image from the video “les Passantes” from Georges Brassens by Charlotte Abramow

Maybe because i grew up without sisters, and with 5 brothers, the “sorority”, this word bothered me for a long time. I don’t like breakups between people (women/men). You know that. I understand the need and even the necessity to meet at some point, “between us”, to share, to get together, to not fear. But in the context of #metoo…. Something disturbed me with this idea of gather women together “between them”. As a movement prior to a revolution that we, women and men, pin one’s hopes on.

And the other day, I saw the first of 4 documentary of Lanzmann. He called them… “The Four Sisters”. 4 films on 4 The Holocaust’s survivors….

Watching The Four Sisters (on Arte until March 23rd) is certainly no fun. But it’s so beautiful and helpful. I’d just published this post on virility and the difficulty for men to cry. The same evening, I end up at the Unesco with Lanzmann who’s 92 and climbed the stairs leading to the stage of the main amphitheatre to take a speech filled with a tangible fatigue, and with his profound emotion :

« my heart cried so much, I cried so much during the 12 years of making Shoah, that I needed 40 years to make The Four Sisters. I knew that I had to do it but I was terrified. Life is one thing, cinema is another. But these tears never blinded me. They allowed me to share. They weren’t judgmental. They bonded us.»

Yes, in suffering, we find sisters, sisters of love, whether we’re a sister or a brother. And immediately, I found that really beautiful. The documentary started; Ruth Elias began to play his accordion, then began speaking… And we went with her, in the depth of History.
My children are still young, and English doesn’t have the same relationship with memory that French has.

picture by Laurence Revol pour les Glorieuses, in collaboration avec We are Lemonade

Then I saw these pictures  in which Lisa and Julie participated, “liberty, equality, sorority”. I found it beautiful, because it was a celebration of women’s bodies. I actually just read a book badly translated (maybe even badly written) that we began with Mathilde and Géraldine, about our relationship to menstrual cycles. It’s called The optimal woman. Really badly written (or maybe it is badly translated because i read it in French) but really instructive! We’ll talk more about it.

image from “les Passantes” from Georges Brassens by Charlotte Abramow

I then met the incredible Odile Chabrillac (who has just realsed a French book about Witches) , and I’m about to read Camille Sefz’s book, The power of the feminine.
It’s a lot, right ?

So here it is, always without injunction, always saying that words are words, they’re the finger pointing at the moon, without ever being the moon itself, always in search, I’m arriving at what i adore about  sorority : this idea of celebrating the feminine ! And it begins with the body ! Once again not in an essentialisation, but at least a recognition . let us not forget our society today is largely based on the idea that power is in a long, raising phallus high and hardly, so let’s not deny the power of the body). this celebration of the feminine, or of women, at the same time, calls for the rise of a new masculinity, out of phallocracy, a masculinity that is powerful and glorious because it is healthy, happy and shining (did I talked to you about THE WORK?!!! please please please watch it)! this is the wish of a sister.

I send you love with “les passantes” by Charlotte Abramow. I don’t connect to the song but the images express a lot of what I feel. Viva women, their bodies and their feminine!

Viva Sisters!