Invited Tuesday, January 25 from France Inter, Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, was questioned on a dramatic subject: the still high number of feminicides. 113 women died under the blows of their spouse in 2021, 10 more already since the beginning of the month: these are the figures that Léa Salamé reminded Gérald Darmanin, who offered a real demonstration in the art of dodging the Questions.
“Even if there were still a single woman who died from blows from her husband, it’s not a question of 10, 100 or 500. We’re not going to start making statistical comparisons, it’s obviously always a drama and we always have to improve, of course!”
Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interioron France Inter
This last sentence, “Obviously we always have to improve”, apparently sounds like a form of concession, even a mea culpa. But it’s actually more subtle than that. When Gérald Darmanin tells us: “whether there are 500, 100 or just one, this is still unacceptable”this amounts to dismissing all policies to combat violence against women back to back, whatever their results, as long as they remain above 0 deaths. And imagine that that is a sophism, a fallacious process. This is called the perfect solution fallacy: it consists of claiming that all solutions that are less than perfect are also unacceptable. Now, of course, they count, these differences: 50 feminicides or 500, numbers up or down, it’s not exactly the same thing.
.@GDarmanin : “Today, women who are psychologically or physically affected by their companion systematically file a complaint, systematically there are now police custody, systematically there are legal proceedings”#le79inter pic.twitter.com/mtM93x8JFL
– France Inter (@franceinter) January 25, 2022
More than a means of justifying the status quo, it seems to me that this is a way of intimating us not to evaluate the success or failure of the government in this matter. As if, suddenly, talking about numbers was indecent. Moreover, the Minister of the Interior tells us explicitly: “we are not going to start making statistical comparisons”. So why not. But it still seems funny, when you listen to the rest of the interview!
“We are at 94,000 naturalizations per year, in the five-year term of the President of the Republic. The majority of the UMP, when it was in charge, was 104,000 per year.” “It’s not a slight drop in property damage since it’s less 15% burglaries, less 22% vehicle thefts, less 29% thefts with a weapon, less 27% violent thefts.” “We deport twice as many as in Germany, three times as many as in Italy”
Security: “When we take stock of the objective of the five years of the President of the Republic, we will see that there is a continuous drop in delinquency, burglaries, car thefts, thefts with violence”, assures @GDarmanin#le79inter pic.twitter.com/kXJS2QHBgz
– France Inter (@franceinter) January 25, 2022
You see that, surprisingly, this question of feminicides is the only one on which the Minister of the Interior refuses to make statistical comparisons: proof, if it were still needed, of the government’s unease on this question.
A single feminicide is already not acceptable, of course. And no one said dealing with such dramas was easy. But we also have to put this debate in context. In November 2017, Emmanuel Macron decreed that the elimination of violence against women would be the great cause of the quinquennium. He was not the first to set this kind of ambition. In 2002, President Chirac made the fight against road violence a national issue in his mandate. Result: in five years, the number of deaths on the road had decreased very significantly, by more than 40%.
This is why Gérald Darmanin is ready for all sophisms to dodge the question: he knows that in this case, it is in his interest that we do not make comparisons!