A former student at the Institute of Political Studies, B. reflects on the wave of testimonies concerning rape and sexual assault in schools. He wonders: "What held me back, how am I different from these anonymous people whose actions are being detailed before my eyes?"
It could have been me.
Two and a half years ago, I left an Institute of Political Studies. With my master's degree in hand, I gently stepped into the workforce, leaving behind fond memories, and then tasted the carelessness of a student with the pay of an employee. Before this Monday February 8, 2020, therefore, I felt like Jean-Bapiste Clémance in Albert Camus' novel: "The judges punished, the accused expiated and I, free from all duty, withdrawn from judgment as well as from sanction, I reigned, freely, in an Edenic light".
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Then came the fall. Revelations of rape and sexual assault in all the schools of the Sciences Po network. Glued to the screen of my phone, while under my eyes parade familiar names of events, parties, clues of belonging to promotions close to mine. Although I do not feel in any way involved in any of the reported facts, a feeling of unease knots my stomach. How could I not see any of this? Are relatives concerned, victims or guilty, without my knowing it? Suddenly, I realize my fallibility: this rapist, this aggressor, it could have been me.
I had always imagined rape as something monstrous. It is not.
The stories told cover very diverse facts, of violence and unequal scope. And I realize that, through the representations that are made of it, I had until then always imagined rape, sexual assault, as something monstrous. It is not so. These acts, on the part of the perpetrator, are in reality terribly commonplace and within my human reach.
Lack of reactions
In the end, I walked a fine line throughout my studies. Why didn't I dive? What held me back, how am I different from these anonymous people whose actions are being detailed before my eyes? Am I sure that I have always kept myself within the moral enclosure that I believed was so solidly built in me? Who knows ? Maybe someone has felt assaulted by my behavior before? No doubt … At the very least, through my acceptance, my hesitation or my lack of reaction to behavior, I feel that I have contributed to nurturing an environment conducive to the deployment of this silent violence.
A pitfall would be to keep the culprits out of our society. "If pimps and thieves were always and everywhere condemned, honest people would all believe themselves to be constantly innocent", said Camus again. Guilty, innocent: what is the game of belonging to one or other of these categories when you leave your studies when you are a 20-year-old boy, pressed by mimicry, swollen with pride, desperate for recognition of self, troubled by alcohol, encouraged by drugs? And, above all, alone, randomly given to parenting education from childhood, while sexuality and education for mutual consent are relegated to three pages of the Earth and Life Science textbook in the classroom. 4th.
We are all guilty
But now, at 20, we are responsible for our actions before the law. Even if the law is struggling to be enforced, it is our collective duty not to give in to the temptation to invoke the very convenient figure of the monstrous rapist, which makes it possible to naturalize these behaviors, to question the " beings "rather than the facts, and therefore to avoid seeing the odious truth: we are all guilty. The IEPs are no exception, what takes place there is undoubtedly common to all grandes écoles, if not to all establishments where the self reigns and organizes collective omerta. Mocking the "elites of France", gauchos or #Sciencesporcs who derailed, is to forget that rape and assault are omnipresent in our environment. No one is safe from assault and rape until we can design a modern and transparent education on consent, which frames us from childhood to our young adult years. But also as long as the mechanics of power and domination that infuse elite factories, from administration to amphitheatres, as in the rest of French society, continue. The breaking of the silence and the resignation of Frédéric Mion from the presidency of Science Po Paris are perhaps the first stones.