Caroline Fourest is concerned about the use of feminism “to flout labor law”

The essayist said on France Inter on Wednesday that “more and more people are being put to social death, for increasingly minor and less well-established matters.”

“Feminism is used to flout labor rights and the presumption of innocence”said essayist Caroline Fourest on France Inter on Wednesday, September 11, who published “Le Vertige MeToo” (Grasset), claiming to have collected “so many words from people who were fired overnight”.

She says she supports the MeToo movement, which she sees “an extremely exciting change of world”that she wants “protect”. But she believes that he suffers from the fact “that we have more and more cases of people who have been erased and put to death socially, for cases that are increasingly trivial and less and less established“, and fears that it will be less “taken seriously”. “We must not ridicule MeToo”she insists.

She cites in particular two cases of personalities who were victims of “social deaths” after accusations that did not result in any convictions. Caroline Rey Salmon, who was “stripped of the Civil Code”the Independent Commission on Incest and Child Sexual Abuse, in February, “because a complaint was made against her for rape [en réalité pour agression sexuelle, ndlr]”. “Her name has been associated with that of rapists, because she examined, at the request of the courts, a 25-year-old girl, who had a bad experience with her examination”she laments. “She tried to help him (…) it’s very violent”explains Caroline Fourest.

This complaint was dismissed at the end of August, but Caroline Rey Salmon lives “reclusive, withdrawn, withdrawn from everything”said Caroline Fourest, who spoke to her on the phone. She has recovered her courses at the National School of Magistrates, from which she had also been excluded, “but his life will never be the same again”she points out.

Caroline Fourest also returns to the eviction of trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf from the jury of the Deauville festival this year. He was accused several years ago of sexual assault on a minor, a case in which he was acquitted on appeal 2020. “He himself reacted and acknowledged that he had put himself in a nauseating situation with his 14-year-old intern, he himself alerted his team”says Caroline Fourest, who read the decision of the court of appeal, deploring the fact that the media debate “never concerns the risk of reoffending”. “Ibrahim Maalouf is not dangerous (…) he still has the right to resume his social life normally”, she pleads.

“We cannot, at the slightest accusation, in the name of a dogmatic and absolutist ‘I believe you’, put people to social death, put labor law to death”she sums up. The essayist pleads for a “dialogue with the younger generation”. “Continue to be vigilant and uncompromising with predators and those who sexualize the workplace. Put them back in their place. But let’s take a graduated response.”