Against the criminalisation of street harassment in France

An open letter by French feminists and researchers into gender violence in opposition to a proposed law to make street harassment an infraction:

“[…] When the category “street harassment” is inserted into the penal domain, the street again becomes the target of public policy. At the same time, this also means targeting the populations who occupy this space, who often belong to impoverished and racialised layers. Other terminologies could be used instead, in order to emphasise that the control over women’s bodies is not only exercised in the street, but also in the workplace, in universities, in leisure spaces, and even in women’s homes.

So the problem of this category, and even more so the plans to police and criminalise it, is that it circumscribes a specific category of acts judged unacceptable — street harassment — and a category of people — men from the poor and racialised classes — that will be judged particularly problematic. Yet we know that young men from the poor and racialised classes are already more than anyone subject to police control and violence by the forces of order. So we might legitimately fear that this new infraction will strengthen this state of affairs.

To police or criminalise street harassment offers no answer to the various different forms of constraint on women’s bodies and women’s mobility, in the street as elsewhere. To create a new infraction will but reinforce the repression and control over men from disadvantaged categories. We are feminists and researchers into gender violence, and this is indeed a question linked to women’s rights. We oppose a criminalisation that will serve to designate what forms of sexism are legitimate and illegitimate. For it will serve to keep in the shadows other forms of sexism, committed in well-to-do neighbourhoods and big companies, which will remain legitimate and above reproach.”

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3493-against-the-criminalisation-of-street-harassment-in-france