I’ve lived in paris for 5/6 years, I was fluent when I arrived (years of international school) and my mom had already been living here for several years. Still, it was a big culture shock and adjustment and absolutely levelled up my French to the point where now French people usually assume I am from here.
The problem is even with all that, I just don’t feel at home. Some cultural differences feel insurmountable, the blasé and critical attitude is difficult for me, I’ve always been very high energy and jokey and have a hard time finding people in everyday life who match that energy. Whenever I go back to the states I feel so fulfilled and like myself and it really makes me question why I’m here. I have a very cool job in the non-profit sector, so not super well-paid, and a very stable loving relationship, my apartment, my mom… there’s still something where I feel like I’ll never fully be accepted here. I feel like my American-ness immediately puts me down in peoples’ eyes, I feel like I will never write perfectly or totally grasp codes and it will always take me a slight extra effort to understand things that are easy for people here. I don’t get cultural references and I don’t know the clichés of every tiny town and region.
I’m from New York so I liked living here because I felt that Paris was such a better cost of living/quality of life ratio, and I love the work-life balance and accessibility of culture. However, what use are my 5 weeks of vacation if I spend half of them going back home? And probably, I always will, because my missing home will never go away, my friends and family there will keep getting married or getting sick or just being there ?
And France’s descent into xenophobic fascism is not helping. I know all the issues in the US, but it’s different, I am from there and always will be, whereas I am actively choosing to live in France and contribute to its economy.
Just feeling like the jig is up and I did what I had to do, and now I can leave. This is just venting, don’t know if anyone here can relate, if this is a bump in the road or a red alert.
Look. Paris is not for everybody. I like it there but I have the advantages of being male and fitting French prejudices about a certain kind of upper middle class yankee,!which makes life easy for me. Having been around the French my whole life, I think it’s ten or twenty times harder to be an American woman in France than an American man. I am pretty sure the US is a lot closer to fascism than France is. But I am also certain that it’s way easier to be an American woman in the US than an American woman in France. For what it’s worth I have two grown French daughters. One has embraced her Frenchness and has moved there. The other far prefers New York because of French attitudes towards women. Everybody gets to choose.
What ate French attitudes towards women?
I agree with all of this and also, I find it funny that Bidens age gets talked about a lot when Trump is… 77 years old. The difference isn’t that big, especially as Trump looks like he aged a decade in the last year or so.
I’m curious, can you tell me more about this? I’m an American woman who loves France… but I’m not really sure what French attitudes towards women are.
At least in the television shows I see, the French attitude towards women seems progressive.
There are very strict gender norms in France. The type of woman who is celebrated in France is one who is a certain narrow (and not very achievable) stereotype of womanhood: beautiful, capable, cool; in general, expectations that there is a certain “image” of an acceptable woman. Of course there is no such equivalent for men to be accepted in society.
North American-style feminism is not seen positively and even the word “feminism” is used as a pejorative and progressive French women avoid using it. There’s a cultural issue with men not respecting women’s personal space or assuming it’s okay to touch them or not believing the woman who says they’re not interested. It’s very clear in North America that bosses shouldn’t make a move on their subordinates, but France is reluctant to see that as an issue.
Also the french women who try to draw attention to this inequality in the workplace and society are publicly derided by both men and women. There’s a cultural attachment to the stereotypical ideal French woman and not everyone is convinced that she is bad for society.
If you want to learn more about French gender issues, this webcomic is a famous one (translated here into English but originally in France): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic
This song is by a Belgian singer but it sparked a LOT of conversation in France. The title is a play on “balance ton porc”, which was the French hashtag version of #MeToo.
I also highly recommend the documentary “Room 2806: The Accusation” for Americans who aren’t familiar with French culture around gender. It’s about a French man who was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel worker in NYC, but it spends a lot of time explaining the complicated and conflicting relationship that French society has with feminism, and directly contrasts that with American culture of gender norms. We have a society that strives for gender equality whereas France’s does not.
This is very specific and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
I’m thinking you don’t really know what fascism is the way you throw it around. You seem to equate it to “people who have political views I don’t like”.
A more honest view would be France’s far right not only has a very sorted history with actual fascism but the current far right party in France not only pushes some very questionable policies but also has a very significant group of support in France.
How can you say that, French Canadian have always be the left-ish workers while anglophones were the ruling class. The things that you think “wouldn’t fly in the rest of Canada” is because internet culture does not permeate through society as much because of the language barrier and media “isolation”.
Dude, check out the levels of anti-semitism in Quebec versus the rest of Canada. I remember seeing a survey years ago that asked “do jews secretly control financial and political systems?”. The rest of Canada was low single digit while Quebec was in the high teens.
Quebec is left-wing but there is a strong quasi-fascist/nationalist bent to their politics.
Québec is nationalist because it has its own culture that faces assimilation constantly. It has nothing to do with fascism, it’s just a different way to build a society. Your view is very anglo-centric.
I don’t know about the survey you saw a couple years ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Quebec_sentiment
Fascist views are fascist. It doesn’t matter why you hold them, they’re still fascist.
Excuse me? Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? If you haven’t researched Speaker Mike Johnson then it’s clear you really don’t. If you have done any research, then the most charitable assumption is that you’re being disingenuous. The Speaker has a documented history of one-sided pro-theocratic Christian positions going back decades. His closest allies are revisionists, liars, and toxic theocrats. Johns lies about the US Constitution. He believes Adam and Eve palled around with dinosaurs in the garden of eden on our “six-thousand year-old earth.” He wants to ban abortion and end gay rights, gay marriage, and even gay intimacy. His positions on southern history are revisionist in the extreme. He’s the GOP’s choice to lead the fascist break-out. What part of the GOP hard-right is not fascist? Its leader, Donald Trump? Give me a break. He’s called for “suspending the Constitution,” using the DOJ to go after his enemies, and ending the apolitical civil service. He wants to pardon the J6 insurrectionists. He worked with Vladimir Putin to get elected in 2016. You can dispute all these facts with your Fox News-fueled feelings but they’re still facts, and those who dispute them are liars.
The French far right divides into fascists and monarchists. Last I checked neither one of these were in senior government positions in France nor were any of their representatives the overwhelming favorite to win the next presidential election. So, what, exactly, are your feelings telling you when you say I “seem” to “throw” my facts “around”? Give me a break.
lol. Fascist. Haha. Is everyone you disagree with a fascist?! You sound like a teenager.
Well you sound like you haven’t been following America’s degradation since 2016. This is classic gaslighting on your part, by the way. Just saying “LOL” as the GOP burns the country to the ground is what’s really teenagerish here.
I fully agree with you. I think that the people disagreeing with your thoughts either 1) lack perspective or 2) are too arrogant to believe that America’s right-wing elements have and continue to hurt and disenfranchise fellow Americans. Classic lack of empathy and critical thinking skills.
The past four years under Biden haven’t been stellar bub…
Last I checked when Trump left inflation wasn’t wild, there wasn’t a cost of living crisis, interest rates weren’t prohibitive, we we weren’t in a proxy war with Russia. The ME was a much more peaceful place as well. But yah, orange man bad, mean tweets, Jan 6th (have you watched the newly released videos? LOL, don’t it’ll smash your perception of the so-called insurrection), etc etc.
“It is blood which moves the wheels of history” -Donald Trump…I mean Benito Mussolini (actual fascist).