Writer and committed citizen, the author has taught literature at college, is president of the governing board of an elementary school and member of the editorial board of Quebec letters. She co-directed and co-wrote the collective essay Shock treatments and tarts. Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec (All in all).
The scene is surreal: in the middle of the Gémeaux awards gala, a man bursts onto the stage to interrupt the host when she was about to present a segment. Led by two women, it was to highlight Quebec documentaries that have an impact on Quebec society.
The exuberant man: Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge, comedian, ex-Hyundai spokesman and tireless dynamo, who thought the time was right to return to public life without a parachute after his anti-vaccine escapades. Erased women: Ingrid Falaise, actress and director of the documentary series Woman I kill youand Léa Clermont-Dion, notably a doctor of political science and co-director of I salute you bitch. La misogyny in the digital age. Stealing speaking time from women, one of whom has just released a film that took six years to complete and which focuses on misogynistic violence that ultimately seeks to take away the voice of women… Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?would sing Alanis Morissette.
If, at least, the content had been more edifying, but no; abyssal emptiness and platitudes dripping with unease aimed mainly at restoring the image of the former darling of the cable channels. However, inciting the population to go to vote by monopolizing the attention by a narcissistic gesture (the Sunday psychologists concluded from it thus) did not deceive anybody. You have to have an ego as big as the moon to think that such an unwelcome coup won’t earn him a well-deserved one. backlash — well, that’s precisely the English title of the Clermont-Dion film.
Everything to silence
Co-directed with Guylaine Maroist, I salute you bitch is a charge, a concentrate of violence. Any woman with a vaguely public life will testify to this, any woman of ideas too: misogyny is everywhere in the digital space. Sometimes insidious, in the form of comments that question diplomas, credibility, the right to occupy space in this daily newspaper x or this magazine y; sometimes frontal, in the form of “shut up, bitch” and “didn’t you understand that nobody wanted you in politics? » ; sometimes downright violent, threatening, sexual: “Your mouth would be more useful for sucking”, “I know where you live, bitch”, “Die, female dog”.
While cyberviolence against women takes many forms, it always has the same goal: to silence them. And too often, it works. Out of fear or fatigue, brilliant women withdraw and society finds itself deprived of their contribution. In Quebec, Marilyse Hamelin has often opened up about her burnout activist, who helped make her leave her post as a columnist. Judith Lussier, she took a long break before returning to the newspaper Subway. Nearby, women who write in these pages persist as they frequently face scathing comments that question the legitimacy of their words.
“In terms of aggression, what women are going to get in the face has nothing to do with what men are going to get,” confided to the To have to Marilyse Hamelin, asked to comment on a Quebec study on online hostility towards women.
In I salute you bitchKiah Morris is stepping down from her post in the Vermont House of Representatives. The only black elected to sit there, she will have suffered insults on the fronts of sexism and racism until the threats moved into the real, all too real world: agitators having entered her basement. Exhausted, terrified, she will end up resigning and moving. Misogyny has won, and yet, it’s still not enough: its main stalker reveals his new place of residence.
In Italy, the documentary tells us, several public figures have led a smear campaign against the former president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini. We even put a replica of his head on a stick wishing him dead! In less crude but certainly mean-spirited packaging, the hostility is also encouraged by familiar faces here. The writers Martine Delvaux and Mélikah Abdelmoumen know that a certain columnist (not the same one) has written about them when, when they wake up, their virtual inbox is overflowing with hateful messages. After releasing their dogs, the tribunes let the invectives of their pack run wild, taking refuge behind the right to freedom of expression.
On the political side, it’s not rosy either: this year, 22 Quebec elected officials said goodbye to the Blue Room. “Men stay, women leave,” wrote Deals. Although sexist remarks have been decried in the past (remember Jean Charest’s words to Elsie Lefebvre in 2005), the “Mother Teresa” recently slapped at Christine Labrie by François Legault is shameful proof that misogynistic insults are hissing still between the lips.
Our place is fragile, our fatigue is obvious. Our tolerance has reached its limits. The women fought too hard for their speaking time to be stolen from them by an actor in need of adulation. Hopefully he will watch each of the documentaries he has prevented from celebrating. They, at least, have the merit of enlightening us.