would include a program of education in sexual and emotional life at school, the initial and continuous compulsory training of professionals in the education, health and justice. But also an emergency plan for the protection of children, the creation of brigades and specialized courts, the massive deployment of protective devices, the inclusion of feminicides and the concept of consent in the Penal Code.
In parallel with the happening, a “signs” workshop was organized this Saturday at the Paris Labor Exchange (Xe), in view of the demonstration against gender violence, which will leave on November 19 at 2 p.m. from Place de la République. .