Can one speak of consent without the consent of the person concerned?
Published at 1:27 am. Updated at 9:15 a.m.
This is what I’m going to do and I know it’s difficult.
But it’s impossible not to think again about what happened this week while recording Sous Listen, Mike Ward’s podcast.
A reader who describes himself as a heavy consumer of humor wrote to me on Wednesday to alert me to the events.
“Sunday night at Sous Listen, the guys from La Poche Bleue (Guillaume Latendresse and Maxim Lapierre), two former Canadiens players, did a lot of negative things to Mike Ward,” he wrote to me. Unwanted touches among other things. We’re talking about the finger on the penis, the hand on the buttocks, the finger on the face and in the mouth. They gave him hugs that I would describe as brutal. Mike didn’t seem comfortable at all throughout the entire episode. He said he felt intimidated and even staff checked in with him during the episode to make sure he was OK. I was deeply shocked by what I saw. »
The comedian has since removed the video from social networks, but more and more images are still circulating on social networks. And the reader sent me several excerpts. What I saw is worth paying attention to.
We actually see the two hosts of La Poche Bleue, who are visibly drunk and making inappropriate comments about the host’s genitals.
There is no law prohibiting stupidity, but if the person repeats it and insists on it, this kind of talk seems like intimidation.
But that’s not what pissed me off the most.
What amazed me was seeing Lapierre and Latendresse touching Mike Ward against his will.
One of the two men placed his hand on the comedian’s crotch. Later they grabbed him from behind and held him between their arms. All while Mike Ward was clearly very uncomfortable.
Of course, both hosts are too drunk to take Mike Ward’s hints and realize that they have crossed the line of acceptable. It’s the effect of alcohol, it clouds judgment. We see clearly that it is no longer a game, that we no longer have a sense of humor. In short, it looks like a real attack before our eyes.
IMAGE FROM MIKE WARD’S VIDEO BROADCAST
“They dropped it,” Mike Ward said in a video he posted Tuesday. They wanted to show me that they could drink like men, but instead they drank like children. »
Mike Ward made it clear: He doesn’t want to make a big deal about it. “They escaped,” he said in a video he posted Tuesday. They wanted to show me that they could drink like men, but instead they drank like children. » Explaining his decision to remove the podcast, he stated that Latendresse and Lapierre “didn’t do anything wrong” but that they “looked fat.”
Whether Mike Ward doesn’t want to revisit the incident is his decision. And if he didn’t feel attacked, that’s his fault too. But that is no reason to trivialize the events of that day. It is not true that Lapierre and Latendresse “did nothing wrong.” You touched someone without their consent.
Since the #metoo movement and the denunciations that followed, we have repeated over and over again the same message about consent and sexual violence: the importance of being on the lookout for signals of discomfort or rejection, respecting each other’s bubbles… We explained to Nausea that alcohol was certainly not a pretext or excuse to justify unacceptable actions.
Since the publication of my colleague Léa Carrier’s report on misogynistic discourse in schools, we have repeatedly emphasized the importance of denouncing toxic behavior and raising awareness among young people.
And now we are confronted live with very aggressive gestures that are minimized in the name of humor and copious amounts of alcohol. We want to sweep the incident under the rug under the pretense of “boys will be boys…”.
I repeat: I will never tell Mike Ward what to think or how to act. If he no longer wants to talk about the incident, that is his absolute right.
But let’s talk about La Poche Bleue’s two hosts, Guillaume Latendresse and Maxim Lapierre, two former Montreal Canadiens players who are now analysts at TVA Sports. Latendresse also sat on the Hockey Revival Committee set up by the Legault government.
I called the two men’s agent, Louis-Philippe Dorais. He replied to me via email that Latendresse and Lapierre had explained themselves at the opening of their podcast. I have listened to the excuses in question. What it all boils down to is this: we removed the podcast out of respect for our families, we have to take this all with a grain of salt, we move on… Oh well!
To my ears, these comments are very problematic. If the incident had happened in her living room, I wouldn’t be writing this column. But he was performing in front of an audience, an audience that witnessed her gaffe. And among them there are probably young men who admire Latendresse and Lapierre.
Therefore, it is important to reiterate the extent to which this type of behavior cannot be tolerated, whether you are a man or a woman, a celebrity or a famous unknown. We must denounce it loud and clear when we witness it.