Gérald Darmanin: the sexist implicit

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This is one of the controversies of the week: this tense exchange between Gérald Darmanin and our colleague Apolline de Malherbe from BFMTV. The remarks of the Minister of the Interior were denounced as misogynistic by many women. This confronts us with a rhetorical dilemma: what basically characterizes sexist discourse?

Summary of the previous episode: Tuesday, February 8, Apolline de Malherbe questions Gérald Darmanin on the increase in violence against people.

“Your presentation is very quick and a bit populist, said the Minister of the Interior.

– “These are your numbers”replies the journalist.

– “Calm down ma’am, it’s going to be fine..”

– “Oh, I beg your pardon, how do you talk to me?”

– “It’s going to be fine ma’am, you’ll see.”

– “But what’s the problem?”

– “There is a 30% drop, I’m fed up with populist speeches all day.”

“Calm down ma’am, it’s going to be fine.” Words that were immediately highly criticized, on all networks. But not by the Minister for Gender Equality, Elisabeth Moreno, guest of LCI Thursday, February 10. “You know I worked for 30 years in extremely masculine environments, construction and new technologies. I was constantly surrounded by men and I learned to detect sexism when it arises. Is it that in the terms that were used, there was sexism?asks the minister. I haven’t seen any. And I speak to you as someone who knows this masculine world where one can sometimes be extremely violent, and extremely sexist. I didn’t see that in that exchange.”

In these extracts, we find an argument: “I worked for 30 years in very masculine environments, I know how to detect sexism, and there, I did not see any.” This is called an argument from authority: trust me, I have a lot of experience. So it can be heard! But when very many women perceive a statement as sexist, starting with the person concerned, we are entitled to doubt the only argument of authority, even if it comes from the minister concerned.

Elisabeth Moreno advances another argument: the interviewer and the interviewee would both have had strong words. “Me what I saw in this exchange between Apoline de Malherbe and Gérald Darmanin, it is a muscular exchange. Apoline de Malherbe chose a muscular interview. Gérald Darmanin answered him in a muscular way. I think that, and Apoline de Malherbe and Gérald Darmanin were both very tense. It’s not one more than the other. I didn’t see any lack of respect, I saw verbal sparring.”

What we mean here is an equivalence: the vigor of Gérald Darmanin’s remarks would be justified by the vigor of the questions posed by Apolline de Malherbe. What is interesting is that we already found this argument in Gérald Darmanin himself! After being rebuffed by his interviewer, he replied: “Me, I’m fed up with populist speeches all day”. In other words: you started it.

So, Apolline de Malherbe’s questions are possibly debatable on the merits. But the words of Gérald Darmanin are themselves denounced as offensive on the form: it seems to me questionable, not to say fallacious, to send them back to back.

In my opinion, yes, Gérald Darmanin’s comments are sexist. But the whole problem is that, as often, the misogyny is not explicit there. It nestles in the deep layers of the discourse, in its implicit. In this case, it can be reduced to two rhetorical elements.

The first jumps to the eye, it is this sentence, “Calm down lady”, while Apolline de Malherbe was otherwise perfectly calm. This refers, of course, to the many prejudices according to which women have a tendency to “hysteria”, that is to say, are incapable of controlling their emotions and acting rationally. It is a well-known scheme, which was already denounced at the time by Simone de Beauvoir.

And then, above all, there is this “It will be alright”. And there, it is more interesting. We immediately feel that something is wrong, but it is more difficult to put our finger on it. Everything comes, in my opinion, from the fact that the situation, at that time, is not going well and everyone realizes it. Therefore, we spontaneously perceive this sentence as an antiphrase, that is, meaning the exact opposite of what it says.

Gérald Darmanin is telling Apolline de Malherbe that, for her, “that” not going to go well at all. But then, what is it “that” ? Is this the interview? She is about to be refuted, even ridiculed? Or, is it “something else” that will not go well? We’ll never know. But what is certain is that in this antiphrase, we hear the threat of aggression, without being able to absolutely demonstrate it.

This is basically the whole issue of denigration speeches. As soon as they are skilled enough to exploit the implicit dimension of discourse, they allow, to paraphrase the linguist Oswald Ducrot, to benefit both from the violence of speech and the innocence of silence.


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