Almost a virgin | Josée Blanchette’s #metoo

She was 15. He was 45. She wore flowery dresses, dreamed of the absolute, he taught anti-philosophy. She was “almost a virgin”, but not exactly for long. Their story would last five years. More than 40 years later, Josée Blanchette tells her story.

This is her #metoo. This is how she dedicates her book, Almost virginpublished by Éditions Druide, in bookstores Wednesday. This is also what best sums up her story, a disturbing story in which she has long worn “rose-colored glasses”, as she says. Him? “Smoked glasses”, sums up here the author and columnist of the Dutywith language that is clearly as colorful in speech as in writing.

We met her a few days ago, and we expected to see a feverish woman. After all, her story is finally coming out, on paper. It will be a bonus at Everyone is talking about it this Sunday to talk about it. She immediately replies that no. She has been simmering this book for a long time. Its first version even precedes the Consent, by Vanessa Springora, published in 2020. She talks about a promise she made to herself, which goes back a long way. A photo of “him”, which she simply refers to as “R.” in the text (for obvious legal reasons), stuck in the corner of her computer, next to her own portrait at 15, had been catching her eye for years to remind her. She was waiting for the right moment. That moment has come.

“With my editor, we even spoke of Josée in the third person,” she assures us. “As if we had to distinguish her. I dissociated myself a little, I imagine it’s a way of protecting myself.”

Very well. However, when she then asks us how we digested her story, this disturbing relationship between a young girl with the eyes of a child (see the photo on the cover) and her CEGEP teacher, we barely have time to tell her that we have three daughters, one of whom is in CEGEP. Immediately, Josée Blanchette’s eyes fill with tears. They will not blush during the interview.

“I’m not completely insensitive,” she concedes, without hiding her emotion. “Girls at CEGEP, that’s the file that comes to me.”

“People think it only happens to other people,” she enthuses. “People think it’s a 1970s thing, but that’s because they don’t want to see it!”

Freeing speech

Almost virgin is not yet in bookstores that Josée Blanchette is already receiving a lot of testimonies. It’s pouring in, she says. “It’s scary!” Women who have never dared to speak out are starting to speak out. So much the better, because that’s precisely why she wanted to tell her story here.

She doesn’t write to denounce him, among other things because he has already been to prison (18 months), for a case of sexual assault on a 9-year-old girl, this time. It was when she read the news a few years ago, about this same “R.”, her teacher, an intellectual loaded with degrees who had supposedly “chosen” her, that Josée Blanchette finally got back to her manuscript. For good this time. Reading the article that day was a cold shower. Her house of cards, increasingly shaky since her son also turned 15, collapsed. “Everything is collapsing,” she says. “I go from being the chosen one to the symptom of an illness!”

She then delves into her memories, her boxes, her diaries. She kept everything, her letters, her CEGEP work, and especially his annotations. Many are transcribed in the text. More than 40 years later, it is crystal clear. “It’s astounding,” confirms Josée Blanchette. “It’s predatory, he manipulated me! He stole my youth,” she adds, paraphrasing her neighbor and friend Manon, a rare close friend (along with her father) to have rigorously spoken out against the relationship. “But I didn’t even know I was young!” But today, she sees it. “I’m not the same woman anymore,” she says, before correcting herself: “I wasn’t even a woman!”

It’s a fact: “This is sexual exploitation. She was a person of authority, my consent was not valid!” Especially since for the majority of their story, she was not an adult, precisely. During this time, the gentleman took her to see Lolita at the cinema… And everyone more or less turned a blind eye to their unusual couple.

It should be noted that in the text, the author maintains a certain modesty and comments very little on the facts.

Her first drafts were, however, more “angry”. Here and there, this shines through, notably when she evokes the “Holy Dick” of Monsieur, in a rare, oh so heartfelt outburst. “I have no idea that his dick is stuck in the zipper of his brain…”, she writes, with the pen for which she is known.

Josée Blanchette is not writing to denounce him, as has been said, among other things because at over 90 years old, he is probably “incapable of causing harm,” she says. “But this story is still possible. There are 10 times more predators on the web today!” […] We should not underestimate the trauma that can be carried throughout life. […] I want women to talk, I want men to get involved in the discussion, and I want them to protect us…”

When she finally leaves him, she has just turned 20. It is only a few months before signing the first of a long series of columns in The Duty. “Wow!” reacts the woman who has been part of the media landscape for 40 years, realizing the connection, never made before. Her story, which at first seemed so far away in time, suddenly no longer is.

In bookstores September 25

Almost virgin

Josée Blanchette

Druid

287 pages