The Toulouse administrative court examined last week an interim relief filed by two feminist associations and a union against the fresco deemed sexist which sits on a wall of the boarding school canteen at Purpan hospital. The summary judge orders the CHU to remove the painting.
Porn for some, cultural for others
It is an openly erotic parody of the painting by Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People. Naked men and women, identified as CHU executives, having sex, biting their buttocks, with a collar around the neck or on all fours. Some find it ugly, degrading, pornographic, sexist. Others claim a form of freedom of expression and a rifle culture peculiar to medical students, openly assuming sass and self-mockery. A tradition so ingrained that the controversy did not come from the ranks of the students themselves or the hospital staff recognizable on the board and who gave their consent.
It was a caregiver, South Social Health delegate who sounded the alert last October. Faced with more and more press articles, the management of the CHU asked the association of interns to take down this fresco. Instructions that were not followed, fifteen days later, the table was still in place.