In Vertigo MeToo (Grasset, 336 pages, 22 euros), the essayist Caroline Fourest asserts that “not all #metoos are equal” and wonders about the risks of “new world” Or “you just have to accuse to exist”. The work sparked heated controversy among feminists.
At a time when serious accusations are being made against Abbé Pierre, and while the Mazan rape trial is taking place, where fifty-one men are accused of having raped a woman drugged without her knowledge by her husband, do you understand that the questioning of the #metoo movement in your book could be shocking?
On the contrary, my book comes at the right time, since it talks about all the benefits of #metoo, and in particular the fact that there is more echo and media coverage in cases as clear and blatant as the number of accusations brought against Abbé Pierre or the system of predation and rape put in place by Dominique Pelicot.
In contrast, meanwhile, people like feminist forensic pediatrician Caroline Rey-Salmon are being wrongly accused [une plainte pour violence sexuelle, déposée après sa nomination comme vice-présidente de la Commission indépendante sur l’inceste et les violences sexuelles faites aux enfants, a été classée sans suite]. It is regrettable that today it is no longer possible to defend a wrongly accused person without being seen as an accomplice of the rapists! Because there are accusations that are not based on anything – there are few, but there are some.
What we see in the Mazan trial is that the victims' words are still too easily called into question. Is it really time to weaken it by proposing to replace, as you do, “I believe you” with “I listen to you”?
When I say “I prefer “I listen to you” to “I believe you””, I am not talking about justice, but about the fact that we have all become #metoo judges on a daily basis, without thinking about this new responsibility. We must obviously be vigilant, take the slightest report of sexual assault or rape very seriously, and this is what I have been fighting for for years and will continue to fight.
But we must not give up on Cartesian doubt. You have to start by saying “I’m listening to you” before you’re sure you can say “I believe you.” I attended a Stalinist trial within the 50/50 Collective which resulted in the crushing of a feminist producer over a false attack based on a completely absurd and fanatical reading of “I believe you”. This producer, accused by an actress of having touched her thigh during an evening, was also acquitted by the Paris court in May. It was this affair that made me want to write this book. I must warn of the risks of injustice.
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