Apparently the reason he was packed off to Paris to finish high school was to separate them. That says that the relationship must have already been pretty far along while he was still a minor.
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Funny, cuz when other certain users get a “consensus” disagreement we often get accused of dogpiling.
So maybe we need to define “dogpiling”?
OT - so I’ll stop.
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Thoughts along those lines may benefit from considering that she – and by a wide margin – was voted the head of her party, the National Front… a FAR RIGHT party.
To separate them, or so that their relationship was no longer an issue?
Sorry for adding to the dog pile. I wrote that part of my reply when I first read your post, but by the time I posted it was a bit of a “me too”. I thought about taking it out but it was an honest effort at answering your question.
It’s a public holiday in France today celebrating victory over fascism in Europe, so I’m kind of on board with everyone who wants to just take a minute to feel good about the worst possible thing not happening for a change. But I don’t think gender should be off topic in a political thread, if I didn’t spend more time on it it’s only because of everything else that’s been going through my head.
Is gender and sexism important in French politics? Two female presidential candidates to nine males is as “normal” here as it is anywhere else. Jean Lassalle’s entire platform seemed to be that he was a big French man who was French and a man (and big), which bought him about a percentage point and a half of votes. Make of that what you will.
I’m in Paris where typical big city attitudes prevail, but France is still a very christian country overall and you really feel it in some of the smaller and not-all-that-small towns. The sarcastically named “Protest for All” has turned out a few good sized manifestations in recent years against gay marriage, gay adoption and now gay surrogacy, and I bet there’s a good overlap there with Le Pen voters. Would any of them been put off voting for Marine, a known menstruator? Je désespère.
My time in the States has been considerably shorter, but in my brief experience there such issues are much more out in the open. In two weeks I was invited to a service at some sort of mega church, dinner conversation once turned to the intersection of gay rights and gun control and I incidentally spent time with a proud ex-KKK member. Black people kept asking me about moving to New Zealand. I know it’s a function of the parts of the US that I visited but I was literally brought to tears by it all before I left. Five years in France and I’ve just never experienced anything that compares.
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Thank you. This was the sort of insight I was hoping for, not a blanket denial of the issue and some condescending talk about how ignorant I am.
I appreciate this.
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It certainly separated them, for a short while. The relationship obviously remained an “issue”, as they eventually got married.
In any event, my point was that bringing up the age gap is kind of a red herring. There is no reason on earth why a 40 year old adult man shouldn’t have a relationship with a 70 year old adult woman. Even the fact that the relationship started when he was so young has some precedent in the land of Raymond Radiguet. The most problematic thing for me is his age coupled with her being his teacher.
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As everyone surely knows, it’s not a proper BoingBoing dogpiling until people start posting snarky GIFs at you.
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I totally agree that it’s the one part that can be considered an issue.
We just had an election where the two leading candidates had the highest unfavorability ratings in recorded history. It seems to have finished out something like Trump 60% negative and Clinton 55%.
Was part of Clinton’s loss due to misogyny? Certainly.
Could a woman with less unfavorability have overcome the misogyny and beaten Trump? Equally certainly.
I’m aware of that. I’m unsure what you think you’re cluing me into. Do you think I’m so ignorant?
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Sexism exists. It doesn’t effect every decision, but it absolutely exists. No, I’m sure that’s not why she lost. Yes, it almost certainly affected some number of votes for or against, because people vote for lots of reasons.
You are likely correct in that there are broader conversations and drivers for the election. Fine. But you don’t get to discount the effect of sexism just because you want to believe it had zero impact. Unless you can poll every voter you cannot know this, but history says gender has played a role ubiquitously across society as a whole.
Any comments (from anyone, not singling you out) that suggest that it’s “wrong” to discuss gender as a possible contributing factor to this vote will very likely be eaten. If you disagree, than talk about it, don’t try to invalidate the very discussion in question.
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You did have a look at the parliament, did you? The guy simply doesn’t have any party support. How he is going to do politics, at all, but especially domestic is quite beyond me.
I am still glad he won. But I have to work with realities.
The parliamentary elections haven’t happened yet, his party didn’t exist the last time they had them. Obviously it’s unlikely he’ll get a large number of seats, but he should be able to cobble together some kind of working government with whatever they do win plus deals with other parties.
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While I appreciate your optimism in regard to compiling a working government. However, the elections for the Assemblee National are in June already. Macron’s movement is not well established, campaigning will be difficult for them. My impression is he will be very much dependent on the established parties, and it’s far from sure he’ll get support for reforms: without proper backing, he is going to have a hard time changing political France.
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“None of the above” votes are very important.
When you stay home, you tell the ruling classes “do what you want, I am apathetic, I am happy enough not to care about the elections, I am not worth pandering to because I don’t vote”.
When you vote “nobody” you tell the ruling classes "I have a vote, I will do whatever it takes to get to the polling booth, and the first candidate who speaks to my concerns will get my vote".
The politicals have people doing the math. I know a guy who worked on the Obama campaign and they stayed up late for weeks doing the math. A “nobody” vote is a vote that candidates cannot take for granted, they have to speak to that voter, party loyalty isn’t enough.
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[quote=“doop, post:129, topic:100557, full:true”]Maybe effectively, but please understand that the spike in uncounted votes was people who very much did not want Le Pen president, and who only did what they did based on the feeling that Macron was going to be president anyway.
[/quote]
My entire point (which has oblivious not come across, or else I wouldn’t have the responses I got) was that it it should be quite clear to anyone that the assumption Macron was going to win anyway and thus you could either stay at home or cast blank votes is horribly dangerous, especially with a voting system like the French, and the high voter mobilisation of the FN. It sums up to supporting the that horrible person and her neofascist agenda if you do the math.
If their political “feeling” was that she would loose anyway they haven’t payed much attention to the news lately. Or they friggin don’t care.
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I just wanted to add that my general impression is similar to doop’s, but the “christian” motivation of voters in France might be a bit overstated in their stance. I don’t want to completely dismiss it, but the office of the president is viewed foremost in secular terms. The right-wing christians in Le Pen’s FN following did already vote for her (mentioned somewhere above already). I don’t think gender played an important part and (despite the Segolène Royal issue which was a horrible example to counter my point) my impression is that the French are even much closer to not giving much thoughts about gender in public offices than, e.g., Germans.
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