Posted yesterday at 1:00 p.m.
An important essay that recalls the central place of black women in the history of this revolutionary movement. And which debunks some received ideas about denunciations.
We haven’t finished taking the measure of the #metoo movement. Collectively, since the first denunciations, we have taken giant steps to better understand the difficult process that a victim of sexual violence must face when she wants to denounce her aggressor.
But there is still work to be done and above all, several blind spots that have not been explored. Including that of the double difficulty of denouncing when one is a racialized person, a subject rarely discussed. It is this blind spot that Kharoll-Ann Souffrant, researcher and social worker, herself a victim of sexual violence as a teenager, wishes to shed light on.
Her observation: black women are doubly invisible when we talk about #metoo: as initiators of the movement and as victims.
While the movie She Said (adapted from the investigation of the two journalists of the New York Times on the Weinstein affair) is about to hit theaters, it is important to remember that the #metoo movement was first carried by black women.
Mme Suffering goes back to the testimony of Anita Hill in the 1990s to illustrate the lineage of Afro-descendant women who have courageously spoken out over the years on issues of sexual assault. The other highlight, the author reminds us, is the testimony of Nafissatou Diallo, the one identified as “the Sofitel maid”, attacked by the powerful Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York in 2011.
The #metoo movement as we know it today, launched by Tarana Burke in 2007, first aimed to denounce sexual violence against racialized girls and women, recalls the author. It has since been co-opted by the liberal white feminist movement — and by Hollywood.
It’s important to remember this because when it comes to whistleblowing, the experience of black women — who face economic, legal and social barriers — is different from that of white women.
Black women also face a double challenge: their desire to report comes up against the desire to protect their community for fear that reporting will reinforce stereotypes about black people, including their supposed violence and unbridled sexuality.
The last part of the book proposes an avenue rarely discussed so far, namely the questioning of the traditional judicial process as the only option available to victims of sexual violence. What Mme Suffering called “the funnel” is it the only option available to victims and above all, does it respond to their quest for justice?
Despite the progress made possible by the establishment of a specialized tribunal, the author suggests that other avenues are possible, such as restorative justice. It would put power back in the hands of the victims who, contrary to popular belief, are not driven by a feeling of revenge.
Victims want to be surrounded and understood, the author reminds us. Above all, they want their aggressor to understand the scope of his act and that the violence of which they have been victims does not happen again.
The privilege of denouncing is an educational book in the good sense of the term. This book is an exercise in empathy and precious education that we would like to slip into everyone’s hands, it is so enlightening and instructive. The lines of thought proposed by Kharoll-Ann Souffrant should always be taken into account when analyzing the #metoo movement and its fallout.
Extract
“Actually, the phrase ‘whistleblower privilege’ is a joke to me, to poke fun at the idea that survivors, in the age of the #metoo movement, would dominate the world and glorify the culture of cancellation. To be clearer, I consider that the privilege to denounce does not exist. It is illusory. Although there has been an evolution since the waves of denunciation of sexual violence, in particular because of the conversations they may have sparked, I believe that basically, things have changed very little for survivors. While individuals may have been touched on a personal level by the flood of testimonies from survivors, the fabric and modus operandi of institutions, whether political, media, legal, community or educational, have remained almost intact, and this, despite the #metoo tidal wave. »
Who is Kharoll-Ann Souffrant?
A doctoral candidate in social work at the University of Ottawa, she is interested in the intersection of gender, the misogyny of sexual violence and feminism. She is the author of the text “L’entonnoir” published in our pages in July 2020.
The privilege of denouncing — Justice for all victims of sexual violence
Kharoll-Ann Suffering
Hustle Editions
123 pages