It’s called Hi, how are you?, But Léa Clermont-Dion’s latest essay could just as well have been called: “Ça va pas”. However, because she believes in prevention, and in the fundamental importance of education, the author launches here, in this fifth title to her credit, a vibrant call for conversation.
“If I am writing to you today, it is in the hope of establishing a dialogue,” she begins, in this new book in bookstores next week, with a direct, committed and deliberately engaging tone. The target audience: adolescents and young adults.
On the menu: definitions, facts and scenarios, as well as several moving testimonies, not forgetting a few poems, in an essentially educational text that is not lacking in feeling.
After File a complaintwhere she reappropriated her own story, returning to her assault, Léa Clermont-Dion is here on an awareness-raising mission. Hence the change of register. “In fact, things are not really going well,” the text continues. In Canada, one in three women will be the victim of sexual assault during her lifetime. One in eleven men. […] We must educate ourselves in order to grow.”
Educate to understand, of course, but above all to reverse the trend. The documentarian (I salute you bitch, Janette and Ietc.) and a doctor in political science, also director of On s’écoute, a campaign to prevent sexual violence in secondary education, makes no secret of it.
This is a book for young people, especially young guys. For a long time, I felt like I was only talking to girls. Maybe it’s innocent of me, but I wanted to reach out to them.
Léa Clermont-Dion, author
Addressing an unconquered audience
Reaching out to start this dialogue “without bitterness,” she is careful to emphasize. How? With facts – she returns extensively to the revelations that tarnished Hockey Canada –, but also several definitions here and there (feminism, toxic masculinity, rape culture). Léa Clermont-Dion also tells her own story, without filter, but with the most concrete words possible. “In August 2008, my boss tried to finger me on a street corner, late at night, when I said no,” she writes. She was 17 years old. She finally filed a complaint in 2017. The guilty verdict, appealed, was finally confirmed last month.
Please note that Hi, how are you? was written while the case was still on appeal. “It was quite special,” confirms the main person concerned, without ever naming her attacker (her former boss: Michel Venne), neither in the text nor in person. “It’s my story,” she justifies. “I feel uncomfortable putting his name.” As for the verdict: “if I had lost, I would have given up,” she lets slip. It’s too much, much too long. It’s a great relief, but seven years of legal proceedings? […] It’s sad, but I understand people who don’t want to file a complaint in this context…”
Still, revisiting her past was a no-brainer, she continues. “That’s why I’m here.”
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Léa Clermont-Dion, author
It takes energy to write a book. If I go there, it’s because I was personally affected. The more we talk about it, the more we can change things!
Léa Clermont-Dion, author
If she masters and popularizes her subject so well, it is also because Léa Clermont-Dion has given various workshops, notably with players of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). She reports her presentations in the book almost word for word. “What works are concrete situations,” she says, after explaining the basics of consent to the 400 players in various virtual sessions. A telling example: “I’ll tell you bluntly: […] If the girl doesn’t want to suck you, well, don’t force her.”
“It was a challenge!” she continues. “But I like talking to an unconquered audience. […] We have to say things concretely: if the girl doesn’t want to, you don’t force her, period. We also have to undo patterns. No, if the girl denounces, she’s not crazy or hysterical. And we shouldn’t pretend that all guys are predators either.
The last chapter of the book offers a series of positive, rather inspiring male role models with Jay Du Temple, a conversation between feminist author Florence-Agathe Dubé-Moreau and her partner, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, in addition to an interview with feminist rapper Rymz, among others.
Rare blind spot here: pornography. “It has to be done,” the author concedes. “Maybe I’ll leave that to others. I’m tired…” Tired, certainly, but not exactly resigned. Léa Clermont-Dion says, on the contrary, that she is “full of hope.” “I see changes in behavior with the younger generation,” says the woman who is also a lecturer at UQAM. “Dialogue happens through encounters,” she concludes. “Otherwise, we’re heading for a brick wall.”
In bookstores September 17
Hi, how are you? Dialogue to prevent sexual violence
Cardinal
180 pages