A group of Feminists from France has found a new way to fight inequality – with sarcastic humour and fake beards. Only rarely is there a violent response. They want equality with men.
Colette Coffin unzipped her handbag and pulled out a small piece of artificial fur. “This is my speaking beard,” she explains.
“I’ve got a much bushier one but this has a wider hole so I can talk without getting too much fluff in my mouth.”
Deftly, she hooks the string loops around her ears and turns to face me. The effect is bizarre. With the little ginger triangle on her chin, the schoolteacher wearing a prim summer dress resembles a wannabe Lenin.
Ilana Eloit, a political sciences student in jeans, shows me her beard. It matches her long dark hair perfectly but she complains it is “very itchy”.
Glancing around, she stuffs it back into her bag under the table. “We don’t want to give the game away yet,” she says.
As dusk falls, I sit at a pavement cafe in an upmarket neighbourhood in Paris with a dozen members of the direct action feminist group, La Barbe.
The name comes from the group’s pantomime style of protest. Its members infiltrate high-level, male-dominated meetings. In due course they get to their feet and silently don false beards before one of them reads out an ironic statement congratulating the men on their supremacy.
The emphasis on facial hair ridicules antiquated male attitudes. “It’s meant to be ‘ringard’,” says Ilana.
All they wanted Equality with Men but without responsibilities; exclaimed comman man, these Women are not ready to take responsibilities in Everyday life, Man has to pay their bills look after them, now they want to look like men too by wearing beards.
If they really want equality let them compete, and let them win with merits but not with Reservations. No man is dominate women, but Women them self degrade them self and call they are harassed or Dominated.
