Since 2021, the UN has dedicated a World Day of Human Fraternity, celebrated on February 4. Dedicated to the promotion of interreligious and intercultural dialogue, its title refers to a great principle of the Enlightenment : the consideration of all men by all men as if they were brothers.
And what about the sisters? Let us not pretend that we do not know that fraternity summons humanity as a whole. But let's take this opportunity to question the notion of " sisterhood ". A simple mirror of fraternity ? Subset of it ? Or is it a reminder of the need not to forget half of humanity when we talk about federating it? We talk about it!
Birth of the democratic ideal of fraternity... Without the sisters !
Fraternity as an ideal of society emerged in France during the revolutionary period. It sounds like a call for federation to constitute a united people of citizens, sealed by indissoluble ties beyond differences in social conditions. But not regardless of gender ! The Revolutionaries are very clear on this point : children, slaves and women are not brothers.
And this is where political feminism comes from : Olympe de Gouges (but also Condorcet, Manon Roland and others) are surprised — to put it mildly — by this poor workmanship of the Republic. It will therefore be necessary to form a collective (of women and men) to obtain the rights associated with belonging to citizenship. Without saying its name, the sisterhood was born : the sisters wanted to be part of the family and would fight for it.
The brothers' self-isolation... And that of the sisters
In the nineteenth century in the United States, women entering universities discovered that a whole part of student life and preparation for adult life was played out in the fraternities.
These clubs, often secret and governed by a code of honour, bring boys together on the basis of shared interests (a hobby, a sport, etc.), common values, shared principles but also membership of a social group. These brotherhoods play an informal but very important role in the destiny of individuals, who support each other, help each other, and facilitate the access of the brothers to the professional networks that will allow them to embark on a beautiful career. These brotherhoods also exert an influence within the university, both through the relationships between them and their weight vis-à-vis the teaching staff, the administration and even the financial staff.
The students were quick to create sororities of their own. For them too, to defend their interests, to weigh in on the organization, to organize solidarity... In this configuration, sisterhood is a mirror of fraternity.
Non-mixity as a " safe " space for acting together
In other contexts, sisterhood will be defined as solidarity between women, perceived as necessary because of a specific experience of the condition of woman. This specific experience is everything that has to do with biology and the body, but also what comes from the sociology of women (how they are situated in society, how they work, how domestic responsibilities and mental load weigh on them...) to the question of discrimination and domination. In this approach, the " sisters among themselves " share the experience, strengthen each other and organize action to improve their condition.
More than a sisterhood against men, this is a sisterhood without men. Non-mixity is supposed to allow a freedom of speech that would not be the same in the presence of the other gender (especially when it is necessary to address the subjects concerning relations between women and men, and even more so the question of domination). It must also make it possible to imagine alternative modes of organizing action, apart from those that would have been thought out " by men, for men ".
Sisterhood and fraternity in adelphity
A third vision of sisterhood is simply to bring out of ambiguity a fraternity that we do not know if it concerns men as a gender or humans as a species. Gendering fraternity by naming the sisterhood is to dispel the misunderstanding and indicate that brothers and sisters belong together, on an equal footing, to the same " family ". It's a bit like that of epicene writing, which specifies that we speak to " all" rather than relying on the generic masculine implicit , which is reputed to encompass the masculine and the feminine.
There is a (very nice) word to express this " fraternity and sisterhood " united in the same sense of belonging and duty of loyalty : it is adelphity. The children of the same matrix are adelphs, whether it is prosaically the parent or more symbolically the Republic.
