She is the mother of the countryside. In June 2011, at night, in the streets of Paris and in around fifteen cities in France, activists from the association Dare to Feminism (OLF) stuck posters on the wall and sprayed stencils on the sidewalks with the effigy of the clitoris. For most passers-by, the organ with the scarlet penguin silhouette is still an unidentified object. In a few years, it will become a standard for equality between the sexes, a symbol of the right to pleasure. Lucie Sabau was 29 years old at the time and she coordinated the poster campaign, called “Dare the clito!”. “We weren’t in warlike mode but we knew we were going to be disruptive, she explains. We had the sacred fire.”
Since the winter, a group of women have been preparing for the operation. Eight young activists, who have just participated in OLF’s previous campaign: “Rape: shame must change sides”, their first large-scale feminist action. “We were revolted and driven by a feeling of urgencyrelates Lucie Sabau. We became aware of the extent to which the attackers’ operating methods are based on this propaganda of hatred and contempt for our bodies and our sexes, on this ignorance in which we are maintained and which is imposed on us. For us, talking about the clitoris was a question of survival.”
A “campaign for cutlets”
Lucie, who has just finished her studies, is the oldest in the group. Every week, she meets her classmates in one or the other’s living room, sometimes more than an hour’s journey from her home, in the Paris suburbs. Together, they talk about their intimacy, their pleasures and the strategy to adopt. “We grew up with boys who thought they had a gender and we didn’t really”continues the campaign coordinator. “Almost no one had a representation of this organ, even schematic, in their head.”
They are looking for: what could be the equivalent, for girls, of dick drawings at school?
The resulting poster, produced with the means at hand, has become iconic. It attracts criticism, sometimes harsh. The clitoris, immense and scarlet pink, barely stylized, is planted in the middle of two spread thighs, all in a naive style that parodies The Origin of the World by Courbet. In the press, including women’s, the iconographic proposal of Dare to Feminism arouses mixed, even knee-jerk, reactions.
“By wanting to strike hard (was it compatible with the clit?), Dare feminism brought out the heavy artillery of provocation”writes the website Madmoizellewho denounces «une communication TOO MUCH» and cites an internal reaction: “what is this, a campaign for schnitzels?” Faced with this shocking campaign, judged «agressive» par The Inrocks, the women’s magazine Marie-Claire asks: “Are feminists going too far?”.
