At the heart of a controversy for his comments on social networks towards Léa Clermont-Dion, lyricist Stéphane Venne announced Friday his resignation from his position as strategic communications advisor to the City of Montreal.
Author-composer of several hits in Quebec song, Stéphane Venne was also employed by the Water Department of the City of Montreal for around twenty years.
“I have just now, with great sadness, submitted my resignation to the director of the Water Department of the City of Montreal. The imbroglio in which I currently find myself affects the City of Montreal, but especially the Water Department, to the great detriment of the cause of water that I have been striving to serve for 20 years,” he said. he writes on the X network.
At the start of the week, he created some controversy by commenting, still on X, on a photo of the Quebec author and director Léa Clermont-Dion.
“Since the world began, this pose (neck tilted sideways or backwards, mouth open) has been a sexual code widely known to both men and women, and both in real life and in art, it is a sort of prompt,” he wrote, before deleting his comment.
Mme Clermont-Dion subsequently denounced these comments, calling them “degrading towards women” and amounting to “pure and simple misogyny”.
A support movement using the hashtag #BoucheOuverte appeared in support of Mme Clermont-Dion on the networks, notably on Instagram, where more than 200 women demonstrated their support by publishing photos of themselves in the pose criticized by Mr. Venne.
The latter later apologized, refuting any misogyny.
“I would have liked to be able to debate normally and rationally the issue that I had raised at the start, namely the image that a person – man or woman – chooses to project of themselves in the virtual universe of media,” he said on Friday.
“I would have liked a public debate other than bellicose. I would have liked a debate made up of arguments, devoid of invective and disinformation. But everything happened too quickly and too badly to allow such a debate, which became a sort of war whose toxic effects unfortunately had repercussions on the City and the Water Service. This has to stop. I make it stop. »
Stéphane Venne, 83, has written and composed more than 400 songs during his career. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1997.