I really understood the importance of the #metoo movement after an interview with Nathalie Simard in 2019. How all these voices together had created a force that helps those who have suffered from the silence surrounding sexual violence. “#metoo was a mega-gift for me, she told me. It’s as if I had a lot of people coming to give me a pat on the back. You are no longer alone. We are all here, even if we don’t know each other. »
Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
Nathalie Simard was particularly alone when she denounced her attacker in 2004 and had it not been for the recording of Guy Cloutier’s confession by the police, I don’t think her denunciation would have been taken seriously.
This is what I remember from the #metoo movement, five years later: Nathalie is no longer alone, all the victims are no longer alone. We said collectively, loud and clear, that there was a serious social problem and that it could not go on like this. What #metoo has revealed, by accumulating all the individual experiences of aggression that most often take place in privacy, is the magnitude of the problem. In fact, the problem is that it is a culture, as difficult to change as to deviate the titanic who sinks on an iceberg. And that, we are just beginning to understand.
#metoo is only five years old? I have the impression that this movement is much older, so much has happened since 2017 — Salvail, Rozon, Brûlé, Lacroix, Bond, etc. — and how the anger had been rumbling beneath the surface for a long time before bursting out into the open.
The denunciation of sexual violence does not date from #metoo, the feminists of the 1970s were talking about it, but their speech was drowned in the celebration of sexual liberation which has in no way changed the statistics of rape in our societies, which remain the least reported crime.
This speaking out began before, at the junction of an activist revival and the rise of social networks — the creators of Facebook and Twitter certainly did not foresee that their inventions would lead to this paradigm shift. I remember very well the shock wave of #aggressionundenounced in 2014 which preceded #metoo, a movement which was launched in 2007 by an African-American, Tarana Burke, but which found a global breath after the Harvey Weinstein scandal in 2017. When you think about it, it has never been seen in the history of humanity that women around the world all say together: you attack us, you rape us, that’s enough.
I also remember that my first reaction was fear. Not for me, and even less for the aggressors, but for those who, precisely, spoke. How many lawsuits were going to fall on them? What was going to be the reaction of a society that was certainly not ready to receive this word, so much did it call into question all power relations? We only have to see the inexcusable drift of Hockey Canada to understand that there are places where things don’t want to move at all, even five years later. And this is not unrelated to the misogynistic violence that is rampant in the virtual world.
Yes, I trembled for all these women, and these men too, who denounced. But what has amazed me over time is the longevity of the movement. Nobody let go and those who believed in a temporary jolt had to bite their fingers.
It’s quite simple: it doesn’t work anymore.
Something has really changed, which feels like the bursting of a family bubble when incest comes to light, but on a societal scale. Once it’s out, we can try to silence, we can play the ostrich, but we can’t go back.
“We will no longer have the right to cruiser, that’s it ? ” My boyfriend started this one day when #metoo started making waves. I laughed. He was never really a flirt, it was me who took the first steps 20 years ago, and he had this reaction as if to protect a privilege which he never really took advantage of. It reminded me of the absurd media outlet of a hundred French women, mostly famous, who defended “the right to importune, essential to sexual freedom”. It’s crazy how they took the bit in their teeth to defend men, and how badly it’s aging. Because it’s vague, the “right to importune”, and there is a difference between being hit on in Cannes and being assaulted in a Sofitel hotel room where you are a cleaning lady. No one said seduction had to go, people keep falling in love every day and Tinder is a big hit.
But I understand, because me too, #metoo has transformed me, by making me think about things I preferred to forget, by revisiting lots of heavy stuff that I had accepted as inevitable. What do you want, change, the real thing, it’s always a little scary at first.
Inflamed discussions took place in the cottages on the subject. I’ve seen dinners where the women recounted their experiences, while the men spoke less and less, as if stunned by the scale of the phenomenon, as if father, brother and husband were thinking “#you too? “, while knowing very well deep down that none of them was lying. That’s a culture, everyone is immersed in it, it oozes through the walls and the pores of the skin, it’s normal that we find it normal even when it’s not, even sometimes when we’re victims of it.
I have heard some painful arguments from exasperated people. Like “rape has always existed, we won’t change men, it’s up to women to be careful”, a bit like Elvis Gratton said that “there will always be poor people”. There was enough to be irritated when, each week, a denunciation arrived. As a journalist, I sometimes opened my computer with fear in the morning wondering who was going to be called during the day.
Because if the movement had a planetary echo, it is first of all because it broke out in the world of showbiz, because celebrities spoke, because other celebrities fell from above, in the circles of the cinema, comedy, music, literature, dance. But we realize that it happens in all walks of life. Media investigations have followed, police practices have changed, anti-harassment policies are adopted in companies, the legal system tries to adapt, but make no mistake: this is not about the victory of journalism , the police, businesses or even justice here, rather that of the courage of the victims who spoke out, and the strength of numbers.
Now everyone is talking about it. Discussions of sexual violence and consent have moved out of activist circles. It has become impossible to play ignorant. For a week, everywhere I look, it’s present.
while reading the book What’s left of #metoo? of the journalist To have to Améli Pineda who makes an excellent summary of the upheavals of the movement in Quebec. Watching the documentary Janette and daughters of Léa Clermont-Dion at Télé-Québec, which recalls the path travelled. By celebrating the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Annie Ernaux. By following the protests of women in Iran.
We move forward. Groping, because it’s new. We are now questioning the culture of cancellation, we are beginning to think about restorative justice. Because it will be nice to denounce each aggressor individually, change will not happen without prevention and education, without attacking mentalities.
Five years later, we should ask ourselves: what have we lost, basically, with #metoo? In my opinion, absolutely nothing, and certainly not our innocence, since we know that we let it happen. Only those who took advantage of the imbalance and silence are slowly losing power. In any case, I have no nostalgia for the world before #metoo. It opened up something akin to hope for a better future for those growing up in a world where abuse is no longer part of the culture, but part of the criminal.
The work has only just begun.