- Marine Périn, youtubeuse who hosts the channel "Marinette - Women and feminism", released her first documentary on YouTube.
- The videographer is the recipient of the EllesFontYouTube award.
- Marine Périn has identified four forms of conjugal cyberviolence: harassment by sms, cybersurveillance, "revenge porn" and administrative violence.
Marine Périn is a youtuber, she has been broadcasting videos for three years on her channel "Marinette - Women and feminism" - where she talks about abortion, women's muscles, body hair, feminist literature, inclusive writing or still domestic violence. Last September, she won the EllesFontYouTube award, a program that aims to diversify the profile of youtuberers and increase their number, following a selection by a jury (there is simply no woman in the top 10 of the most followed French youtubers, and only 13 in the top 100 in 2016).
Marine Périn was therefore awarded a grant of 15,000 euros which she chose to use to talk about a subject little known to the general public: conjugal cyberviolence. His film Traquées , broadcast from Monday evening on the video platform, explores the daily lives of four victims of this violence, devalued, isolated and trapped by their spouses. Rare, we also hear two perpetrators of this type of violence explain how they got there. It is the first documentary by Marine Périn.
Tell us about your documentary…
It is a documentary on conjugal cyberviolence, which is an additional tool for maintaining control. What I mean by cyber is everything related to new technologies. I have spotted four main forms of violence: harassment by text message, cybersurveillance, "revenge porn" - when your spouse forces you to shoot intimate images and then uses them against you - and administrative violence.
Administrative violence?
This means, for example, preventing your partner from having access to her CAF account (Family Allowance Fund), to deprive her of resources. Change your passwords. Change the destination bank account in the Pôle emploi personal space. Another example: an abusive spouse had declared that he still lived with his ex, and she found herself deprived of all her help.
How is cybersurveillance manifested?
It's asking your partner to be accountable all the time. "Send me a photo that proves that you are there". Install spyware. Those who exist to monitor the children are diverted to monitor the wives. It's dangerous because it can find a woman who has taken shelter. Cybersurveillance also involves requests for passwords, to prohibit contact, deletion of messages. This worsens the isolation, the feeling of being hunted down. In the film, for example, we see a guy who asked his partner to film her all day. She spent her time putting her phone back in the pocket, because as soon as he couldn't see well he suspected her.
How did you work
I discovered this theme because the Center Hubertine Auclert had produced a report on the issue, which shows that it is massive: nine victims of domestic violence in 10 suffered cyberviolence. I contacted the associations questioned in the report, and then made a call on Twitter to find witnesses. I had more than 25 responses, and in the end I selected four women. I contacted social workers and I also approached the legal angle. No victim in the documentary obtained a conviction. There is not yet any case law on this… Yet everything that we have just mentioned corresponds to crimes, but they are not grouped in a specific place in the Criminal Code. There is no aggravating circumstance when someone's phone is confiscated, and when it is a spouse it can even be considered less serious, because of the principle of community of property.
Is it the fault of new technologies?
No, not at all, because many victims say they found help and information on social media. For example, there is an online chat from the En avant toutes association. Young women go very little into associations. One victim told me that she had gotten out of it because she recognized mechanisms of domestic violence thanks to information that she found online. One of them even told me about one of my videos… And that's why she wanted to participate in the documentary, to add her stone to the information building.
You are the first French documentary filmmaker funded by YouTube, what does it do?
I hadn't seen it like that before you told me about it. It is mainly a financing that I had following a price. I've always been on YouTube because we reach a younger audience. And there I want my documentary to touch young people, because young women are a little more affected by domestic violence than women of all ages (one in seven women against one in ten women). And then to reach an audience that the traditional media reach less.
Is that the future of documentaries, being on YouTube?
Money is still on TV. Audiovisual productions on the web have a lot less money: we did all of that with 15,000 euros, ten times less than a television budget, and I got all the gear on loan ... Arte is putting its documentaries online on YouTube… This will be done little by little.
Justice
VIDEO. "Unworthy women": Justice investigates a sexist Facebook group of 56,000 men
Society
"In rape, we, the victims, take perpetuity"
20 seconds of context
We have chosen the use of familiarity to best convey the spontaneity of the moment.
- Discrimination
- Documentary
- Youtube
- Cyber harassment
- Feminism
- Domestic violence