The launch of the hashtag #Metoogarçons, triggered by the speech of the actor Aurélien Wiik, is accompanied by several hundred testimonies on social networks from male victims of sexual violence, whose stories have hardly been heard for a long time.
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On February 22, on the eve of a César ceremony marked by an unprecedented wave of allegations of sexual violence, launched in particular by Judith Godrèche, the 43-year-old actor stated that at the age of 11 15 had been “abused” by his agent and had filed a complaint at 16 because her attacker had “done it to others”.
His message attracts several hundred statements on the social network X (formerly Twitter), which quickly go beyond the limits of the 7th art.
France Insoumise (LFI) MP Andy Kerbrat immediately explained that he had been “abused for three to four years by a predator who has since died without any chance of justice”.
“People believe you and love you (which I did thanks to my parents). You will achieve great things, so keep expressing yourself. If you can, go to court. We don’t heal, but we repair ourselves. Together,” adds the 33-year-old MP.
“Brakes in society”
The 42-year-old journalist and writer Adrien Borne, who publicly reported being the victim of a child molester in 2016, admits that he “felt very alone” at the time and says he “views the emergence with a mixture of terror and necessity “metooboys”.
Far from being a new issue, the issue of men affected by sexual violence has long been overshadowed by the problem of women, who make up an overwhelming proportion of victims. According to the Ministry of the Interior, 87% of victims of sexual violence in 2022 were women. 97% of the suspects were men.
Beyond the statistical reality, the question has long been taboo, said AFP Laurent Boyet, president of the Les Papillons association, who testified in 2017 that he was raped by his brother at the age of six.
“There are obstacles in society, especially the idea that a man doesn't cry, he is strong, that a man cannot be a victim,” he states.
“Very often we say to male victims: 'This isn't possible because you're a man, why didn't you defend yourself?' That’s what I was told,” adds Arnaud Gallais, president of another association of victims of sexual violence and a victim himself.
Faced with “loneliness”
For a long time, vigilance against child victims of sexual violence was focused on girls rather than boys, confirms Sébastien Chauvin, a sociologist specializing in gender issues. “Boys were freer and the possibility of sexual violence was completely inaudible for a long time,” he says.
In a meeting with AFP at the end of December, director Joachim Lafosse assessed that the women who had broken the silence in the cinema industry in recent years had done so “thanks to sisterhood, community, their solidarity”.
“On the other hand, when you talk about what happened as a man, the words come with a loneliness. Patriarchy does not invite the exchange of words between men, you have to be strong,” he stressed.
In 2021, the #Metooincest wave gave many men who were victims of pedophilia in childhood the opportunity to testify. This movement was followed by #MetooGay, which, however, further raised “the question of consensus in the gay world, including between adults” and, according to the sociologist, obscured the power relations in the world of work or in family circles.
And now? For Laurent Boyet, “it is no longer about freedom of expression, but about whether society will finally hear us.”