"Je ne veux pas être condamnée au viol à perpétuité, et toi?"  : luttes féministes québécoises contre les violences sexuelles (1970-1983)
The 1970s and early 1980s saw an explosion of activity and, above all, visibility of feminist groups in the province of Quebec, many of whom worked on the issue of sexual violence. Feminist activists played a central role in the problematization of this form of violence - yet the literature about their activities remains virtually non-existent. The purpose of this work is to trace the history of feminist activist struggles against sexual violence from the early 1970s to 1983, when the Bill C-127 (Canadian sexual assault act) came into effect, by portraying their claims and their discourses. This work is based on the private archives of three Centre d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel (CALACS), on four interviews with feminist activists active during the period concerned and on the content of feminist periodic Québécois Deboutte! (1972-1974), Têtes de Pioche (1976-1979) and La Vie en rose (1980-1987). In this research, it is shown that some Québec feminist groups, by organizing themselves around the common issue of the liberation of women, have created distinctively feminist discourses on the issue of sexual violence by creating broad definitions and by attributing the cause of this violence to a harmful socialization of genders, itself maintained by a patriarchal system. At the same time, they have transformed their own understanding of the category "woman" and its attributes. These groups have engaged in an attempt to eradicate sexual violence through various activities, mainly within three axis: the creation of services for victims, public awareness campaigns and political actions. In the end, they built a network of Centres to help and fight against sexual violence, contributed to the debate about the laws framing this type of violence in Canada and made sexual violence a public problem in Québec by rendering it visible.
Québec Canada Gender Sexual violence History of feminism (1970-1983) Social movement