Stanford Humanities Center
New Edits for Human Experience story
On May 14, 2011, just before takeoff for a flight from New York City to Paris, police arrested French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a leading candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections. Strauss-Kahn was charged with allegedly sexually assaulting a housekeeper at the hotel where he had been staying in New York. The resulting scandal, which has most recently seen Strauss-Kahn released from prison on parole, has revealed distinct differences between American and French perspectives on gender roles, riling the media and the public in both nations.
Cécile Alduy, an associate professor of French at Stanford, has been following the case with great interest. Her research centers on the history of the body and of sexuality in literature, and she sees the furious debate that has erupted in the aftermath of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal as a story with roots that trace back to Renaissance-era France.
Alduy’s study of French poetry and literature, from the 16th century to today, has allowed her to examine the cultural history of France through a number of scholarly lenses. Her specific emphasis on the history of the representation of the female body in texts and art has broadened the scope of her literary expertise to include feminist and gender studies.
Close to 60% of respondents to a poll taken in France on May 16, 2011, shortly after Strauss-Kahn was indicted, believed he was more likely framed by a political competitor than guilty of the charges. In an opinion column published in the French newspaper Le Monde on May 26, 2011, Professor Alduy indicated that this first, massive wave of support for Strauss-Kahn and the little attention paid to the alleged victim in the first few days after the news are evidence of the way that issues of sexual harassment, sexual aggression, or sexism are routinely downplayed and under scrutinized in a society that on the surface appears to support gender equality. Hers was not the only voice to raise concerns about this state of affairs: in the weeks that followed the arrest, demonstrations and petitions called for more respects for women’s rights, and a vivid debate opposed French and American feminists, intellectuals, and citizens of all walks of life as the French public and the media grappled collectively with these issues maybe for one of the first times.
Professor Alduy’s reaction was largely shaped by her research and her experience as a French national and observer of French society. Alduy shares her thoughts on the roots of the polemics that surrounded the first weeks of the judicial saga, sketching for us a brief history of gender representation in French art and literature.
Let’s start by what you singled out in your Op-Ed for Le Monde as traces of the Ancien Régime mentality that still pervades everyday gender relations in France. In the aftermath of Strauss-Kahn’s indictment, journalist Jean-François Kahn, a long time friend of former IMF director, tried to defend him by suggesting that rather than attempted rape, the scene might have amounted to a “troussage de domestique.” The comment provoked an uproar among French feminists: why? And where does the phrase come from?
CA: The phrase “un troussage de domestique” has been translated in the Anglo-Saxon press as “a quickie with a domestic.” Although contextually accurate, this translation does not even start to unfold the rich, but troubling cultural connotations that lies underneath.
“Trousser” literally means to lift someone’s skirt. The phrase evokes a visual euphemism found in medieval and Renaissance iconography and literature where the scene of a man sliding his hand underneath a woman’s dress is a metaphor for what’s to come next: actual intercourse. It’s a very common image in Renaissance engravings, in books of light erotic poetry or, in literature, in the tradition ribald songs and novellas that date back from medieval folk tales and the Roman de la Rose and continues in Rabelais’ coarse misogyny—a tradition still very much alive in what some French comedians proudly reclaim as a specifically French “grivois” strand of humor.
Jean-François Kahn, probably unconsciously, adds to this already charged image a long-lived idea: that the bodies of servants and domestics are up for grabs for their masters.
What is symptomatic here is the cultural unconscious revealed by the use of such an archaic idiomatic phrase: although women’s rights (and employees’ rights for that matter) have progressed drastically over the last 50 years, the cultural frameworks through which some see and talk about women’s bodies is still very much steeped in an Ancien Régime mentality.
Blasons du Corps Femenin 1536, dans Hecatomphile [Ensemble, les fleurs de Poesie Françoyse, Et aultres choses solacieuses. Reveues Nouvellement] 1537
What about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn story motivated you to comment on French culture in an international forum like Le Monde?
CA: As a French woman living in the United States, I felt outraged, and shocked, at how Strauss-Kahn was immediately exonerated from a majority of French people from any suspicion that the alleged victim was indeed assaulted, even though there is a history of sexual misconducts on his part, it is true under-reported by the French media in the name of respecting politician’s private lives.
The kinds of sexist comments that could be heard in the media in the first few days after Strauss-Kahn indictment were appalling, and contrasted sharply with the ethics of zero tolerance for sexual harassment in the workplace in the States. What was shocking to me was the cultural unconscious these comments and reactions revealed, and the blind eye the French media and the political and intellectual elite would turn on this fact.
The warm, positive responses I received after my Op-Ed was published confirmed that I was not the only one to have felt a line had been crossed.
Twenty years ago Anita Hill alleged that her supervisor, now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, harassed her in a sexual manner, setting into motion an era of increased awareness of the issue of sexual harassment in the United States. You have described the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal as having the potential to be a parallel turning point for the French. How confident are you that the French are ready for change?
CA: I do think that the Strauss-Kahn scandal has already changed the conversation about sexual harassment and gender stereotypes in France. Even with the latest developments that saw the release of Strauss-Kahn from house arrest and mounting doubts about the credibility of his accuser, the media have been subjected to harsh criticism for their coverage of the political elite and for “covering up” alleged misconducts. Other sexual scandals implicating elected politicians erupted in May and June, as if a taboo had been broken, a wave of revelations unleashed.
For almost a month after May 14th, there was not a single day when the question of gender inequality, everyday sexism, and the necessary reassessment of the role of the media and the judicial and legal system in counterbalancing these, were not front and center in the public debate. That's a welcome change.
I do think that there has already been a shift in the perception of these issues, a realization that other countries treat sexual harassment, sex crimes and plain old inappropriateness differently, and that the current taboo in France on such affairs cannot last any longer.
And there is now a new generation of young, vocal, organized feminists who are in favor of a zero tolerance policy regarding sexual harassment and everyday expression of machismo.
Read more: Alduy on "What’s New in the New Strauss-Kahn Storyline?"
© Stanford University. All rights reserved. Stanford, CA 94305 Contact Us
Share
