The French #MeTooGay started more than three years after the #MeToo movement.

Why ?

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  • This Thursday, the accusation by a young Internet user of a rape on the part of an elected PCF of the City of Paris ignited the powders and encouraged the French gay community to speak of the assaults and sexual violence suffered.

  • A word that is released, three years after those of women during MeToo.

  • Between fear of appropriating the feminine space, fear of attacking one's own camp, and shame, reluctance has long remained numerous.

“Difficult to tell but it is, I believe, necessary.

So here it is: the condom cracked, I asked him to stop and he didn't want to, I managed to escape from his apartment, under his insults.

I ran to the emergency room for post-exposure treatment.

#metoogay ”.

Like thousands of other Internet users, Jérémie gave his testimony this Thursday evening on Twitter.

More than three years after the explosion of the MeToo movement with the Weinstein affair, the French gay community is starting its own freedom of speech around sexual assault.

At the origin of this movement, the testimony of a young man claiming to have been raped at the age of 18 by an elected PCF of the City of Paris, Maxime Cochard, and his spouse, while he was in a "particularly vulnerable situation ".

Then thousands of testimonies abounded on the web.

Why is the explosion only happening now, and not earlier, in recent years?

Women on the front line

Already, by a desire not to eclipse the words of women at the time of the first MeToo.

Léo * (first name changed) testifies: “I believe that women have enough snuff so that it is not the rat race when they have a space to speak.

It had held me back, rightly or wrongly.

"Same reasoning with Jérémie, who considered it important that the liberation of women" should not be overshadowed by men's testimonies.

In any case, it was their courage that showed us the way, so I say thank you.

"

For François *, this explanation is perhaps not the only one.

“There was a real nobility in being silent while the women spoke,” he says, “but maybe also that, on purpose or not, they were left in the front line to test the waters.

Once we saw that they had survived it, that the MeToo movement had moved a few lines, we thought we could go.

"For Sébastien Chauvin, sociologist of homosexuality, it is in any case clear that the current movement would not have existed without the feminine MeToo:" The voices expressed in MeToo have taught gays to recognize the violence they suffer from on the part of other men, including within the gay community, as patriarchal violence ”

Tackle your own camp?

Many testimonies agree on the fear of testifying and giving food to the LGBTphobe.

Unlike the female MeToo, which targeted another social group - men - the Gay MeToo denounces members of its own community.

An action that sowed a bit of doubt.

Flora Bolter, co-director of the LGBT + Observatory at the Jean Jaurès Foundation, noted “a fear of betraying one's own camp, or that the accusation of an individual is taken for a generality and throws opprobrium on the whole community.

"

François explains what has prevented him from testifying for so long: “When the Demonstration for All and company already calls us rapists, sexually insane or savages, we don't want to give them new arguments or would be- what an example they could use.

Women can say Men are trash, we're not going to say Gays are trash, that wouldn't make sense.

"

Fixet on sexuality

Jérémie also hesitated before giving himself up, not only for fear that those around him would define him only as a victim of violence, but also because “our society is still homophobic, many people fixate on our sexuality.

It is intimate and it is difficult to expose it in the public square.

"

Leo, he is against all these questioning: "I do not see how the victims should ask the question of the consequences of their speaking.

It's completely overturning the normal order of things and I find that unfair.

“For him, his testimony is on the contrary a“ citizen process ”.

Pitfalls faced

In this regard, Flora Bolter feared in particular the reaction of LGBT associations, fearing that they would partly discard the problem, or insisted on the fact that heterosexuality contained more sexual assault, etc.

“In the end, the associations reacted very well, understanding the problem and simply showing support for the victims,” she notes, relieved.

Here too, the feminine MeToo movement has been there.

"It is difficult to problematize sexual violence in an environment which builds the right to sexuality as a resistance", underlines Sébastien Chauvin in particular.

For Flora Bolter, sexual violence being overwhelmingly the act of men against women, “the devices have rightly been designed for this overwhelming problem.

But in fact, some sexual minorities, such as lesbians or gays, do not find adequate answers.

"

The fact remains that despite all these potential pitfalls, the floor was released on Thursday.

Jérémie explains what pushed him to take the plunge: “I finally decided to testify for what it could bring to others, to the victims first of all who can identify with my experience and realize the problem, and to the victims. aggressors who are not always aware of what they are doing or of the consequences.

With the #Metoogay, they will no longer have this excuse.

"

Miscellaneous

Paris: elected Communist accused of rape on social networks denies the facts

Media

#MeTooInceste: How the speeches gradually broke the silence on incest and pedocriminality

  • Sexual assault

  • MeToo

  • Society

  • Sexual violence

  • Gay