i’ve always been a francophone and, to a more guarded extent, a francophile. i grew up in that milieu and for me it always retained the burnished, romantic glow of childhood. but here, i must agree with norman finkelstein. it’s an interesting experiment in how fear and hatred, combined with colonial arrogance and present day impuissance, can make people dangerously stupid. this all-or-nothing fabricated notion of exclusive, monolithic, timeless identities needs to be deconstructed (liberté, egalité, fraternité, laïcité or secularist, feminist, democratic, western, european, etc) – it’s becoming as lurid as the théâtre du grand guignol. #WTFFrance
More here.
N.B. just to clarify, i (and finkelstein or whoever came up with the title that finkelstein chose to post on his blog) do not literally mean that france should somehow tumble off the planet in some strange prank devised by olympian goddesses, it’s a tongue in cheek title which expresses our frustration and, as a woman, my absolute revulsion and rage at men asking women to strip in any way whatsoever as armed agents of any state.