Dear Bernard,
Posted at 8:00 am
I will not offer you the pleasure of using your nickname. Also, I think columnists and journalists should mutually agree to stop doing this. Every time we do that, we weave in the fabric of the hero you’d like to be.
Before sending you my best wishes for the New Year, I wanted to come back to the video you published a few days ago, in which you react to the sketch we made on you in the bye, the one in which you treat (twice instead of once) Patrick Huard from “Fag”.
First of all, I found it odd that you described Patrick Huard as a “fag”, the one who is straight unless my gaydar is out of whack. And then I understood that for you to call a man a “faggot”, regardless of his sexual orientation, is the ultimate insult, the one that puts the man in a state of extreme weakness.
When I heard that, I went back 50 years. Well, my dear Bernard, you have the ability to make us travel in time, to make us go back. Another string to the bow!
On the way to school, I saw myself being insulted by some classmates. Suddenly you were symbolizing all the guys who were swearing at me, calling me fagot, mumoune or fifi depending on the inspiration of the day.
These guys had maliciously decided to give me a name when I didn’t even know it at the age of 10. Do you know what that state of mind looks like, my Bernard?
Do you know how it feels to get beat up in schoolyards for not being like the majority? Do you know what they experience inside when they finally find themselves alone in their room, on a park bench, or in a mall?
Did you think for two seconds as you uttered those outrages from the comfort of your SUV while pitting the “island geniuses” against those who, like you, claim to be defending the widow and the orphan?
Have you tried to imagine who are the ones who endure these insults, which they digest as best they can or hold them like a ball in their stomach for years, if not the rest of their lives?
This ball can reappear so quickly… If only you knew.
I’ve been lucky, I have a good family, nature has given me strength of character, I’ve “walked my own path” as my father said, and I’ve found happiness in many areas. But that’s not the case for everyone. There are those guys who spend their whole lives repressing their homosexuality by being deeply unhappy.
Well, this reminds me of the time I met one of my elementary school bullies in a gay bar (I must have been 23 or 25). Well, you thing! I could have yelled at him, insulted him in turn, told him all the damage he did to me, or smacked him in the face with my B-52. But instead, strangely enough, I felt sorry for him…
And then there are those who give up in the face of all these schoolyard terrorist attacks. No later than January 14 was the funeral of Lucas, a 13-year-old French teenager who committed suicide after being the victim of homophobia in his hometown in the Vosges.
I can also tell you about Kloé Guillemette, a 15-year-old trans teenager who was beaten by another student at a school in Alma last fall. About thirty young people formed a crowd and some filmed the scene without interfering.
I can also remind you of David Fortin, also of Alma, who left home in 2009 leaving behind great mystery and broken hearts. Before he left, he went through hell at school.
So when I hear an adult like you say that you went to Quebec to demonstrate for the well-being of “our children” while uttering the word “faggot,” I tell myself you’re slipping up your guts, my dear Bernard .
You’re trivializing a word we shouldn’t be hearing in Quebec by 2023. By repeating it, you’re telling your emulators that it’s still the weapon you must take to crush a male opponent.
Fortunately, others than you are responsible for getting things done. Awareness campaigns are doing their job. Young people learn to respect ‘others’ and ‘others’ receive more support to ‘go their own way’.
But there is something that discourages me… While the ordeal of the young people ended after the 4pm bell, it continues throughout the evening and weekend on social media tonight. The same social networks that are fed insults and anger by people like you.
You see how everything is in everything!
I wish you a happy new year 2023, my Bernard! But if you could twist your tongue a hundred times before posting a video, we’d have a great one too!