Interview with historian Christelle Taraud | Counting the dead is not enough

From the witch hunts of yesteryear to the rapes of war, “in every country in the world, in every era, women have been killed because they were women,” writes French historian Christelle Taraud in Femicides: a global story, the 900-page work that she edited. Women are fed up with this violence. When will the revolution come? she asks.

Each feminicide upsets us, but it “is not an anomaly” in world history, you write bluntly. What is it then?

It is the symbol of a terrible, very old balance of power which is based on the banality and impunity of violence against women. Femicide is in fact the most visible part of a system that dates back to prehistoric times. If this violence is so difficult to eradicate, it is precisely because it is part of millennia of domination by men over women.

What is specific about femicide?

It’s not a murder, but an execution. The man who kills a woman because she is a woman is both the judge and the executioner. Execution most often occurs after years of coercive control, when the woman seeks to take control of her life, which is inconceivable for him.

For you, femicides are part of a continuum. However, women represent 50% of the population. Men also have mothers, daughters and friends exposed to violence. How can we nevertheless explain this relative apathy?

Femicides exist in societies which have always tolerated all types of violence against women, femicides, but also incest, rape, domestic violence. […].

Not to mention that women are also sometimes killed before birth or just after. In Asia, 200 million women are not born, especially in India or China, but also in Thailand, Vietnam… Is there another category in the population world which would suffer a genocidal policy affecting 200 million people without there being a scandal planetary?

In France, these days we hear actresses denouncing attacks, others saying that they suffered this or that act, but that they found it, at the time, normal. But it’s not more today than yesterday. We will never be able to eradicate violence committed to women as long as we continue to think that there is acceptable violence.

Gérard Depardieu’s exes and President Emmanuel Macron in any case immediately went to the front to defend him…

The women in his life said it wasn’t possible. “We know him so well, he would never do that to a woman,” they said unanimously. As if we don’t know very well that we can supposedly being a good husband at home and a pedophile or rapist outside…

The singer Bertrand Cantat, who executed the actress Marie Trintignant, was also defended by those close to him, in particular by his brother who claimed that she was a “bad girl”, a hysteric. The truth is that Cantat exercised permanent control over her and that the very morning of his death, Marie had told her mother that she wanted to leave him.

Marie Trintignant, who died at the age of 41 from a hemorrhage following the beatings of Bertrand Cantat.

And for that, he served four years in prison, it’s shameful, as is his lack of regret. He could have used the media space he takes advantage of to champion the deconstruction of hegemonic masculinity. He didn’t do it and that’s what I blame him, like so many other women. For the rest, there must be real penalties, but judicialization is not enough. Our entire socialization needs to be rethought.

“Men are afraid that women will make fun of them. Women are afraid that men will kill them,” underlines Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. Are men and women themselves aware of this fear, at least of being attacked, which runs through their lives and of the precautions they often take, even unconsciously?

Yes, women are afraid of men, because they know that they can slip into extreme violence very quickly. And before raping or killing a woman, in private, a man committed, during his life, other attacks against a number of women. How many women are insulted and harassed in the street? Before the man kills his wife, he humiliated her, insulted her, controlled her. If this gear was stopped in time, it would make all the difference. When a woman is insulted in the street, no one cares. On the contrary, people should stop, intervene and that the woman herself systematically files a complaint. This is in any case what the feminicidal continuum shows, that violence against women is a constant flow and that everything is linked.

And that’s without mentioning Afghan women and Iranian women, who see their lives being denied. How can we overcome our helplessness in the face of them?

Soror resistance networks are formed. They don’t succeed yet to bring down the Taliban regime or mullahs, but they succeed in exfiltrating a woman in danger, in freeing others from prison, and they work on public opinion… We have at the very least succeeded in setting up circles of vigilance, action and thought that transcend borders.

Is there really hope?

We are in a period of awareness, of shock. We have to see if this will lead to there feminist revolution that we are calling for. A regression is not impossible either. Women’s history is made up of advances and setbacks, which is specific to any dynamic based on power relations.