
Friendships on the Line: When Politics and Gender Beliefs Take Over
While political disagreements are a prerequisite for a healthy democracy, excessive moralizing in debates, particularly by the far left, can transform friendly relations into actual private tribunals and cause rifts.
'I'm sorry, but I need to have friends who think alike, for my mental health,' Lucie* explained when she announced their separation. Domitille* has now accepted the decision, but continues to check on her former friend. The young woman in her 30s, who works in marketing, met Lucie while studying literature at the Sorbonne. At the time, the two students rarely discussed politics. 'There were no real disagreements, we just had discussions like all friends do about couples and relationships,' Domitille says.
'But one day, Lucie decided to settle the score.' Domitille received a detailed message in which her friend explained that she could not remain close to someone with 'unconscious sexist behavior.' Lucie's target: statements by Domitille that were deemed anti-feminist. "For example, I had said in passing during a conversation that women were more talkative and communicated more easily by text message than men. The mere fact of having stated that there could be specifically masculine and…

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France 24
an hour ago
- France 24
Are French cities' youth curfews effective in curbing drug-related violence?
The city of Nîmes in southern France is famous for its Roman arenas. Yet it has recently become the theatre for a series of shootings linked to the drug trade. First there was a shooting in a public square in the neighbourhood of Pissevin which left bullet marks on a nearby building and elevator door. Then there was the gruesome discovery of the partially charred, bullet-riddled body of a 19-year-old man in a nearby village. This violence, along with other shootings in broad daylight, led authorities in Nîmes on July 18 to enforce a curfew on young people. In doing so, they are following the example of French towns like Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine north of Paris and Villecresnes in the capital's southeastern suburbs. The ban, which prohibits anyone under 16 from being outside between 9pm and 6am in the most-affected areas of the city, is meant to prevent youth from 'being exposed to violence' and to 'contain tensions', according to a press release. These curfews – whose effectiveness is difficult to assess – are regularly challenged via the justice system, particularly by French rights group LDH (Ligue des droits de l'homme). Cinderella policy fails to stem urban violence Yet resorting to curfews fails to address structural issues like the police's inability to operate in some of France's most troubled neighbourhoods, some experts say. They claim the measure is more of a communication strategy for the authorities rather than an effective social policy. The problem of 'applying the law in certain poor neighbourhoods like Pissevin in Nîmes remains', Thomas Sauvadet, a sociologist and expert on youth delinquency at Paris Est Créteil University, says. 'The level of delinquency and criminality, whether economically motivated or not, makes police action difficult." Béziers, 120 kilometres southwest of Nîmes, also imposed a nighttime curfew for children under 13 last year. Its far-right mayor Robert Ménard decided to extend the measure last March to anyone under 15 in certain areas. "No 10-year-old out on the street at 2am is up to anything but mischief," Ménard said in 2024. Despite the ban, Béziers is still witness to scenes of shocking violence. In July, some 50 individuals in balaclavas lured police into a sensitive neighbourhood and then attacked them with fireworks, local media reported. The curfew is of course 'a communication strategy on the part of the public authorities', Laurent Mucchielli, a sociologist and research director at France's national reseach centre (CNRS) specialising in delinquency and security policy, says. 'They need to show they are doing something.' 'A curfew is not easy to enforce in neighbourhoods where the police only intervene in an offensive mode, and in urban configurations where their presence is quickly spotted by lookouts who alert the drug dealers,' Mucchielli says. Lack of perspectives Among the many factors that push young people into delinquency are a lack of perspectives, inter-familial violence, and difficulties at school which later lead to problems in accessing the job market, experts say. 'Let's not forget that it's easier for drug dealers to involve young people in their business because there are many teenagers in these poor neighbourhoods who left school early and have no qualifications,' Mucchielli says. 'Their parents are part of the 40 percent of the French population who can't afford to leave their homes to go on vacation, and they see this activity as 'a way out', or at least as a way to live a little better.' The adolescents and young adults who work as petits mains, or runners, in the illegal drug trade take enormous legal and personal risks. They prepare and deliver illegal drugs in exchange for modest payments while risking their lives and exposing themselves to legal action if they get caught. Their superiors higher up the ladder, on the other hand, can make hundreds of thousands of euros per day through their drug-dealing operations. After staking out their turf, they defend it tooth and nail from both the police and any competitors they perceive as a threat to their business. Mucchielli thinks that the police should be reinforced in order to better pursue those at the top of the drug-dealing chain, rather than going after petty drug-dealers. He also recommends rapidly resolving homicide attempts. 'The level of impunity is truly worrying. It terrifies inhabitants – and rightly so. And the youths who possess firearms and use them are generally over 16' – meaning the curfew does not apply to them.


Le Figaro
13 hours ago
- Le Figaro
Austerity Measures, Markets' Confidence Loss… The Specter of a Greek-Style Crisis for France
Réservé aux abonnés French Prime Minister François Bayrou presented his public finance recovery plan as a necessary evil to avoid France suffering a crisis similar to the one Athens experienced 15 years ago. 'Comparing today's France to Greece in 2010 is undoubtedly excessive. We're not there yet,' Christian de Boissieu, professor emeritus at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and vice-president of the Cercle des économistes think tank, said about the comparison François Bayrou drew during his press conference on July 15. Was this image a way for the French prime minister to seek greater support for his rigorous public finance recovery plan? Bayrou presented the over-indebtedness as a 'curse' against which 'the Greek people, the Greek state, have been forced to make enormous sacrifices,' cutting pensions by '30%' and civil servant salaries by '15%.' 'That's exactly what we don't want,' Bayrou emphasized, pedagogically. France is not there yet. Its deficit, standing at 5.8% of its GDP (gross domestic product) — the worst in the eurozone, admittedly — is still far from reaching that of Greece in October 2009. This had been the starting point of an acute debt crisis that lasted until 2015…


France 24
14 hours ago
- France 24
Gaza student leaves France over anti-Semitic social media posts spat
A student from Gaza who had been studying in France on a scholarship left for Qatar Sunday, ordered out over anti-Semitic comments found on her social media accounts, the foreign ministry said. Foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot "stressed the unacceptable nature of the comments made by Ms. Nour Attaalah, a Gazan student, before she entered French territory", said the ministry statement. "Given their seriousness, Ms. Attaalah could not remain on French territory. She left France today to go to Qatar to continue her studies there," it added. The student's lawyer, Ossama Dahmane, said Attaalah had chosen to "pursue her studies in another country in a spirit of appeasement and to guarantee her security", even if "she firmly denies the accusations made against her". The young woman, who had received a student visa and a government scholarship as part of a programme for Gazan students, had been due to join Sciences Po Lille in the fall. She arrived in France on July 11, according to a French diplomatic source. But social media posts from the past two years calling for the killing of Jews, since deleted, were discovered. That led to a judicial investigation for condoning terrorism, and an inquiry to determine why the posts had not been detected in advance. FRANCE 24 was unable to confirm the screen shots attributed to her by internet users and media outlets, but Sciences Po Lille said Wednesday that her social media comments had been confirmed, without elaborating. Dahmane, the lawyer, said the "alleged facts are largely based on shared tweets, taken out of context". Barrot said Friday that France was freezing all its student evacuation programmes from Gaza pending the outcome of the investigation into how the posts had been missed. The foreign ministry would not say how many students have been affected, citing privacy reasons. France has allowed in several hundred students from Gaza since the start of the war between Israel and the Hamas movement.