Grenoble: 100 feminist organizations for changing the rules…

For four years now, the Muslim women’s union has been fighting for access to the municipal swimming pools of Grenoble, a public service from which they are excluded by the internal regulations. Indeed, the latter imposes a sexist-racist standardization and refuses all people who do not want to wear a so-called feminine and traditional swimsuit. However, the feminine – if indeed this singular has a meaning – cannot be reduced to wearing a bikini or a one-piece swimsuit.

Going to the pool means exposing your body to society, to the standardization of binary, gendered assignments, to sexist, transphobic, racist, validist imaginations. Discovering one’s body and thus exposing oneself to the gaze of other users can be a humiliating, embarrassing and therefore excluding experience. Obliging people wearing the headscarf to undress to access a public service open to all is very concretely prohibiting them from accessing it. Feminism that only defends the rights of white and bourgeois cisgender women has no value other than to offer an alibi for reactionary and colonialist decisions.

Several feminist collectives, political parties, unions and individuals are positioning themselves today via the Feminist General Assembly of Grenoble so that access to municipal swimming pools is no longer conditioned for anyone by the length of swimsuits that meet the requirements of hygiene (swimsuit in lycra material) and safety. In this political context of the trivialization of Islamophobia, and the rise of the extreme right, the town hall of Grenoble bears the responsibility for the exclusion of Muslim women who wear the headscarf from municipal swimming pools and therefore has the duty to change the regulations. .

On the right, politicians like Laurent Wauquiez or Emilie Chalas expose their uninhibited Islamophobia; and on the left as on the right, anti-sexist arguments are continually instrumentalized for racist purposes. The defended republican universalist model hides without much success a colonialist misogynistic system according to which patriarchal violence would only be the prerogative of Muslim people or perceived as such. The discourse held on the so-called “mismatch” between Islam and women’s rights only aims to take away rights from women who wear the headscarf, to deprive them of public services.

Swimming pool regulations actively contribute to this marginalization and social humiliation of Muslim women wearing the headscarf. We can no longer bear that the first concerned are not the first listened to.

We expect Grenoble’s elected officials to take their responsibilities by voting for the change in swimming pool regulations at the next city council on Monday, May 16. We won’t wait another summer for the swimming pools to be open to everyone.

We have the right to dispose of our bodies as we wish!

Feminist AG 38

Signatories:

1. NousToustes38
2. Balance ton bar Grenoble
3. Serein.es
4. Feminist Collages Lille
5. Purple Scarves
6. The Respect Squad
7. Feminist Collages Chambéry
8. Peps Isere
9. The Beginners
10. Burgundy Feminist Collages
11. Grenoble Feminist Collages
12. Lesbian Fightback 38
13. Queer Jewishness Collages
14. Jewish Feminist Collages Marseille
15. Collages against Islamophobia
16. Balance ton bar Paris
17. NousToutes06
18. All kinds
19. Greater Lyon Muslim Women’s Union
20. Marseille Feminist Collages
21. Balance your bar Marseille
22. Balance ton bar Aix
23. Grenoble Feminist Antifascist Group
24. Grenoble Pride
25. Cape Health
26. Isère High School Emancipation
27. Young ecologists Grenoble
28. Toulouse Feminist Collages
29. Hero•ines 95 without borders
30. Fridays For Future Grenoble
31. All of us 34
32. Rouen Feminist Collages
33. Lié•e•s
34. Feminist Actions Tours
35. Balance Your College Tours
36. Med’Sans Violence
37. Feminist Action Group Rouen
38. Feminist Collages Vienna 38
39. Feminist Collages 94
40. Feminist collages Vitry-sur-Seine
41. Youth For Climate Lyon
42. Colleux•ses nantais•es
43. Boulogne Feminist Collages
44. Healer Company
45. Feminist Collages Angers
46. Feminist Antifascist Coordination
47. Montreuil Feminist Assembly
48. We All 35
49. Revolutionary Feminists Nantes
50. Femicide Collages Paris
51. St Etienne Feminist Collages
52. Feminist collages Perpignan
53. Diversions Grenoble
54. Feminist collages Blois
55. Limoges feminist collages
56. Revolutionary Feminists Paris
57. Feminists Against Cyberbullying
58. All of us 33
59. Grenoble student solidarity
60. Grenada Collective
61. The Hijabeuses
62. Grenoble Libertarian Communist Union
63. Eure feminist collages
64. We All 27
65. Nta Rajel Collective
66. LGBTQIA+ collective of Corrèze
67. Trans_sport Queer
68. We All Marseille
69. Plural Identities
70. Red Youth Grenoble
71. Vizille’s feminists
72. UEC Grenoble
73. The reindeer
74. Feminist collages Lyon
75. For a Committed, United, Feminist Medicine
76. Front for the Fight for a Decolonial Ecology
77. All of us 76
78. Marseilles March 8
79. Tribute to Moms Association
80. lesbian seating
81. AntiSexiste Brigade
82. The Degummers
83. Cqfad+
84. Action Antifasciste Grenoble
85. Isère High School National Movement
86. Patriarchie Magazine
87. Acceptess-T
88. Greater Lyon Citizen Alliance
89. Citizen Alliance of Grenoble
90. Citizen Alliance of Seine-Saint-Denis
91. Stéphanois collective against Islamophobia and for equality
92. Le ReAct
93. UNEF Grenoble
94. The sonorous clitoris
95. The Young Insoumis.es Grenoble
96. Adelphe Lille
97. Feminist collages Strasbourg
98. Young Generation Grenoble
99. Lallab
100. FLIRT – Front Transfem
101. Young Ecologists Lyon
102. Young Insoumis.es St-Etienne
103. Lesbian Liberation
104. KLM Collective
105. Paulette Magazine
106. Montpellier Feminist Collages
107. FUIQP 38

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