Can we talk about consent without the consent of the person concerned?
This is what I’m about to do and I know it’s tricky.
But it is impossible not to return to what happened during the recording of ListeningMike Ward’s podcast, this week.
A reader, who describes himself as a big consumer of humor, wrote to me on Wednesday to draw my attention to the events.
“Sunday evening at Listeningthe guys from The blue pocket (Guillaume Latendresse and Maxim Lapierre), two former Canadiens players, put Mike Ward through a lot of negative things, he wrote to me. Unwanted touching among other things. We’re talking about finger on the penis, hand on the buttocks, finger in the face and mouth. They gave him bear hugs that I would describe as brutal. Mike didn’t seem comfortable at all throughout the episode. He said he felt intimidated and even the staff checked with him during the episode to make sure he was okay. I was deeply shocked by what I saw. »
The comedian has since removed the video from social networks, but images are circulating more and more on social networks. And the reader sent me several extracts. What I saw is worth paying attention to.
We actually see the two hosts of The blue pocketvisibly very tipsy, making inappropriate comments about the host’s genitals.
There is no law that prohibits stupidity, but when the person repeats and insists, this kind of talk starts to seem like intimidation.
But that’s not what made me the most angry.
What stunned me was seeing Lapierre and Latendresse touching Mike Ward against his will.
One of the two men put his hand on the comedian’s crotch. They later grabbed him from behind, holding him between their arms. All this while Mike Ward was visibly very uncomfortable.
Of course, both hosts are too drunk to pick up on Mike Ward’s cues and understand that they’ve crossed the line into what’s acceptable. It’s the effect of alcohol, it clouds judgment. We clearly see that it is no longer a game, that we are no longer in humor. In short, it looks a lot like a live attack, before our eyes.
IMAGE TAKEN FROM THE VIDEO BROADCAST BY MIKE WARD
“They dropped it,” Mike Ward said in a video he released Tuesday. They wanted to show me that they could drink like men, but instead they drank like children. »
Mike Ward was very clear: he doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. “They escaped,” he said in a video he released Tuesday. They wanted to show me that they could drink like men, but instead they drank like children. » To explain his decision to remove the podcast, he explained that Latendresse and Lapierre “did nothing wrong”, but that they had “looked thick”.
Whether Mike Ward doesn’t want to revisit the incident is his choice. And if he didn’t feel attacked, that’s his fault too. But that is no reason to trivialize what happened that day. It is not true that Lapierre and Latendresse “did nothing wrong”. They touched someone without their consent.
Since the #metoo movement and the denunciations that followed, we have constantly repeated the same message about consent and sexual violence: the importance of being on the lookout for signals of discomfort or refusal, respect for bubble on the other… We explained ad nauseam that alcohol was above all not a pretext and an excuse to justify unacceptable actions.
Since the publication of my colleague Léa Carrier’s report on misogynistic discourse at school, we have reiterated the importance of denouncing toxic behavior and raising awareness among young people about it.
And now we find ourselves faced with very aggressive gestures live, gestures which are minimized in the name of humor and the alcohol flowing freely. We would like to sweep the incident under the rug under the pretext that “boys will be boys…”.
I repeat, I will never tell Mike Ward what to think or how to act. If he no longer wants to talk about the incident, that is his absolute right.
But let’s talk about the two animators of The blue pocket, Guillaume Latendresse and Maxim Lapierre, two former Montreal Canadiens players who are now analysts at TVA Sports. Latendresse also sat on the hockey revival committee set up by the Legault government.
I called the two men’s agent, Louis-Philippe Dorais. He replied to me by email that Latendresse and Lapierre had explained themselves at the opening of their podcast. I listened to the excuses in question. It pretty much boils down to this: we removed the podcast out of respect for our families, we have to take all of this with a grain of salt, we’re moving on… Well!
To my ears, these comments are very problematic. If the incident had happened in their living room, I wouldn’t be writing this column. But he performed in front of an audience, an audience that witnessed their slip-up. And among which there are probably young men who admire Latendresse and Lapierre.
Hence the importance of repeating the extent to which this type of behavior must not be tolerated, whether you are a man or a woman, a star or an illustrious unknown. We must denounce it loud and clear when we witness it.