InvestigationThe relationship to consent, household chores, gender-neutral education… In the wake of #metoo, men are exploring these questions through support groups. And try to define the contours of a more sensitive, less dominating masculinity.
This is the fifth time that Mehdi, Jérémie, Victor, Joffrey, Laurent and Lucas find themselves in these conditions. The small band of thirty-somethings met in a café on 11and district of Paris. Once seated, they took the time to order beers before getting to the heart of the matter. Even if this meeting looks like it, it’s not just a Wednesday night drink with friends. Evidenced by the small black notebook on the table, on which are scribbled in pen the rules to follow during their discussions: take turns speaking, do not cut others, talk about your own experiences using the pronoun “I” , do not mock, do not criticize, do not judge. Welcome to the anti-fight club : here, men come together to open their hearts and accompany each other in their efforts to become better people.
This evening, Victor Bonte, three-day beard and small round glasses, wants to talk about his relationship to consent. “I think in the past I’ve been pushy with women. I may not have been paying attention to some signals,” confides the designer in a hesitant voice. “When I listen to podcasts on the subject, it makes me ask myself questions. Sometimes I look back and feel like I haven’t been listening enough. » The others welcome these words without flinching, let Victor develop his thoughts to the end. “In this kind of case, we dig, we wonder what brought him to this realization. The goal is not to solve a problem, but rather to listen and resonate,” slips Jérémie Claeys, illustrator and producer of podcasts. This evening, he wants to talk about household chores, and starts in turn, after asking if he could speak: “When my children arrived, I saw myself more as a helper for my wife than as her equal. We had tensions around the clothes piling up in the dirty laundry basket, the vacuuming… Now, I try to think about it before she points it out to me,” unrolls the father of two children.
The tremors of #metoo
Beyond these Wednesday evening confidences, the objective of this meeting is first of all to digest together the tremors caused by the #metoo movement since 2017. Jérémie, Victor and the others all listened to the journalist’s podcast in full Victoire Tuaillon “Les Couilles sur la table”, produced by Binge Audio and devoted to the social constructions of masculinities, and began to question their own responsibility for gender inequalities. And if they have well integrated the concepts of “mental workload”, “safe place” and “systemic domination”, they are sometimes skeptical when it comes to applying these new concepts in their daily lives. “For the past few years, my wife has been very interested in feminism. I sometimes have the impression that it sends me back to an image of paternalistic, privileged masculinity,” regrets Laurent Bazart, 45 years old. “Even if we don’t always understand each other, I try to learn from it, especially for the education of our 8-year-old boy. We both play a lot of football, how to push him to surpass himself without using macho vocabulary? », asks the freelance illustrator, who now forces himself to banish words like “chochotte” in the presence of his son.
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