With "Me Too", Rose Lamy and 8 authors go beyond the hashtag

The #MeToo movement is five years old: in 2017, the hashtag swept like a wave on social networks, making people forget the very origin of its expression, launched by the African-American activist Tarana Burke, several years earlier.

In five years, we have spoken of “freedom of speech”, the term feminicide has entered everyday language, and subjects linked to gender-based and sexual violence are part of the political agenda.

Yet the #MeToo movement has its blind spots: what about non-white, working-class women?

Have we really listened to the victims?

What recovery of the movement by the far right and transphobes?

What is the link with capitalism and girl bosses?

Rose Lamy, activist, co-founder of MusicTooFrance and author, who feeds the Instagram account Get ready for the fight, had already published a year ago "Undoing sexist discourse in the media" (Editions JC Lattès).

On October 12, “Me Too: MeToo, beyond the hashtag” (Editions JC Lattès) was released, which she directs with eight other authors (including Angèle, Rokhaya Diallo, Elvire Duvelle-Charles, Lexie, or Christelle Murhula).

A collective work, documented, which always makes you want to fight.

How did you come up with the idea for this book?

We thought about it with my editor last spring.

We knew that the five years of MeToo were coming, and I was a little afraid of what people were going to say about it.

I was afraid that it revolved around the fact that it was great, that now everything was fine, when that is not at all the representation that I have of it.

Being in the MusicTooFrance collective, I know that the wave of MeToo did not come from above, that we waited a year and a half for the institutions to move... It's beautiful and romantic on paper, the fight, but it has a social cost and in terms of energy to wear it.

I didn't want this idea to be confiscated by saying that everything was great: this hashtag didn't affect everyone the same way, and it didn't necessarily affect everyone at all.

With the other authors, how did you meet and how did you work together?

Obviously it is not exhaustive, and there are affinities with certain people.

We called or saw each other a lot.

The approach, by anticipation, was to shed this light on the story, because the dominant light would not be sufficient.

I think a lot in terms of narrative: like history, reality in my opinion is the fruit of what we come to tell.

And if only one side of reality is told, that skews what is described as reality.

In all feminist or progressive struggles, there is light from another point of view.

It is to get another idea of ​​reality.

Overall, these are all trajectories quite linked to MeToo, which in my opinion must also go down in history, and we had to talk about these people.

That's why we contacted people who were experts in these subjects: they were free of everything, there was almost no editing, except for the form.

And it's interesting, because by letting the texts live quite freely, we realize that they all begin with Tarana Burke: the texts respond to each other, they explore the same mechanisms, certain passages are similar... We have wanted to keep the texts as they were.

Even if all the texts talk about #MeToo, there is a very current approach: Lexie talks about transphobia, Louz about the weight of the far right...

It was a desire not to make only a chronological account: these are current subjects.

In her text on transphobia, Lexie inserts a historical context, returns to conversion therapy.

Especially since this summer was marked by a lot of transphobia following the Planned Parenthood affair, it was complicated and exhausting to write in an urgent survival situation.

Also, in this same text or in that of Louz, the reactionary rapprochement and the extreme right, and even the rupture in this case, it is very topical.

Elvire Duvelle-Charles' text is strong on the fact that the victims were not asked what they wanted;

Christelle Murhula's text on capitalism or Reine Prat's on guerrilla warfare are also very powerful.

For your part, you write about the

There too, it is still a current issue and it showed what was reserved for “bad victims” as described by Amber Heard.

In the end, I wonder if it's not the same thing in France for Sandrine Rousseau: she is attacked as the "bad feminist", who would take for all the others.

This is the idea of ​​Reine Prat's introduction and closing text on guerrilla warfare: when we talk about MeToo and violence, it is not something that is behind us.

For the system, a good victim is a dead victim: we disregard violence without evidence, which does not kill, which does not leave a trace.

And that's what happens in the stack of hashtags: harassment, discrimination... The question is how long we'll have the strength to fight, and the resistance of the system opposite, which conceded two three things but failed to recognize the underlying issues.

We have talked a lot about

We realize that the criticisms against MeToo began the day after its appearance: Aymeric Caron had for example regretted the use of the word “pork” in the expression “Balance Ton Porc”.

It's still crazy!

One has the impression that this movement, even before existing, it was already necessary to be wary of it.

Is this book a way of taking stock in order to reconfigure the struggles for the future?

I think it is.

There are many open fronts, and those who lead them have their heads in the grindstone.

It feels good to sit down and say to yourself: “it's crazy what we've done, it's heroic with the means we have”.

Me what I want to do, more and more, is to note the symbolic victories.

The words of Mathilde Seigner (companion of Roman Polanski, editor's note) questioned on the set of Léa Salamé and that she apologizes, the strength of the victims of PPDA on the set of Mediapart, the word feminicide which is in the dictionary and which changes representations, all this work on feminicides which has become a national cause...

Then figures and writings like those of Valérie Rey-Robert or Sophie Gourion, associations like Prenons la Une... Let's become aware of our victories.

There are, but as we are head inside, we do not necessarily see it.

And the question arises of how we pool, how we work together, the politicization, the structuring, the moment when we start talking about it.

Since we are here to stay, we are aware that the fight is not over, to think about how we settle in time as a real opposition.

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