CHAPTER ONE: Activists and Competing Visions of Sexual Diversity
I for one give credit to the homosexual movement to have understood one thing very well. On this kind of question, we don’t progress millimeter by millimeter. There comes a time when you have to break all the taboos to push things forward…
I think the fight against homophobia is a particular kind of fight in the banlieues[1]. I recognize this… even if, according to cultural tradition, if I might say, we know that the Arab world did not have the same relation to the homosexual question as the Western world did…We have to have the courage and
the honesty to admit that we are only at the first stage, at the stage where we have to unlock speech…50
— Malek Boutih, Former President of SOS Racisme, 2000.
Introduction: “The banlieue is not queer":
In September 2010, after one aborted attempt, the Arte channel screened a controversial documentary, La Cité du mâle.51 Directed by Cathy Guetta, the investigative report examines the allegedly widespread nature of banlieue sexual violence. Its title makes a play on the homonyms "mâle" (male) and "mal" (evil), suggesting a confusion between an overabundant masculinity in the projects (cités) and a tendency toward evil. Ostensibly returning to the Cité Balzac, where 17 year-old Sohane Benziane was horrifically burned alive in 2002 following a fight with her boyfriend, the filmmakers seek to expose the untenable living conditions of women and sexual minorities in the banlieues. I employ the term “ostensibly” because those interviewed did not hail from Balzac but from neighboring towns, as was later revealed. Before its scheduled airing, the film was engulfed in a controversy involving one of its production members. Nabila Laïb, who worked for Arte at the time, declared a wish to retract her name from the production credits because she disagreed strongly with the editing practices applied in the final cut, which in her view distorted the collected testimony while supporting an editorial perception of rampant sexual violence and victimization of women that was not necessarily in accord with the uncut footage. According to Daniel Leconte—the presenter who introduced the show and gave Arte's response to the
50 Zeraoui, Fouad (int.). “Homophobie en banlieue: Interview avec Malik Boutih”. Kelma.org. 2000. www.kelma.org/PAGES/DOCUMENTS/malek_boutih.php. Consulted 2/14/2012.
51 Sanchez, Cathy (dir.). La Cité du mâle. Arte Channel, 29 Sept. 2010.
http://www.arte.tv/fr/3388100,CmC=3388108.html. Consulted 2/28/12.
controversy—consent forms had been collected, and all testimony had been recorded with cameras in plain sight. Leconte suggested that Laïb had wished to retract her name not out of editorial or ethical objection, but rather in light of threats she had received against her person. Laïb, in an interview with the journal Bakchich, denied this, citing that it would be illogical for interviewees to agree to recording and then issue threats without having seen an objectionable version of the film.
La Cité du mâle has earned many afterlives: the various contested claims made in and about the film have been examined both in a media polemic gripping the blogosphere and on watchdog sites. A contre-enquête or counter-documentary project was launched, in order to revisit the full testimony of those who were interviewed and to document the editorializing of the filmmakers.52 Its title shifted Sanchez’s to La Cité du mal (“The City of Evil”), removing the gender component and focusing on a generalized vilification of the banlieues. The
counter-investigation found that the journalist, Nabila Laïb, whose complaint had resulted in the film being pulled from the airwaves a first time, had been misrepresented as a "fixeuse," or someone who assists "real" journalists as an interpreter, informant, or guide, especially
through "dangerous" areas. The counter-investigation claims that she was much more instrumental than that description allowed, being in fact the "journalist who had made the film possible." Laïb told Bakchich that she had "almost lost consciousness" when watching the final cut of the film because the director, Cathy Sanchez, "only chose the passages that corresponded to what she had already written in her report. She kept none of the passages in which the youth spoke about themselves. When I see the images, my stomach hurts. I'm very upset. It's out of the question that my name be associated with this type of shit."
The counter-documentary was directed by Ladji Réal, a filmmaker and community
organizer who uses theater and cinema to facilitate youth dialogue. The project originated, in
52 Laïb’s interview, and an extract of the counter-investigation are available in the following online article: Verzaux, Anaëlle. "La Cité du mâle : la contre-enquête". Bakchich.tv. 17 Dec. 2010. http://www.bakchich.tv/La- Cite-du-male-la-contre-enquete.html. Consulted 1/31/12.
his words, with his shock at witnessing such sexism aired “without complexes” and his ensuing curiosity about how such attitudes could have taken shape. In one of La Cité du mâle’s more infamous scenes, two young men are shown strolling the streets of the projects, shaking hands with friends dubbed “patrol-men” by the off-camera narrator (because they comment on the attire of a passing young girl), who adds that the two “never get up before noon,” and live off of hustling and petty jobs. When re-interviewed by Réal, one of the two boys claims his image was distorted because he has held a steady job since 2005, requiring
him to get up long before mid-day. One of the main subjects of Sanchez’ documentary, Okito, who uttered perhaps the most disturbing lines in the documentary, was presented as a Senegalese Muslim (with connections made between his sexism and his purported religion). Okito revealed in Réal's re-interview that he is actually Christian.
Perhaps the greatest distortions occurred with the portrayal of Sohane Benziane's tragic death. Two girls in their early twenties, Imèle and Melissa, were supposedly asked by Sanchez to share their thoughts about Sohane. Sanchez’ question is actually not posed in the footage, but is rather rephrased off-screen by the narrator. The camera then cuts to Imèle and Melissa joking about "easy" girls who enjoy group sex and who hang out in cellars, without mentioning Sohane’s name. In Réal's interview, the girls say they were never asked directly about Sohane. They furthermore state that they were not well placed to speak to the subject, having never met her in light of their age difference (they were 12 year-olds at the time of her death) and residence in a different neighborhood. Réal, in a press conference for his counter- documentary, discussed the serious ramifications of the film for interview subjects who had lost job opportunities since the airing, as well as the plight of several minors who had shown up together at Cathy Sanchez's office to demand a meeting, only to be arrested, placed in detention (garde à vue), and then brought before a tribunal.
The counter-documentary seeks to establish a filmic rebuttal to stereotypical trends of
banlieue representation, and notably features an interview with Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, a sociologist who has written extensively about the concept of “sexual vilification.” This term refers to a process variously observable in media, politics, and even academia, by which minorities and immigrants are reproached for allegedly “regressive,” patriarchal, or anti- modern attitudes about sexuality in a way that stigmatizes their neighborhoods explicitly and cultures of origin implicitly. The counter-documentary exercise is innovative, as it presents a creative reaction to “regret” about having engaged with the city-center media, which many banlieue interview subjects have cited as a reason for disengagement and hostility to film crews who seem to "land" out of nowhere in the banlieue. They point to the recurrent experience of having their testimonies distorted or conveniently edited, to practices of suggestive questioning, and to misleading descriptions by journalists of the media project at
hand in order to obtain the subjects’ consent for filming.53
Though the documentary focuses on men in its depiction of sexual violence and territorialism, its portrayal of women, and in particular "virile" women, is also noteworthy. An announcer—whose voice calls to mind the over-dub of a horror film—describes how the aforementioned Imèle and Melissa have fallen, despite themselves, into a kind of “virility trap”:
Imèle and Melissa are twenty years old. They know the projects by heart, they were born there. Sneakers, baggy jeans and sweatsuits. They dress in the manner of tomboys (à la bonhomme) as they say around here, to be at peace. Like most girls, Imèle and Melissa do better in school than the boys. Both have degrees and work. In short, they seem rather emancipated in the projects. But listen to their reactions when we ask them about men who lay hands on women.
A confusing passage ensues, in which the camera cuts to the girls joking about how they would not want to be struck by any man or woman, but that if that were to transpire, they would probably "punch back." The narrator then brings up the subject of Sohane, off camera, before cutting back to the interview with Imèle and Melissa, who have suddenly shifted to the
53 Cassaigne, Bertrand. "Les médias et la banlieue". Ceras. Revue, Projet n°302. January 2008. http://www.ceras-projet.com/index.php?id=2864. Consulted 3/1/2012.
topic of girls "who don't respect themselves," who shouldn't “provoke and then complain.” They conclude by saying "we're not here with knives under our throats, there's consent." Upon these words, the commentator concludes:
Imèle and Melissa, without even being conscious of it, seem to have perfectly integrated the machismo laws of the 'hood. A good girl should “stick close to the walls,” stay self-effacing, not outgoing (ça rase les murs). A good girl does not look men in the eye, a good girl marries within the tradition.
Imèle and Melissa never broach these topics on-camera. Marriage and the imperative to respect tradition, the concluding theme of the narrator's monologue, is never brought up in the interview questions.
Such editorializing fails many journalistic standards, as the critical news analysis site Mediapart and the magazine Les Inrockuptibles pointed out. 54 These include the imperative to film subjects within the same continuous exchange and to include the question asked by the narrator in the recorded response. But the most obvious violation of the “rights” of journalistic subjects involves the blatant disconnect between what is said and what is interpreted. A great irony emerges when we see that the girls, far from creeping along the shadows of walls, walk in the middle of the sidewalk filmed in public space by a film crew visible to all, eyes looking straight ahead into camera and not at the ground, greeting male and female neighbors.
Sanchez and narrator Leconte pursue their investigation of how banlieue women have integrated virility with another interview subject, Habiba:
Narrator (Leconte): Girls don't have it good (mal barrées les filles). Yet still, in the projects, there's another category of girl that doesn't get harassed. But this tranquility has a price. Namely, erasing any trace of femininity, so as to resemble boys to the point that one can't tell boys and girls apart. This is the story of Habiba, 19 years old. In her neighborhood, Habiba... is the leader of a gang of boys.
Habiba: I don't like it when people call me “tomboy” (bonhomme), I've already fought with several people about this. I have a name.
Cathy Sanchez: Still (quand-même), we can agree that you kind of look like a tomboy...
Habiba: (Smiling) Yeah, I guess.
Sanchez shows particular persistence in trying to get Habiba to break down and admit to an
54 In the article, the Addoc organization (Association des Cinéastes Documentaristes), a group made up of French documentarians, denounced an “exemplary abuse of public television” ("une dérive exemplaire de la télévision publique").
Guédé, Emilie."La Cité du mâle: une contre-enquête pour dénoncer les dérives des médias".
www.lesinrocks.com. 12 Dec. 2010. http://www.lesinrocks.com/actualite/actu-article/t/56797/date/2010-12-
16/article/la-cite-du-male-une-contre-enquete-pour-denoncer-les-derives-des-medias/. Consulted 3/1/2012.
elusive “feminine” vulnerability, to share an anecdote of suffering at the hands of boys. Unable to elicit such an admission, she attempts to categorize Habiba as homosexual, despite her assertions of heterosexuality. Instead of focusing on Habiba’s mastery of virility codes and her refusal to be categorized, the editorialists suggest that her social mobility is the mere result of not being an attractive target for men. In so doing, they display a startling adherence to gender conformity, calling “unfeminine” women back to femininity.
This media anecdote offers an illustration of how journalists ostensibly concerned about banlieue women can at the same time reify gender norms in newly oppressive ways. In this sense, La Cité du mâle offers an entry point into this chapter, which examines the various ways in which activists who purport to fight for sexual diversity have at times projected gender norms and sexual conformism, whether heterosexual or homosexual. In journalism, investigations, and interventions on the ground, commentators purporting to represent LGBT and feminist interests have produced an alternately villainized and eroticized banlieusard[2] or immigrant-issued virility. This process fits into a larger, more familiar one, in which immigration from the former colonies has been sexualized, with concerns articulated around men’s machismo and women’s subjugation, though as my opening discussion of Cité du mâle illustrates, a “dangerous” machismo of sorts has been attributed to certain female subjects. Condemnations of the religious coercion possibly behind Muslim women wearing the veil
have also attacked gender expressions that do not instantiate “traditional” femininity. In recent years, respect for sexual minorities has constituted a new frontier for campaigns targeting banlieue attitudes and behaviors. In this vein, some defense campaigns have taken the form of attacks. Rhetoric about “saving” banlieue women and gays has exoticized the banlieues as inhospitable and lawless zones worthy of human rights intervention, while deterministically prescribing the “appropriate” expression of homosexual identity or practices. As Western human rights groups have represented the Muslim world more generally as a place
inhospitable to women and sexual minorities, the banlieue, and attitudes there in regard to gender and sexuality, have more recently been presented as a microcosm of the Muslim world inside France.