France blocks move to include cousins in definition of ‘incest'
Nine out of ten French people want to extend the legal definition of incest to include cousins, but the move is being blocked by ministers fearful of igniting religious tensions.
The government is said to be concerned that if it changed the incest law, it would also have to outlaw cousin marriages, which are rare in France as whole but common in some communities.
A poll by Ipsos for Face à l'Inceste, the anti-incest association, found that 93 per cent of respondents wanted the notion to include cousins along with parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles.
The poll was commissioned as part of a campaign to tighten laws on incest in a country that has been notoriously slow to address what was long a taboo subject.
The word incest did not appear the criminal law code until 2010. Incest is now considered an aggravating factor in rape or sexual assault cases, but there is still no blanket ban on it, as there is in the UK.
However, marriages involving parents, grandparents, siblings and aunts and uncles are outlawed.
Critics say the country's ambiguous approach to incest has caused widespread damage, and studies show that about one in ten French people are victims. Fathers and fathers-in-law constitute 32.7 per cent of the perpetrators, according to research in 2020, followed by uncles on 17.9 per cent.
Face à l'Inceste says that up to 20 per cent of incestuous assaults are committed by cousins.
Corentin Legras, a researcher at the School of Higher Social Sciences Studies, agreed, saying sexual assaults by older cousins were widespread, notably during family get-togethers.
France's Independent Commission on Incest and Sexual Violence Against Children seized upon these findings to press the government to include cousins within the legal definition of incest.
But ministers refused. Legras said: 'A relationship cannot be incestuous if there is a possibility of marriage afterwards.'
Ministers are said to be reluctant to ban cousin marriages, which remain common in France's Romany community, which is estimated at up to 350,000 people.
Cousin marriages are also occasional among Muslim immigrant populations and rare but not unheard-of among traditional Catholics.
Christine Boutin, 81, who was housing minister between 2007 and 2009 in the centre-right government of the day, is married to Louis, her first cousin, for instance. She angrily rejects suggestions that their relationship is incestuous. They have three children.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Trump is terrified of Black culture. But not for the reasons you think
By the time Jesse Owens bowed his head from the highest podium tier to be crowned with his fourth Olympic wreath in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Europe's premiers knew they had a problem. In front of a record-setting crowd at games that should have been a lavish display of Aryan propaganda, Owens's unmatched athleticism on the track humiliated the host Nazi regime and smashed one of the vital ideological pillars upon which European empires annexed the world into their racial order. Since the inception of race-based slavery and settler-colonialism in the 15th century, the novel idea that human beings could be stratified into distinct 'races,' with superiority defaulting to white Europeans, was bolstered by the claim that white racial supremacy was the rational outcome of the 'natural' biophysical, intellectual and aesthetic ascendancy of white people, and thus of whiteness itself. Adolf Hitler watched Owens, the five-time world record holder and grandson of enslaved people, triumph in his first event from a lavishly decorated imperial box, and abruptly exited the arena thereafter rather than witness Aryan athletes stumble to place second. In his conspicuous departure, a reluctant admission heard around the world had been made. A pillar was smashed. European physical superiority had been proven an undeniable fallacy and, more insultingly, Black dominance on the track was now a quantifiable fact. The ideological stakes of white supremacy – that whites were the smarter race, the sole ones capable of higher thought, that white people were the most physically beautiful, and also that the cultural products of whiteness were the most artistically valuable to advanced civilization – had suffered a powerful blow and shifted on its heels. In the 1930s, Hitler and his ministers embarked on a 'synchronization' campaign to bring fine arts, theatre, literature, architecture and media in line with Nazi propaganda – a move that was not unique to the Third Reich. All European colonizers expanded their empires via the theft and destruction of the cultures they subjugated, coupled with the intellectual propagandization of their own cultural superiority. Since the world wars, the march of modernity and the inescapability of western cultural imperialism continue to be hedged on that perfectly rigged game in which the products of whiteness are extolled as the most beautiful and significant because white intellectual arbiters tell us that they are. But in fewer than 40 years following the Berlin games, western empires were swiftly losing their hold on the cultures and minds under their rule. By the late 1960s, a Black freedom struggle in the US ignited a movement for African American identity, inspired by and linked to independence movements throughout the African continent and diaspora. The Black arts movement (BAM), a concerted effort to transform the artistic and cultural vanguard across Black politics, scholarship and organizations in the US, resulted in a creative explosion of cultural production centered on Black life and experience. BAM birthed a new Black consciousness – one sourced from self-determination and aimed squarely at thwarting claims of white cultural supremacy. It brought to the fore a generation of young Black writers, poets, artists, dancers and thespians who asked why any white-controlled institution was qualified to appraise art created for and by Black people. When Owens died in 1980 at just 66 years old, having spent his post-Olympiad life subjected to the repeated humiliations of Jim Crow, he and other 20th-century Black athletes had tapped the glass jaw in the myth white superiority and opened the floodgates for BAM's blitzkrieg against white cultural and intellectual hegemony. The movement was radically forged shifting away from conceding any white cultural supremacy, including a disinterest in white endorsement and patronage. BAM activists built their own institutions including bookstores, publishing houses, theatres, galleries, museums, cultural centers and scholarly journals and digests. Organizers started Black studies programs, conferences and curricula across the country. The movement understood that Black cultural production required Black intellectual production to secure its value and meaning. The ideological through-line from the overt white supremacy of the past to today is crystal clear. BAM's legacy can be found in the threat that Black culture and cultural institutions pose to new versions of old authoritarianism. In recent months, the Trump administration has advanced its culture wars to defund, demolish and demote the institutionalization of Black arts and culture, notably through very public takeovers of the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, and Smithsonian Institution, along with several high-profile firings of Black experts and leadership in these and many other institutions reliant on federal funding. With book bans and the seizing of administrative, fiscal and curricular control of elite universities, Donald Trump has declared open war on all knowledge and expression that his administration deems anti-white. Much of the public discourse has summed up Trump's demolition efforts as an assault on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) campaigns, and much of that discourse gets it wrong. In patronizing Black culture as merely worthy of representation in white spaces, we misconstrue the endgame of Trump's white supremacist politics. Trump knows that culture in the hands of subjugated peoples is a political weapon that he can't best. His lavish attempts at conjuring a culture via pageantry seem pathetic because they are. In a culture war fair fight, where Black people hold power in institutions, knowledge and politics, he will lose. Hitler wasn't affronted because Owens was included or represented in the games. The Führer stormed out infuriated after witnessing a Black man win. Even more important than its content, BAM's great victory was in putting forth an uncomfortable truth for the white mainstream: the cultural contributions of Black people laid bare the sheer fallacy of western cultural eminence. BAM was able to back up that claim with an organized Black scholarly and institutional thrust, thus exposing how claims of white cultural dominance were only buttressed by white political power. A look back at what BAM gained in turning Black cultural and scholarly institutions into wellsprings for Black political action explains why the Trump administration sees Black culture as an enemy. It also reveals what Americans got wrong by emphasizing the soft politics of representation and inclusion while shortchanging the capability of Black artistry to dethrone the great myth of white superiority. At the height of one of the most violent eras of the 20th century, BAM organizers set their sights on Black liberation, not conciliation. As a result, BAM's blueprint for Black power reoriented institutions and organizations and persists half a century later. Our stakes today are just as high, but in reducing Black culture into diversity and inclusion efforts we're playing directly into a game where Trump can expunge these politically inconsequential gains as soon as they are made. As the historian Gerald Horne has argued, African Americans have always been bilked of economic and political power in this country, but their cultural capital – particularly their visibility and influence – has long been outsized. For a demographic that consistently comprises only about 13% of the US population, Black entertainers, artists, musicians and athletes rank disproportionately among the most known and top performing figures in their fields. Black art forms such as the blues, jazz and hip-hop have done much of the heavy lifting of exporting 'Americanness' as a popular culture product around the world. By the late 1960s, in the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X, an emerging generation of young Black artists, poets, writers, dancers and thespians began asking what they should be getting for that cultural influence, if that capital could be transformed into political action, and if the power of their cultural production could be harnessed exclusively on their terms. The Black arts movement was an artists' call to arms, born directly out of the ideological shift towards Black nationalism that was triumphed by Malcolm X. He insisted that Black people were a nation within a nation, and that Blackness was a cultural nationality unto itself. Its identity and aesthetic was oriented in the African diaspora, not in assimilation into white America. After Malcolm X's death, Larry Neal, a key theorist of the movement, wrote, 'the struggle for black self-determination had entered a more serious, more profound stage' that necessitated the formation of a Black cultural thrust, the building of autonomous Black institutions, and the need for a Black theory of social change. BAM activists saw themselves as the cultural branch of the larger Black power movement, where art would enable Black people to imagine themselves beyond the dictates of white racism, and graft the ideals that could envision a world in which Black people have collective control of their political and economic lives. In line with Malcolm's 1962 missive at a Los Angeles church, in which he asked Black people, 'who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to?', BAM forged a radical new expression of the Black aesthetic, one that both ignited sociocultural revolution and deposed the white gaze by recasting beauty itself as Blackness. 'Black is beautiful,' a refrain for the Black power generation, became more than a slogan that defined the time. It was a declaration of cultural independence and a battle cry in the fight for a sea change in Black identity. BAM converted Black cultural capital into Black political capital. Its key figures, who made up an extensive list of artists, activists and organizers – Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Gil Scott-Heron, Hoyt Fuller, Nathan Hare and Dudley Randall – understood that the politics of art was co-constituted with the art of politics. The movement swiftly enveloped better-known mainstream Black artists, including many who quietly funded causes such as the Black Panther party legal defense fund and several fledgling Black arts institutions. Artists such as John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Thelonious Monk and Harry Belafonte used their sounds, images and performances to amplify Black consciousness and liberation into the 1970s and beyond. BAM's artists radicalized a Black aesthetic into a political ideology and understood, as literary theorist Terry Eagleton explains, 'the aesthetic, one might argue, is […] the very paradigm of the ideological. Ideology and style are the same thing.' BAM was not a civil rights campaign, however, and its endgame was neither style and visibility nor representation and inclusion. What BAM artist-activists understood and made into a political strategy was the idea that art itself, as a product and form of Black expression, was not solely capable of liberating Black people. It needed to be safe-housed and incubated within Black communities by independent Black institutions. Thus even as BAM composed the cultural wing of Black power, it further deployed into subsidiaries across an institutional and scholarly landscape. BAM's organizational grid included numerous independent Black theatre companies, Black bookstores, independent Black K-12 schools, scholarly journals such as the Black Scholar, publishers including Third World Press, and digests such as Black World that became premier venues for the intellectual discourses that anchored Black art's political gravity and meanings. The art and cultural production of the movement offered a vision for revolution, but it was BAM's massive footprint across Black arts institutions and scholarship that converted that artistic vision to a currency of real social change for everyday Black communities, often accomplished by challenging the divide between 'fine' arts institutions and those serving the Black masses. Louis Chude-Sokei, the longtime editor of the Black Scholar, said how journal founders resisted the familiar elitism of academic scholarship. 'Their mission was to 'unite the academy and the street,' ... not just in terms of genre, language and style, but also in terms of the kind of people it affirmed as 'scholars' and 'intellectuals.'' In a survey by the Kerner Commission – Lyndon Johnson's national advisory board charged with investigating the underlying causes for Black urban social unrest and rebellion in the late 1960s – nearly 80% of Black respondents agreed with the statement 'all negroes should study African history and language.' Decades of toil, political gains and intensive planning and research by Black curators, historians and museum professionals resulted in the institutionalization of that survey into the world's largest museum complex. The Smithsonian's 19th installation, the massively popular National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), opened just more than a month before Trump's 2016 election. It enshrines Black material culture as history by jettisoning an often repeated myth about America, in which the nation's supposed exceptionalism is a result of harmonious multiculturalism, where various ethnic groups have voluntarily contributed to an 'American tapestry.' Instead, the 'Black Smithsonian,' as it has been nicknamed by loyal supporters, forges upon a road BAM paved and challenges one to question the US's whitewashed history. The result is a meticulously accurate inverting of the American narrative into one told through African descended experience, in which the US's economic, political and social systems were established for and by the purpose of using stolen land to exploit the labor of stolen people. This is not a Disneyfied tale of 'diversity' that gestures towards Black offerings into the melting pot mythos of a 'nation of immigrants'. NMAAHC's masterful curatorial team, under the helm of the Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G Bunch, stayed true to much of BAM's core legacy by exhibiting Black culture with a mind for raising Black consciousness. Visitors leave the museum not only with amazement and reverence for Black cultural preservation, resistance and perseverance, but also with reliable and verified information, which, studies have shown, the public trusts more when coming from museums than any other source. Bucking the propagandistic synchronicity campaign of the Trump realm, however, has brought NMAAHC directly into the administration's crosshairs. In recent months the NMAAHC has been a battle ground for Trump's authoritarian government, in which an executive order entitled 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,' accuses the museum of advancing an 'improper' and 'divisive, race-centered' ideology by 'promoting', among many expert-backed facts, 'the view that race is not a biological reality' – the very biological pseudoscience that was once a pillar of Aryan propaganda and bolstered European imperialism's tenet of white biophysical superiority. The executive order was not an empty threat and targets other federally backed institutions such as the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery (NPG), which recently appointed a Black woman as the director of curatorial affairs and featured an exhibition on the Black Figure, and the National Park System's Independence national historical park, which the order accused of 'interrogating institutional racism' in its trainings. Just a week ago, Kim Sajet, NPG's director, stepped down after Trump's recent call for her termination. Trump's synchronization campaign has further rolled into takeover efforts for federally backed institutions not named in the order, such as the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Trump swiftly removed the center's longtime director, Deborah Rutter, and replaced board members with his loyalists, who soon after elected him chair. At the Kennedy Center's opening night on 11 June, Trump was met by jeers and expletives from longtime patrons, with shouts of 'rapist!' and 'felon!' while admirers shouted up 'we love you!' to his box seats. Terminations of the personnel of these institutions are just one part of Trump's far more entrenched war to defund and eradicate the institutional infrastructure of arts and culture, including recent drastic cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, among many other public-private foundations. Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the Kennedy Center's recently fired vice-president and social impact director, as well as a poet, dancer and playwright, publicly indicted Trump's efforts to 'take down everything Black'. Trump's messaging has consistently referred to this propaganda campaign for state control of culture as an 'anti-DEI effort' – euphemistic phrasing that has been adopted uncritically by many media outlets and the political left. Adopting the terminology is an acceptance of the propaganda itself, in which Americans miss the true political thrust of culture to incite social change. We omit the lessons we should all be carrying from the Black arts movement that taught us both our real target and how to use culture as our weapon against it. The soft-bellied politics of 'diversity,' 'inclusion' and 'representation' are not a challenge to the remaining pillars of white supremacy, but rather a concession to it. For example, there are many who argue that the US's elite 'fine' arts institutions have championed the cause to diversify and address their histories of exclusion with an explosion of post-2020 Black hires into their leadership. 'These hires are largely ornamental,' said Chaédria LaBouvier, the Guggenheim Museum's first Black curator and first Black author of its catalogue, 'as evidenced by the many layoffs, firings and eliminations of these positions since they were instituted.' BAM activists were insistent that Black cultural expression came with a political ideology and warned against attempts by powerful white patrons to defang Black art of its meanings for Black people. Even in BAM's day, 'diversity' efforts were deployed as tools to dismantle Black radical politics. The Kerner Commission, angst-ridden about the possibilities of continued Black protest, suggested that Black people be assimilated into capitalism as a means to quell the Black freedom struggle. Nixon took up the task with diversity programs for Black business owners who he hoped would subdue Black resistance organizing in American cities. BAM insisted that Black art must be canonized by Black intellectuals. While the fine arts world has witnessed recent record-setting auction prices for pieces by Black artists, LaBouvier notes that these works are generally treated as commodities, with appraisals subjected to the caprice of market fluctuation, whereas the value of works by many white artists are stabilized by the canonizing research of overwhelmingly white art historians. Diversity, inclusion and representation reinforce a belief that the cultural contributions of oppressed peoples hold value only in the grasp and domain of their oppressors. As Rafael Walker, an assistant professor at Baruch College who specialized in American and African American literature, noted, 'when you're talking about representation, presentation is in the word. You're talking about presenting to someone, to another. Present to whom? The Black arts movement did not give a damn about presenting Black culture for anyone else's approval.' In his efforts to demolish and disappear Black culture and the institutions that support it, Trump has made a loud admission: if he truly believed that Black culture were inferior, he would be leaving it on display and intact. Its mere existence would prove white supremacy. Trump knows the real threat of Black culture that has been shortchanged in the public DEI discourse, as his administration is a metaphor in itself for mythology of white supremacy: extensively kleptocratic, grossly inept and held in power by depraved and ruthless violence. As Haki Madhubuti, a BAM founding father, explains of the movement's endgame: 'The mission is how do we become a whole people, and how do we begin to essentially tell our narrative, while at the same time move toward a level of success in this country and in the world? And we can do that. I know we can do that.' Trump's great fear is knowing we can, too. Spot illustrations by Tina Tona
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Watch: BBC presenter corrects ‘pregnant people' to ‘women'
Martine Croxall, a BBC News presenter, appeared to reject gender-neutral language during a live broadcast. The news anchor was reading a report from a teleprompter about advice for vulnerable people during heatwaves when she used the term 'pregnant people'. Immediately afterwards, Croxall added with emphasis: 'Women'. The apparent correction, during a broadcast on Saturday lunchtime, was endorsed by JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author and gender campaigner, who posted a clip of the incident on X, the social media platform. 'I have a new favourite BBC presenter,' she commented. The gender-neutral term 'pregnant people' is used by activists who believe biological women who may be pregnant can be men, if they identify as such. The NHS has been criticised for using terms like 'pregnant people' and 'birthing person' instead of 'women' in order to be more inclusive of gender self-identification. The BBC has no specific policy on the use of gender-neutral terms but does stipulate that journalists should refer to people using the pronouns of their preferred gender, rather than referring to their biological sex. The BBC News style guide advises editorial staff that: 'A person born male who lives as a female, would typically be described as a 'transgender woman' and would take the pronoun 'she'. And vice versa. We generally use the term and pronoun preferred by the person in question.' BBC under fire over trans coverage In April, a story about the death of Jiggly Caliente, a transgender drag queen, referred to the late performer as 'she' throughout, in accordance with the current guidance. However, the policy has been cast into doubt following the Supreme Court ruling in April that women are defined by their biological gender, not self-identified gender. The BBC is assessing the implication of the ruling for its news coverage. A statement from the broadcaster in April said: 'In our news reporting, we always aim to deal with issues fairly and impartially and this is informed by our editorial guidelines.' Last week, Rowling claimed the BBC could no longer be trusted to report on transgender issues after it failed to report that a women-only housing development would be open to biological men. She wrote on X: 'It's not women-only. Men will be accommodated there if they say they're women.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Post Office admits Horizon scandal staff are compensating victims
The Post Office has admitted that staff linked to wrongful prosecutions of postmasters are still working in a department which compensates victims of the scandal. Chairman Nigel Railton has acknowledged three so-called 'past roles employees' remain employed in the organisation's remuneration unit. It came after the chair of the advisory board for compensating victims said how postmasters had been left 'deeply distressed' after encountering certain members of staff. The Telegraph can reveal one employee was involved in the mediation scheme case of Lee Castleton, a former postmaster bankrupted as a result of civil action taken against him by the Post Office. More than 900 former sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted as a result of the Horizon scandal, when faulty Fujitsu software incorrectly recorded shortfalls on their accounts. A public inquiry into the scandal is expected to produce its first report in the coming weeks, which will focus on the human impact of the scandal and the ongoing process of financial redress. Though various schemes were set up to compensate victims, Sir Alan Bates and others have criticised them for taking too long and for offering payouts far smaller than some have claimed for. The majority of the schemes – including the one set up to pay out Sir Alan and more than 500 others who took legal action against the Post Office – are now administered by the Government. However, the Post Office continues to run the Horizon Shortfall Scheme for victims who were neither wrongfully convicted nor involved in the High Court Case. Last month, The Telegraph revealed a former Post Office auditor who visited branches with suspected shortfalls, was, until recently, employed within the unit. And earlier this month, Christopher Hodges, chair of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, wrote to Mr Railton to express his concerns about staff who had roles linked to historic cases linked to the scandal. 'The issue is the ongoing involvement in redress and appeals work of Post Office staff who are perceived as having earlier been involved in the scandal,' he said. 'We continue to hear reports from victims who have met such staff in compensation meetings, and who find it deeply distressing and inappropriate.' 'No conflict' In a letter in response, Mr Railton said that as far as its 'analysis' showed, it had 'no employees working on redress who are in a position of actual conflict'. Mr Railton said some individuals who worked for Post Office while postmasters were being wrongfully prosecuted were employed in the Remediation Unit when it was set up. He then said the Post Office 'quickly acknowledged' that this gave rise to 'perceived conflict' particularly in the case of those who worked in roles 'even loosely connected with historic prosecutions' – known as 'past roles employees'. While the chair said the Post Office had 'taken steps to remove' these staff, he said the organisation was anxious that as these individuals hadn't been accused of wrongdoing, they were to be treated fairly and that the process should not 'slow down the pace of redress'. 'Leaving at the earliest opportunity' Mr Railton then added: 'As at the date of your last meeting (at which the oral update was given), we were in a position to report that all but two Past Roles Employees had been redeployed from the Remediation Unit (and many had left the business altogether), and that discussions were ongoing with the remaining two individuals with a view to their leaving Post Office. 'Since then, one further individual has been identified and the team is working towards their leaving Post Office too at the earliest opportunity.' One individual who continues to be employed within the unit is Shirley Hailstones, who is not accused of wrongdoing. Documents shown to the inquiry show Ms Hailstones gave feedback on a defence drafted on the Post Office's behalf in relation to victims' cases. And Ms Hailstones was also previously involved in the mediation case of Mr Castleton, who was portrayed by Will Mellor in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Mr Castleton was ultimately told he would not be able to take part in the scheme and that his only option would be to take his case to court. The inquiry was shown emails from forensic accountant Ron Warmington and Ms Hailstones, a Post Office case review manager, sent in November 2013, discussing potential links between faults at different Post Office branches. Ms Hailstones did not copy-in former sub-postmasters Mr Castleton and Sir Alan to her email, before she shared it with then-Post Office irrelevant Angela van den Bogerd and said: 'This interaction in my view should not be widely circulated.' Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Castleton said: 'It's entirely irrelevant whether any of these people are guilty of wrongdoing or not. 'From the perspective of former sub-postmasters, anybody working at the Post Office in that era will be tainted – it's the optics. They need to be removed.' A Post Office spokesman said: 'We do not comment on individual employment matters. 'We can confirm, as per our letter to the Advisory Board that has been published, there are three individuals leaving the Post Office at the earliest opportunity.'
