It is a story that we know, a story that has been written since 2017, in the courts, the media, the workplaces, the communities, the families. It is the story of a dike that gave way, of words and stories that could no longer remain buried; a story of which we now know all the nuances: pain, doubt, frustration, hope, solidarity.
It’s a story that has been written since the first outbursts of the #MeToo movement, or even for centuries: women endure violence in silence, to the breaking point. Then, when they finally speak, they again pay the price—the burden varying of course according to the place they occupy in the social space. Thus, each new chapter stages its share of obstacles, assaults, and highlights the cruelly unequal distribution of the possibility of defending oneself.
In our country, among the women who have all the means at their disposal to defend themselves, we find first and foremost Julie Snyder and Pénélope McQuade, today targeted by a defamation lawsuit, launched by Gilbert Rozon, for remarks made to the television, in the fall of 2020. Last Friday, the two hosts suffered a setback, when the Quebec Court of Appeal concluded that the lawsuit brought by the founder of Just for Laughs was not a SLAPP suit, and that the case could be heard on the merits.
As a reminder, in September 2020, live on his show The week of the 4 Julies, Julie Snyder explained to Pénélope McQuade, invited on the set that day, that she had been inspired by her speech to denounce, too, an attack that she would have suffered at the hands of Gilbert Rozon. Julie Snyder then spoke directly to the camera, in these terms: “I would just like to tell Gilbert Rozon that I could not say no to him because it happened while I was sleeping. I slept in a place where there were people from Just for Laughs […] I couldn’t say no, because I wasn’t asked. »
I remember being impressed by the radicalism of her speaking out, in a context where I had not expected it. There was something in the “address” – you, I want to tell you that I remember, and that I now know how to name what I felt – which contrasted with the strictly regulated, understood, consensual codes of television . It also seemed to me that there was, in this specific use of power, a gesture of resistance in the strong sense. Speaking to the camera, Julie Snyder wasn’t just addressing Gilbert Rozon. She also said: I am one of the most powerful women in the Quebec media and I use this platform, mine, to tell you that I will not bend. Something like the outline of a response.
In this sense, it is not surprising that this speech was immediately sanctioned by a defamation suit. One can imagine the anger aroused by such a seizure of power where it is not expected.
This lawsuit, we learned through journalists who had access to 500 pages of sworn testimony in the fall of 2021, became an opportunity for Gilbert Rozon to empty his bag, four years after the wave of denunciations of 2017. He was tired, he said in this testimony, of being the “rug on which everyone wipes their feet”, and he regretted that victims of sexual assault are become “our new heroes”. He also mentioned that he “can’t wait for someone to apologize” for the lies that have been spread about him in the public square. Recall that Gilbert Rozon was acquitted in December 2020 at the end of his criminal trial for the alleged rape of Annick Charette. However, he is still the target of six civil lawsuits brought by women claiming to have suffered assaults and harassment.
The conviction of being persecuted, legal revenge: we recognize the strategy. Still, reacting to the decision of the Court of Appeal in the lawsuit brought by Rozon, which it judges to be abusive, Julie Snyder declared on Monday that she had the firm intention of telling her story in court. “No matter what, I will stand up and tell the truth,” she said in an interview with The duty.
It is tempting to be discouraged by the turn of events in what is known today as “the Rozon affair”. The bogging down of the proceedings in the maze of civil justice, the acquittal of the criminal charges in a decision where it is however explicitly mentioned that the version of the accused is not credible. And now, we have to suffer the lament of the so-called victim of mob justice. One might think that the defeat is total, that the #MeToo movement has basically failed to move the lines, or very little. Yet this story, the story of the end of silence, continues to be written against all odds.
There may be distant hints here of the slap saga that has been obsessing the planet for a week. While everyone is discussing the legitimacy of actions taken in the name of “defending women”, it has never been so clear – and we all know it instinctively – that in a patriarchal context, women are always defended alone.
Perhaps this is how the #MeToo movement and its aftermath should be read: as the story of the construction of a self-defense strategy, the story of a long-awaited response, from which no one is concerned. will excuse.