On the edge of the water, made heavy by the first cold weather, geese and ducks still wade among the alders. Passers-by sometimes stop to look at them, often remarking: “Come on, they can leave whenever they want, the rest of them, can you tell me why they haven’t yet reached Mexico! Eille, I tell you that I would have left a long time ago! ” We sometimes speak directly to the emerald heads of the mallards: “Tell your wife it’s time to leave! »
Posted at 5:45 a.m.
They are known for spending their lives in pairs, these beautiful birds, we have always been told: ducks love each other for life. We can easily see this, moreover, they almost always come in pairs, no matter the time of year, and the sight of a solitary duck always has something a little sad, we wonder where its other half is , if something hasn’t happened to him. It is assumed that it is not by choice that a wild duck opts for celibacy.
We were once told that they sometimes chose partners of the same sex, information that I never verified, but which served our purpose – it was proof that nature sometimes preferred love to reproduction and that conventions, taboos and intolerance were very human inventions.
Just like the idea of virility, which we have talked about so much this week and which has yet, I believe, never been debated on the banks of our rivers or in our forests.
How is it that of all beasts, humans are the only ones who have such a painful need to always define themselves?
Thus, the emergence of masculinist influencers on the front of our small media scene has provoked great debates in recent days. Should we, should we not, and above all: why? It didn’t take much for a good part of the commentariat to jump into the arena and remind us that if it is certainly a bad thing to be misogynistic and sexist, we should not be surprised that our era devalues virility has given some people the desire to puff out their tattooed and steroid chests.
Basically: they exaggerate, but you have to understand them.
They put a lot of downsides, these commentators, they denounce hatred and emphasize their respect for the emancipation of women, after all they are confident in their virility, they have no need to proclaim it on fiery platforms and can content to let it shine through in their measured words.
But we feel them crippled with nostalgia for a half-imagined era, brave knights parading in their glittering armor, displaying crosses on their breastplates and offering these ladies bouquets of hawthorns from the tip of their lances. In this smooth and idealized formerly, they return from hunting, exhausted, their thighs stiff from having ridden too much behind a terrified fox and duly lifted by one of their serfs, they will eat red meat, write sonnets steeped in a primary sentimentalism and making love to women whose blissful consent is forever acquired.
My God, how good they are, they enjoy the fruits of the earth and their bodies and their soul is at peace, their hearts confident and reassured: they are just and good, their leniency is infinite and each of their gestures is legitimized. They are, above all, in their place.
It’s a completely arbitrary place, of course, skillfully maintained by centuries of big arms and ease of domination – if these men really wanted to be lions, they would leave the pack as soon as their testicles descended and would immediately stop claiming to be providers.
However, some people talk to us about this place as being an acquired right, a space that we want to expand (we are gallant, after all), but that it would be dangerous to abolish, look what happens when we feels invaded on our territory, and understand that it is not us that you should blame if males boosted with rage are praised to the skies, it is you.
Do they realize, these fine thinkers, that they are agitating and rebelling to defend privileges that are in no way threatened, but only pointed out? Are they aware that it is still their own people, in the majority and free to exercise their rights and make their voices heard, who last week elected a caricature of everything they defend? Do they remember, when they deplore the incessant attacks on an identity that is due to them, that throughout the world it is their people who impose their laws and their good will?
Of course they know that.
What do you think? Participate in the dialogue
