User:ChachaUPEC/Caroline De Haas

Caroline De Haas [kaʁɔlin də ʔas], was born on September 10th, 1980 in Bourg-en-Bresse (Ain), is a French feminist activist and politician.

Family and studies
Caroline De Haas is the oldest daughter of a couple of doctors: her mother, a Catholic, is a gynecologist and her father a general practitioner ,. She has seven brothers and sisters, including Magali de Haas, who succeeded her as the spokesperson for Osez le féminisme ! (with Thalia Breton and Julie Muret).

She studied contemporary history at the universities of Lyon-II and Nanterre, where she obtained a master's degree in 2008, , ,.

Union and association commitments
She grew up in a activists family: her father militated in the medical sphere and her mother in the catholic environment. From the beginning of her studies, she campaigned with Amnesty International, Petits frères des pauvres and Scouts unitaires and with the Union nationale des étudiants de France (UNEF). During the Lyon congress in 2003, she was elected to the national office of the student union, she became its treasurer and general secretary, in October 2006, and follow the local chapter of Lyon. She left her functions in 2009.

In 2009, she participated to the foundation of the association Osez le féminisme ! of which she is spokesperson until July 2011, , ,.

In April 2011, Caroline De Haas was one of the signatories of the manifesto "Equality now!", Forty years after the manifeste des 343.

Political commitment
Caroline De Haas militates among the Mouvement des jeunes socialistes then, at the Socialist party as press secretary to the party spokesperson, Benoît Hamon until 2012.

After the 2012 presidential election de 2012 and the creation of a ministry for women's rights in the Ayrault government, Caroline De Haas is appointed adviser in charge of relations with associations and the fight against violence against women in the cabinet of Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. She stays at this position for one year, during which she was responsible for creating and leading awareness sessions on gender issues for government ministers. ,.

On April 10th, 2014, she left the Socialist Party, because for her, the absence of debate and the government's liberal policy go against her convictions.

In April 2014, she was at the top of the list in Île-de-France for the "Feminist lists for a united Europe" in the 2014 European elections. The list obtained 0.29% of the votes cast.

In January 2016, she launched with Elliot Lepers and Arnauld Champremier-Trigano the Left primary campaign which aims to organize a primary election to appoint a left candidate for the 2017 presidential election. On February 18th, 2016, she initiated with union activists the petition "Loi travail : non merci !" against the reform of the labor Code proposed by Minister Myriam El Khomri. "She threw it at the corner of a table, in a meeting that had nothing to do with it. It started with a sincere indignation", remembers Arnauld Champremier-Trigano. Two weeks later, the petition collects more than a million signatures.

On September 7th, 2016, she became campaign director for Cécile Duflot, candidate for the 2016 ecological presidential primary, (she is eliminated in the first ballot).

She is a candidate in the 2017 legislative elections in the eighteenth district of Paris supported by the PCF, EELV and Nouvelle Donne,.

On June 11th, 2017, she was eliminated at the first round of the legislative election. Obtaining 13.57% of the votes and 7.39% of the registered ones, she was in 4th position (on 26 candidates).

Media presence
In May 2011, she spoke on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, declaring that "the way in which this saga has been commented in France by media and political figures highlights an unbridled sexism, of which we know the existence".

In 2013, in response to the publication of a petition, signed by "343 salauds" (bastards), who defends the freedom to use the services of prostitutes, she created the site 343 connards (assholes), which allows the sending of tweets to all signatories of this petition, including Eric Zemmour, Frédéric Beigbeder or even Marc Weitzmann. "With this site, Caroline De Haas does not intend to debate, discuss, exchange or even ignore: she only disqualifies her interlocutors", regrets the journalist Peggy Sastre. In 2014, she also co-founded the site Macholand, intended to allow Internet users to denounce ambient male chauvinism in the media of their everyday environment.

In the debates following the 2016 New Year's sexual assault in Cologne, she replies: "Go pour your racist shit elsewhere", to those who link the assaults to the arrival of migrants in Germany. This position is qualified as a denial by Élisabeth Badinter who accuses "feminist headliners" of "having put priority on the denunciation of racism before the protection of women". Caroline De Haas replies that Badinter did not participate in the demonstrations of support for women in Cologne.

In May 2017, she intervened in the debate on street harassment against women in the Chapelle-Pajol district (Paris). She proposed in particular "to make bigger the sidewalks", considering that this violence against women is linked to "a space problem, where there is a concentration of people". After the reactions to her words, she denounces an "unnecessary controversy" believing that "her speech has been extremely reduced",.

In January 2018, the French Minister Gérald Darmanin was accused of rape by a call-girl, in reference to 2009 facts. First, the case was dismissed because of a lack of response from the complainant to the summons investigators. But, Caroline De Haas took that case and convinces the lady to re-file a rape complaint "by surprise", and charges feminist lawyer friends to defend the accusation, while, in the same time she herself promotes it in media. A petition, supported by a number of feminist activists, is circulating on the internet demanding the resignation of the minister targeted by a preliminary investigation by the Paris prosecutor's office. Florence Rault, lawyer at the Paris Bar, said on the VuDuDroit blog that this method is not very respectful of the work of justice: "[…] the pack is launched and loudly demands the resignation of the minister, that is that is to say, his political and social death", considering De Haas as "one of the high priestesses of aggressive neo-feminism". In a post published on Mediapart, Caroline De Haas says: "I am stunned by the reaction of the Prime Minister who, without waiting for justice to be done, decided who was right or wrong in this case." "He has my full confidence," he said of the accused. […] The Prime Minister has already decided. He does not presume Gérald Darmanin innocent. He says he is. Before the justice" . . On February 16, 2018, the rape investigation against Darmanin was discontinued, as the complainant's absence of consent could not be established by the investigation..

In February 2018, she said that "one in two or three men is a sexual assailant" but, according to her, her words were distorted. However, L'Obs replied to her: "Recorded, like the rest of the interview, these words were transcribed, then formatted to ensure their readability. She did not ask to read them again. ".  She is widely criticized for these comments, in particular by Marlène Schiappa and Dominique Besnehard who declared (in March 2018) on TV that she wanted to "slap her". She filed a complaint against him a few days later. After his declarations on France Info concerning the accusation of sexual assault made against Nicolas Hulot by the magazine Ebdo, she is accused of peddling rumors,. In particular, she said: "I had friends who told me that they had heard victims speak of harassment. At least two or three”. She said that she is tired of hateful messages against her, so she closes her Twitter and Facebook accounts, before reopening them a few months later and contributing to the media coverage of the "Ligue du LOL case",.

She is invited at La Grande confrontation on LCI November 13, 2019, a program on freedom of speech and what it is or is not possible to say on the mode of humor. She takes part Alain Finkielkraut on his statements made in 2009 because to say that "for example, when a 40 year old man rapes a 13 year old girl, it is not really a rape because she was no longer really a little girl, as did M. Finkielkraut, trivializes the reality of rape, especially child crime in France",. So, exasperated he exclaimed "Violate, rape, rape! Here, I say to the men: rape the women! Besides, I rape mine every night." Caroline De Haas adds on Twitter: "Either this gentleman is violent, or he finds it funny to caricature marital rape. Either both. In any case, he needs help." Marlène Schiappa, Secretary of State for Equality, thanks her for recalling the law in live at TV,. Asked by Télé Loisirs, Caroline De Haas says : "I want him to apologize to women victims of domestic violence. In addition, journalists and presenters must be better trained and made aware of these questions because their level of consciousness is today quite low…". However, Libération believes that the 16 second video clip posted on Twitter does not capture the "ironic" dimension of the philosopher's words, which can be understood by listening to the entire sequence. In response to the numerous criticisms that his remarks provoques, Alain Finkielkraut said in Le Figaro 'that today, we no longer understand the irony: you have to be literal, otherwise people don't hear anything. For Claude Askolovitch, "we can think that Finkielkraut is seriously wrong, it is my case, without pretending to take an irony from the TV set for a call for rape". Also present, the lawyer Emmanuel Pierrat denounces "an artificial controversy, which Caroline De Haas intends to recover after the fact. Even if I do not share his ideas, I can understand that Alain Finkielkraut used a lively tone: his words were constantly diverted." A little later in the show, Caroline De Haas takes the opportunity to make the philosopher repeat that Greta Thunberg, at 16, is a child in his eyes while he believes that in the Polanski case, Samantha Gailey, the 13-year-old victim was no longer a child.

Professional life
In June 2013, Caroline De Haas created Egaé, and peer to peer, a professional equality consultancy agency,. In 2015, she founded the Egalis group which brings together three companies dedicated to gender equality (Egaé, peer to peer, Balance and Other Advice) and of which she is associate director. In 2017, she said that she took a blow to the ego when all the employees of her company turned against her during a seminar. "I had a big management problem in my company. I almost exploded in flight", she said. For Pauline Chabbert, co-founder of Egae, "They blamed her for very personal things, about her way of being and acting".

The economic model of these companies is based on obtaining equality training contracts, in particular with public administrations and local authorities. For Frédéric Mas, Caroline De Haas' businesses are characteristic of the "political entrepreneurship": a way of using public money to make a profit without financial risks of the traditional contractor. "Egae, it’s about 60% of interventions for public bodies and 40% in the private sector", explains Caroline De Haas. The group co-leads the projet Expertes.eu aimed who improves the visibility of women in public space and the medias .The executives of the newspaper Le Monde are trained by Caroline De Haas,.

At the end of 2017, she criticized the lack of means of the French government plan against violence against women (420 million euros in 2018). Journalist Eugénie Bastié notes that Caroline De Haas' company is specialized in training companies, unions and local communities in gender equality, that is why "her business is mainly based on public money, this is why she is now calling for an increase in the budget".

In 2019, she defended the establishment of a non-violence certificate, along the lines of the school road safety.

Private life
She is in a couple, since 2011, with a doctoral student in economy, and she has two children.

Criticism
In February 2018, a Libération investigation, based on fifteen victims testimony who reported harassements, sexual assaults and rapes suffered by members of the UNEF student union when Caroline De Haas was secretary general. "Rapes and sexual assaults were common at UNEF, of which Caroline De Haas was the secretary general from 2006 to 2009 without ever being affected. There was, however, a whole pigsty to swing",indignant Éric Naulleau (writer) during the revelations. The conservative weekly Valeurs actuelles also accuses her of having "remained silent". "Ten years ago, I was not an activist against gender-based and sexual violence. I was a woman, a victim of violence who was not trained to detect violence around me", defends Caroline De Haas before to close temporarily her Twitter account.

On November 1st, 2019, Caroline De Haas signed a rostrum calling for a "march against islamophobia", published in Liberation, which included, among the signatories, the Imam Abu Anas who legitimized marital rape ten years earlier. She removed her name from this article, but she kept the calling to participate at the procession. She justified that in a blog post on Mediapart : "I asked that my name be removed from the list of signers. Because there are people on this list who had words of staggering violence against women. I don't want to see my name next to theirs." On November 13th, 2019, the french lawyer Francis Szpiner reproaches her for her participation on the LCI set. "You were present at a manifestation during which there were beside you retrograde Islamists close to the Muslim Brotherhood, who are pro stoning and lashes adulterous women in countries where sharia prevail". Marianne notes: "see their names next to hers, no; march by their side, no problem".

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