Le 14 avril 1986, Simone de Beauvoir décédait. Pour célébrer, 40 ans plus tard et de façon un peu décalée, cette immense écrivaine et philosophe féministe, nous republions la lettre B comme Beauvoir, qui figure dans l'Abécédaire de Christine Delphy.

Les tensions actuelles autour du pétrole du Moyen-Orient ne sont pas seulement géopolitiques. En menaçant de s'emparer des réserves pétrolières de l'Iran, quelques semaines après avoir fomenté un « coup d'Etat fossile » au Venezuela et menacé de saisir le Groenland et son riche sous-sol, le président des Etats-Unis dévoile la violence sur laquelle repose ce qu'Ulrich Brand et Markus Wissen qualifient de « mode de vie impérial » de l'Occident, et plus particulièrement des Etats-Unis. Rappelons qu'avec 17 tonnes équivalent CO₂ par habitant en 2024 (contre 7 pour l'Union européenne), les Etats-Unis figurent parmi les plus gros émetteurs de gaz à effet de serre par habitant du monde.
Les transports sont leur premier poste d'émissions directes. Parmi ces derniers, les SUV, camions et voitures particulières en totalisent 80 %. Derrière ces chiffres se cache une organisation spatiale spécifique autour d'un des piliers majeurs de l'ordre social américain : les banlieues tentaculaires des grandes métropoles. Or le métabolisme suburbain sur lequel repose l'American way of life, avec son triptyque maison individuelle, centre commercial et voiture obligatoire, dépend d'une source absolument vitale : une énergie abondante et bon marché.

Réflexion sur les dérives identitaires du mouvement animaliste et les pâtes qui ramolliraient les peuples.

L'encéphalomyélite myalgique touche au moins 450 000 personnes en France qui subissent directement le déni des autorités sanitaires, le sexisme du corps médical et le délaissement de l'État par l'absence de recherche de traitement et de protection sociale. La maladie est pourtant très répandue.

Un article de la loi sur le service militaire est encore plus inquiétant que la mesure elle-même. L'article 3 doblige tous les hommes de 17 à 45 ans à déclarer à l'armée tout séjour à l'étranger de plus de trois mois. Concrètement, cela veut dire que tous les hommes en âge de combattre subissent une séquestration implicite.

Following Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli's resignation in response to mass Gen Z-led protests, Nepal goes to the polls on 5 March. Some 19 million people — including 837,000 new voters — will choose from 120 registered parties. With unemployment and governance failures eclipsing traditional ideological debates, anti-corruption and inclusion demands have dominated the campaign.

« Je ne savais pas encore que j'étais devenu un objet. Je me découvrais objet au milieu d'autres objets », écrit Frantz Fanon en 1952. Le 17 mars 2026, Apolline de Malherbe reprend une fake news d'extrême droite en interrogeant Bally Bakayoko, élu maire de Saint-Denis : il aurait appelé celle-ci « ville des Noirs ». Fanon savait.

A genocide in Gaza that the world watched and allowed to happen. The Epstein files. Parliamentary scandals. Corruption so deep nobody can see the bottom. A war on Iran launched days after a peace deal was within reach. Most of us have lost faith in the people running things. And that loss of faith is opening the door to something we should all be watching closely: the steady transfer of decision-making power to algorithms and AI systems that are not neutral, not accountable, and not safe.

The eager obituary writers tended to announce that #MeToo had failed whenever further incidents of high-profile sexual abuse were reported (though the very fact they were reported and in some cases successfully prosecuted may have been a result of these shifts). The single most important impact of #MeToo, I believe, is akin to what many environmental victories look like: nothing, in the absolute best sense of that word. Success for many environmental campaigns is the river that was not dammed or polluted, the forest that was not cut down, the species that did not go extinct, the oil wells that were not dug, the coal that was not burned. Unfortunately, these results are invisible if you don't know why the river is flowing freely, the birds are singing or the meadow near your home wasn't paved over.

Freyd's work also led her to another concept with incredible value and usefulness today, DARVO. DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. It's a pattern Freyd identified in how perpetrators of violence respond when confronted. However, institutions also use this strategy, and they often have more power and resources, allowing them to be more effective than individuals.
Today, DARVO is a weapon wielded against the public by people and institutions meant to represent and protect us as citizens. The handling of the Epstein files, for instance, follows the classic abuser's playbook identified by Freyd: the obstruction, and then slow-walk, of selectively redacted release of information (Deny); the constant discrediting and threatening of survivors (Attack); the protection of powerful men's identities, reputations, and privacy (Reverse Victim and Offender). Asymmetrical power and the government's use of “transparency” have exposed victims' identities while masking those of the powerful. At various points, their names. Faces. Bodies. Addresses. Families.
This is what a system protecting itself does. DARVO, in the Epstein case, has consistently made victims the face of the crimes and ensured that the network that enabled Epstein remains an abstract force.
For many women, especially women of color who have never had the luxury of trusting these systems in the first place, the Epstein situation is confirming our worldview. The distress we are feeling isn't borne of surprise or even outrage, but deep grief and rage. It's the exhausting weight of living in a world that continues to tell women that we don't matter, not even as children. What the Epstein case is doing, however, is showing many more people that the men most likely to talk about protecting “their” girls and women are the ones most likely to feel entitled to do to girls and women whatever they please.