Country Report: France, May 2023 - social mixing and fight against transphobia are only good for the children of the masses, not for those of the establishment
This May, in France, Education Minister Pap Ndiaye launched both his plan for social mixing and campaigns against LGBT-phobia in schools. When Pap Ndiaye was appointed a year ago, he was completely unknown to the general public. A teacher-researcher and historian specialising in the social history of the United States and minorities, whose mother was a teacher in France and father who was a Senegalese engineer, he claims to "share most of the causes" of the Wokes. In terms of form, his rather strict style and haughty bearing in fine suits stand in stark contrast to the carelessness of many politicians. It's been a long time since France has had a minister who looks like a minister rather than a trader.
When he was appointed, the French right was up in arms, seeing Emmanuel Macron's appointment of a "wokist, intersectional Islamo-leftist" education minister as a veritable declaration of war. Strangely enough, surely out of ignorance, the French right failed to notice and make use of the fact that this radical progressive intellectual was, in the end, making the same observation as the identitarian Renaud Camus and his famous "Grand remplacement", when Pap Ndiaye declared: "Our mission is to make immigration a central element of national history".
Looking at his CV, you'd have thought that Emmanuel Macron's progressive government would put him centre stage, but we don't know why this minister at the head of the ministry with the biggest budget, €60 billion, is particularly discreet. I'm not sure that if you did a micro-trottoir in the streets of France, many people would be able to name him. The only issues it seems to be working on are 'LGBT-phobia' and 'social mixing'. Despite the increasingly visible backwardness of French state schools, which continue to fall in the PISA rankings, the Minister's priorities are not the fight against illiteracy and the lack of engineers, but rather the promotion of pupils' gender identities to better combat discrimination. Let's be clear about this: it is intolerable for a teenager to be harassed because he or she is gay, but it is also unacceptable for a child to be harassed because he or she is a bit 'slow', obese, effeminate, an orphan, good in class, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, and so on. Deciding that one form of child suffering is superior to another is particularly odious. What's more, it seems to be a political manoeuvre to give the impression that the state is taking some action while it is powerless to raise the standard of education in French state schools.
In my time, in the 80s and 90s, public schools mainly catered for children who had failed in state schools or the children of practising Catholic parents who wanted their children to grow up in an environment that respected their religion. State schools were seen as the place to go for excellence. Today, the behaviour, safety and attainment problems in state schools are such that it is the private sector that is seen as the route to excellence. The same progressive bourgeoisie who will tell you that the main problem with integrating immigrant populations is that they are being 'crammed' into the suburbs, while they themselves stay in their beautiful neighbourhoods and protest when migrant reception centres are set up down the road from their homes, bemoan the lack of social diversity in state schools, but send their children to private schools. You have to realise that in large conurbations, some secondary schools cater for several dozen nationalities, which leads to problems with mastering French and therefore delays in learning other subjects. What's more, children are now stigmatised because of the white colour of skin. Yet instead of looking for solutions to these problems, Pap Ndiaye has preferred to launch a grand plan for "social diversity", which everyone already knows will be useless.
It would all be the usual 'progressist circus', trying to hide the devastating consequences of uncontrolled mass immigration on all the state's infrastructures, were it not for the fact that the Education Minister has sent his children to the 'École Alsacienne', which has cancelled its workshops on transphobia following complaints from parents.
The École Alsacienne is a Parisian private school catering for children from the age of around 3 up to the baccalaureate. This highly selective and select establishment is, let's face it, the most sought-after school in the Parisian establishment. Getting into it will guarantee you a bright future. Well, our Minister, who gives great lessons on social diversity, has put her children there. What's more, while the Minister of Education was promoting the fight against LGBT-phobia in May, this elitist public school with excellent results put an end to the workshops run by the OUTrans association following complaints from parents. The parents were "outraged", as the OUTrans speakers "curtly reframed and accused" their children of being transphobic because they refused to admit that today men can be pregnant and to accept Trans men in the girls' toilets. The children will testify: "We really had the impression that they were trying to push us to become trans, that it was super cool to make a transition", "The presenters talked as if trans people were a huge part of the population, but we know that's not true, and when we told them that, they shouted at us." The President of the Alsatian School Parents' Association admitted: "What strikes me is the intolerance of these people who were there to advocate tolerance. These children are lucky to have influential parents who are very involved in their education. But what about children in state schools, brought up by a single parent, living in the suburbs and having to leave at 6am to go to work in Paris and coming home at 7pm to prepare dinner, before collapsing from exhaustion in front of the television?
You ask yourself how the French can put up with such tartuffery from this minister? It's actually quite simple. Firstly, during the interviews the mass media don't question him about the fact that he lectures on social mixing and promotes LGBT ideologies to other people's children while he doesn't impose all this on his own children. If you don't follow the news on the Internet, you'll have a hard time finding this out. Secondly, there are on average two scandals on this level every week. One scandal chases another. Everyone talks about it for three or four days, then they move on to the next scandal. It's a perpetual progressist circus.
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