When Sofie Peeters moved to Brussels for a film degree, she found herself confronted with a depressing problem almost every time she left her front door. Walking around her local neighbourhood, the mixed, working-class district of Anneessens, at any time of day she would be greeted with cat-calls, wolf-whistles and jeers of "slag" and "how much do you cost?"

Sick of wondering whether it was her fault for wearing particular clothes, she made her end of year film on the topic, armed with a hidden camera to record the street harassment.

Female acquaintances admitted the problem was so bad they never went out in a skirt, avoided the metro, never made eye contact with men, avoid walking certain streets, never wore shorts and in one case, only ever left their house by bike.

The student film, Femme de la Rue, a shocking account of everyday sexist insults in the street, is now at the centre of a political and social storm in Belgium and across its borders. After it was shown on TV and at a screening last week it has become an internet success and triggered a public debate.

Belgian politicians say they were already planning legislation to crack down on sexist insults and harassment, promising fines for offenders. French feminist groups seized on the film to highlight similar problems in France and break the taboo surrounding street harassment. In turn, Peeters has denied charges of racism as the film shows mainly jeers by men of immigrant north African origin.

In the film, she walks round her neighbourhood wearing jeans and a cardigan and then a knee-length summer dress and flat boots. A hidden camera shows that both times, men – from youths to groups of older men on cafe terraces – leer, cat-call and proposition her. She is called "whore", "slut", "bitch" and told that she looks up for sex. One man follows her saying she should come to his house or a hotel room. She says she gets this kind of comment eight to 10 times a day.

"The first question women ask is: 'Is it me? Is it something I have done, is it my clothes?' But when I made this film I saw it wasn't just me, lots of women have this problem," Peeters told Belgian TV.

One woman in the film admits it's "sad" but she always changes out of a skirt even to go round the corner. Others avoid public transport.

Peeters talks to a crowd of local young men of north African origin about how to stop the insults. They suggest she says she is married. Peeters said: "I was told, 'Come out with a man, your boyfriend and we'll leave you alone.' But that's ridiculous. Women have the right to walk where they want."

She told the paper La Capitale that most harassment was by men with Maghreb roots but the film was more about the social status of the neighbourhood than ethnicity.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/belgian-street-harassment-documentary-race-row/story-fnb64oi6-1226443396385

A BELGIAN woman who made a film about being harassed on the streets of Brussels has been accused of racism because the men she secretly recorded pestering her are of immigrant origin.

Sofie Peeters, a graduate film student, used a hidden camera to record a barrage of verbal abuse from men of all ages as she walked around a district of Brussels in a summer dress and boots.

Extracts of the film, posted on the internet, show the 24-year-old being approached by men asking for sex. Polite refusals are greeted with shouts of “whore” and “bitch”. Critics accused Ms Peeters, a Fleming, of racism, pointing out that the men in the film were of North African origin. The footage was shot in the immigrant Anneessens district.

Ms Peeters said one of her “biggest fears” had been “how to tackle this subject without making the film racist”, but added: “This is the reality - when you’re walking around Brussels, in nine cases out of 10 these insults come from a foreigner.”

It's pretty disgusting the lengths that the forces of Fascism will go to to demonize islam in Europe. Here we have a so-called "film student" walking around a muslim area like she's somehow allowed to completely ignore the dominant cultural values of the area.

I mean no one "deserves" to be harassed like that but the idea that subaltern immigrant communities will take this sort provocative dress and assertive behaviour lying down is ludicrous.

So my question is how can the European progressive and anti-fascist movement react to this sort of hate-propaganda from Right-wing feminism?

Edited by Ironicwarcriminal (Aug. 6, 2012 03:23:53)

Goethestein posted:

by that logic people would be perfectly defensible when they harass muslims walking down te street in a non muslim area

Um no because the non-muslim culture is dominant. These persecuted immigrants have established de facto sovereignty over their residential areas and by challenging white, atheistic hegemony (like the guys in these videos) they are expressing their pride and their refusal to accept provocation by the majority.

Jerthebear posted:

you're talking about areas which are predominantly muslim, so they are the majority; somehow the oppressive nature of one majority is justified, while the other's is hegemonic provocation?

look at which side has the courts, the media, the state, the guns and THEN try to equivocate them.....

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Crow posted:

just organize the immigrant women to go around beating / shaming these guys. Win

who is going to organize those women?

The Party

Crow posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Crow posted:
just organize the immigrant women to go around beating / shaming these guys. Win
who is going to organize those women?


The Party

The Party being imposed on muslim areas to "help" them? oh dear this is like central Asia all over again

tpaine posted:

you killed a man. add that to your resume

Mr. Alex Crow
666-420-6969 DearthMaul@earthlink.net

Special Skills
1) Fuck
2) Destroy
3) Drive Goon to Suicide

i dont think anyone ever "drives" a goon to suicide, so much as take the parking brake off

swirlsofhistory posted:

I hazard a guess these non-white men probably don't get invited to the sexy university parties that young white women attend. White men don't need to catcall because their sexual access to white women is taken for granted, they're the ones throwing the parties and naturally fall into what the woman considers her acceptable dating pool. It's OK to have hookups and casual sex within that closed scene, but out on the street where white women and non-white men happen to mingle is ruled out of bounds for sexual advances. When these feminists demand 'protection' from being propositioned on the street, they are effectively clamoring for more policing of non-white men. They are helping shore up the informal structure of white supremacy.

Agreed, women just need to accept that they don't have the right to walk the streets unmolested

Crow posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Crow posted:
Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Crow posted:
just organize the immigrant women to go around beating / shaming these guys. Win
who is going to organize those women?


The Party
The Party being imposed on muslim areas to "help" them? oh dear this is like central Asia all over again


yes, the party helped them, and 80% of people polled in kazakhstan, tajikistan, kyrgyzstan during the mid 90s thought quality of life has declined since independence. also, that was a national question, and this is an internal question.

I never knew you were such a fan of imperialism crow....

Crow posted:

wonder if you even know where those republics are located without looking at a website for idiots

i can trace the course of the oxus with my eyes closed brutha.....yYou know.........it’s the river that feeds the sea that the Soviets completely destroyed?

babyfinland posted:

90% of germans polled in 1942 felt that life was better under hitler than in the weimar republic, same.

oh yeah, that's interesting, that makes alot of sense, the people polled in those republics were still living under the USSR, in the 90s, in your Head Space, Which is fat

babyfinland posted:

Crow posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Crow posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Crow posted:
Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Crow posted:
just organize the immigrant women to go around beating / shaming these guys. Win
who is going to organize those women?


The Party
The Party being imposed on muslim areas to "help" them? oh dear this is like central Asia all over again


yes, the party helped them, and 80% of people polled in kazakhstan, tajikistan, kyrgyzstan during the mid 90s thought quality of life has declined since independence. also, that was a national question, and this is an internal question.

I never knew you were such a fan of imperialism crow....

i always knew you were very historically ignorant

what else would you call imposing european military administration on non-europeans to oversee thesystemic exploitation of labor

how would you classify labor in the soviet union then, that's really interesting, you're very interesting to me

babyfinland posted:

iwc did you know that uzbekistan smells like roses. nyc smells like urine and tashkent like roses. what a world.

interesting....

did you see this?

http://www.youroilandgasnews.com/tethys+petroleum+limited+announces+tajikistan+resource+upgrade+27.5+billion+boe_80039.html

Tethys Petroleum Limited ("Tethys" or "the Company") (TSX:TPL)(LSE:TPL) is pleased to announce that it has received an updated independent Resource Report for its Tajikistan assets. These cover an area of approximately 35,000 sq. km and the estimated gross unrisked mean recoverable resources are 27.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE).