Incident last night on the red carpet in Cannes during the climb of the steps. An activist from the radical feminist movement SCUM burst in, naked, wearing only panties, and sporting a Ukrainian flag painted with the phrase: “stop raping us”.
On the association’s Instagram account, a long text was published with the photo of this incident with this text in English:
“On May 17, 2023, a SCUM activist walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival, wearing a red dress, to denounce surrogacy, which is closely linked to the film industry. Surrogacy is the loan of the body women to bear children who will be delivered at birth to those who commanded them.
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of surrogacy cases are performed by heterosexual couples. All surrogacy procedures without exception, and regardless of the nature and content of the contract between the two parties, are based on the exploitation of women for their reproductive capacity.
Surrogacy is neither an individual process nor a lifestyle choice, but a production system orchestrated by companies, involving lawyers and laboratories. It is rooted in capitalist ideology as well as in the international human trafficking market.
The products sold are newborns, the means of production are their mother’s body.
In 2022, the estimated global value of the surrogacy market was $14 billion and is expected to reach $129 billion by 2032.
The commercial success of this procedure can be largely attributed to its many clients in the film and media industry, whose economic power allows them to access it before it becomes available to the masses. While women’s bodies are transformed into tools of production, their autonomy is threatened by the right of scrutiny of customers.
The rise and normalization of surrogacy thus compromise our still very fragile control over our bodies. Reducing women to a reproductive system also negates our individuality, our subjectivity. We choose to portray this threat through the colors imposed on women forcibly assigned to a reproductive role in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
We denounce all those who are ready to crush the humanity of others in the name of the transmission of their genes. As the commercialization of women and children is deeply incompatible with our human dignity and fundamental rights, we urge all countries to respect the international human rights conventions they have signed, and therefore to work towards the abolition of surrogacy nationally and internationally.”
