Hello from Brussels!
I’m taking a few days off from the world by going out into it. I recommend it. This is the first time I’ve left home without a laptop and a pile of work since… I don’t know. Long before Covid. Below are a few touristy photos and captions—the best I can do with fat fingers on an old phone. Below those— pre-trip notes on how not to help women in France.
In the meantime—I’m still waiting for more responses about what to do with my Thursdays. Right now, the responses have been favoring photos of lesbians in bed (drinking coffee) and more of a focus on the city of Paris. What do you think?
Brussels / Bruxelles
A city known for its beer, frites, and chocolates, of which we are consuming plenty, Brussels is also a delightfully comics-obsessed. Five minutes after we arrive I see a whole fresco on the ceiling of a tunnel we’re walking through.
That night we saw this series.
Sunday we went to a comics museum which is pretty amazing btw.
That’s just one side of the city. It’s worth coming just to stand for an hour in the Grand Place which is extraordinary. Sorry my photos are totally inadequate. You’ll just have to come and see for yourself!
If you’re into architecture or design Brussels has so many Art Nouveau buildings and houses there’s no way to see them all. Many in terrible repair though.
Oh! And we discovered Brussels’ very own Williamsburg, Brooklyn where locals are fighting early gentrification.
More on Brussels next time. Xoxo
Notes on Women and France
Written pre-trip.
Thursday was a holiday in France, one lingering from their uber-Catholic days in which it was meaningful to celebrate the Ascension of Jesus to heaven, following his crucifixion and resurrection, what we ostensibly marked that day last month when we stuffed ourselves with chocolate eggs and “fishes.”
Ana and I went to sports complex a couple of blocks away from our apartment where there’s a soccer field, and around it a track. At one end there’s also a basketball court where kids toss up balls which usually don’t even hit the rim. They’re always pulling them out of the bushes. And every time I wonder how they can be so bad.
It was a holiday so there weren’t any official games, which left the field free for lots of people to play pick-up games of soccer. I said kids. I said people. But I meant men and boys. I counted 59, but they kept moving so maybe there were 62 or 63. I finally saw one woman on a bench watching her son. Aside from Ana and me, there was not one female anywhere benefiting from the track, or soccer field or basketball court. Sometimes there are two or three jogging, but not Thursday.
This speaks volumes about women’s power, our obligations. The only good thing about Marine Le Pen is that the perennial presence of her far right party in the final rounds of French presidential elections at least means a woman’s face is normalized on posters.
We don’t talk nearly enough about this or all the ordinary women who in 2022 are still beaten up by their spouses or boyfriends, and are treated like shit by the cops when they complain, the same cops who throw their hands up in confusion when the very same women are killed—2 or 3 a week. Like they couldn’t have done anything. We don’t ask why girls don’t exist on playgrounds. Either from fear they’ll be harassed, reluctance to enter a masculine sphere, or because they’re home taking care of the kids.
Given that you’d think I’d be more upset about the latest public scandal in France concerning one of Macron’s new ministers, Damien Abad, Minister for Solidarity, the guy in charge of policies for the disabled and social welfare. Almost immediately after his appointment, news broke accusing him of abusing women, forcing them to have sex with him.
Everyone picked it up. They printed headlines reading, “First meeting of new French cabinet overshadowed by rape allegations.” Thing is—he’s not on trial right now; the accusations date from 2011 and 2012. The courts threw out one case in 2017. And in the other, a formal complaint was never made.
Still, the left is holding demos demanding Abad resign, in fact, that Macron’s whole government should. Bunch of rapists.
Some of them are genuine. And I know that it requires a lot of courage for a woman to walk into a police station and file a complaint. And that getting a guy convicted of rape is nearly impossible. So Abad may have done it, even if he got a not guilty verdict. But…
That’s not why this story from years ago is being resurrected. It’s not why the leaders of the Left are rubbing their hands in glee, as demonstrators demand Abad, and Macron resign.
They’re just delighted because what better way to undercut Macron’s appointment of a female pm than digging up old rape accusations for someone in his government?
They don’t care how coming minutes after Macron appoints a female prime minister, the ancient rape charges against Abad just seem like a cynical political riposte using ostensible victims as canon fodder. That it seems cruel.
Abad quitting wouldn’t give the two women who accused him justice. If he did it, nothing less than a conviction and jail would. It also won’t send a message to other male functionaries to behave themselves. For that, you have to do better than dig up old court cases, put on political theater. You have to take all crimes against women seriously. All the time. Not just when it has a political payoff.
Ugh.
A beautiful obit of Urvashi Vaid in the New Yorker. By Masha Gessen.
It begins…
In 1992, Urvashi Vaid, a thirty-three-year-old Indian American lesbian activist, was campaigning for the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association to be included in the annual India Day Parade in New York City. Vaid went to the Queens office of one of the parade organizers to make her case. As she told the story, the organizer claimed that the reasons the association had been turned away had nothing to do with homophobia. As evidence, he offered—and, at this point, Vaid would turn on a distinctly Indian English pronunciation, “an Indian woman is the head of all the gays.” Vaid was so confused that the man had to repeat his claim. She realized that he was, unknowingly, talking about her.
Vaid, who died of cancer on May 14th, in Manhattan, at the age of sixty-three, wasn’t the head of all the gays, but only because that job does not exist…
That’s it for this week. Try to find something beautiful to look at.
Demi-disgruntledly yours,
Queli Croakswell