Despite constant interventions, open denunciations in stories and reports on the subject, we have to admit that many people still haven’t learned how to behave civically on the Internet. These people hide behind their screens to indulge in comments, even very violent and unrestrained insults that they wouldn’t make in person. And well-known personalities are easy victims for these trolls, who are shamelessly rampant on social networks. Women are prime targets for these trolls, who don’t hesitate to go out of their way to gratuitously belittle them.
Geneviève Pettersen gave a good example of this recently during one of her 98.5 FM programs. The author and lover of Pierre-Yves McSween shared one of the worst messages she received following a segment where she and Frédéric Labelle were discussing Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante ‘s decision to block comments on certain platforms.
Geneviève went on to read a message she had received on Facebook. She warns listeners first, and we do the same. The next few passages may shock some.
“And here I apologize, listeners, it’s very very raw and it took me two days to get over it. It’s not a joke. You’re an est* de grosse c*nne, I wish you death my dirty old t*rche. You don’t deserve anything you got. You should shut your big ugly dirty mouth. I can’t believe you give yourself the right to speak. I hope you get beaten to death, you old hag. How dare you speak when you’re such a c*nne? (…) Karma will catch up with you and I hope for the worst of the worst of the bad. I want to see you run over by a garbage truck and get beaten up a thousand times, like you say, once isn’t enough. I wish you to be v**led to death (…)”.
Her co-host then asked if she’d pressed charges, to which she replied that she’d stopped doing so, but that yes, it was indeed the type of message for which she could have gone to the police.
Here is the message in full:
Some celebrities reacted to the host’s post, like Kim Lizotte and Manal Drissi, in turn sharing their views on the violence of online comments and messages.
Kim shared Geneviève‘s audio segment, accompanied by a screenshot of a comment received under one of her videos. It reads: “Crazy nasty cr*ss! She knows f*ck all. She’s a wannabe comedian. Get out of your echo chamber est* de folle. Nobody means what you say! Ast* de folle du cal*ce”.
In support of the women who are victims of this gratuitous nastiness, she raises a simple question: But why?
“In support of all the women in the public sphere who experience it regularly. It’s normalized, trivialized, but that’s what it is. We tolerate it and we carry on. But why?” she wonders about the violence experienced on various platforms that, presumably, fail to filter assaults.
In turn, Manal Drissi raised the issue. She returned to her most recent experience on Facebook, at the unveiling of the trailer for a collaborative project with Gabrielle Lisa Collard.
The simple unveiling of her series in development provoked a wave of nasty comments on Facebook. In response to these and to Geneviève‘s post, she made a point of reminding us what it means to be a woman or a marginalized individual in the public sphere. The mayor of the Côte-des-Neige-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, Gracia Kasoki Katahwa, also knows something about this.
For your information, here’s some background on what the mayor of this Montreal borough has experienced:
This is all happening here in Quebec, but misogyny is everywhere. For more information and to see the extent of the damage it causes, we invite you to watch the documentary Je vous salue salope by Léa Clermont-Dion and Guylaine Maroist.