We celebrate the five years of an earthquake named #MeToo in an atmosphere of merciless struggle. Five years is a very small chapter of awareness. But what an awakening! The global turmoil that began in October 2017 with the shocking revelation of the horrors committed by Harvey Weinstein continues to feed on scandals revealed here and there. Here, Hockey Canada, whose crummy reaction to a gang rape shows that there is still a long way to go; there, the courageous revolt of Iranian women who stand up to a regime denigrating the place of women in society.
It was the fall of Weinstein, the aggressor who reigned supreme over Hollywood, that started it all, with the excellent and robust investigative work of the journalists of the New York Times and New Yorker. If society woke up with the hashtag #MeToo, published on October 15, 2017 and taken up in a few days by millions of women around the world, it is because victims of sexual assault agreed to dive back into their story. Openly, in the flagship media of several countries around the world, they told the unacceptable so that the unacceptable would no longer be tolerated.
Even if the road will still be long before this trivialized culture of aggression is completely reversed, we must be proud to see how much the October 2017 coup and its many upheavals have freed the voice of the victims. Previously, they were snubbed, ridiculed, vilified if they dared to speak. Today, nothing guarantees a perfect reception, but they know that they can risk telling the unspeakable. The scale of the movement was phenomenal. And to those who are often tempted to demonize social networks, let’s recognize their unequaled feat of having succeeded in bringing together millions of women around a cause in just a few days. Individual injury, collective struggle. This solidarity was salutary.
There will have been a before and an after for women-#MeToo. Carried away by the wave, Quebec has also experienced its share of scandals. One after another, Rozon, Salvail, Venne are pointed and stumble, among other personalities who were targeted by police complaints and investigations. The court sentenced Michel Venne to six months in prison (he has since appealed his case). The other two fed the headline with twisted stories and several plaintiffs exposing them, but the court cleared them. If there is a reasonable doubt, even someone whose story was not believed by the judge cannot be convicted. The rules of law do not always agree with popular clamor. We also learned that.
Reputedly impervious to social movements, the justice system had no choice but to keep up with its times. Not so long ago, revolting stories of judges trivializing the nature of an assault by blaming the victim or placing the blame for the assault squarely on the victim occurred in some courts. Today, judges must be exemplary in the treatment of these complaints and cannot detach themselves from the ambient social noise, which listens to the complainants.
In this regard, one of the most spectacular advances in Quebec, the result of the #MeToo movement, is without a doubt the advent of specialized courts for sexual violence and domestic violence. These provide for special support for complainants, from the moment – crucial, as we know – of filing the complaint with the police. The idea of deploying specific resources to promote benevolent listening and solicitude can only be welcomed.
The #MeToo movement has made it possible to measure with some amazement the extent of sexual violence. It also showed the insidious nature of “ordinary” violence inscribed in the banality of everyday life, and tolerated even if it was suffered not in the privacy of a room, but in front of everyone, at work. Professional spaces, institutions, places of education have had no choice but to adopt well-crafted policies to prevent and condemn all forms of harassment and violence, from the uncomfortable joke of “uncle” to with the most threatening gestures.
Of course, there were a few deviations along the way, such as excesses in the field of popular and anonymous vindictiveness, outside the marked field of the police and justice. We are also still visibly wondering about the ways of reintegrating penitent and sincere aggressors into a form of public life in their process of rehabilitation; when can we find a certain light and under what conditions? Finally, we hope to increase the rate of reported sexual assaults, which is still too low.
October 2022. Five years after the sordid revelations about his predatory behavior, Harvey Weinstein will start a new trial next Monday in Los Angeles. Already sentenced to 23 years in prison since 2020, the director faces this time 11 counts of rape or sexual assault from five complainants. The alleged facts would have occurred between 2004 and 2013. No, the fight is not over.