Adrien Quatennens’ answer is a masterclass on the apology of violent men

Struck by a handrail after the violence committed against his wife, LFI deputy Adrien Quatennens announced this weekend his “withdrawn from his function as coordinator” within the party.

This Sunday, September 18th, split a long press release in which he states that he does not want to resolve himself “Squat down, play down the facts and wait for the storm to pass “.

The man’s refrain went away

Speaking in this context is not trivial. If some people ask for courage in the face of the trial (a man, right, takes responsibility, right?), We can also see it very simply desire to take control of the narrative, carefully choosing some words and expressions at the expense of others. It is he who tells his side of the story, and is therefore the one that will take precedence from now on.

A transparency that therefore leaves nothing to chance and that allows Adrien Quatennens to show himself in the light of a respectable man, thus taking up the cliché of the sinister man who accidentally goes mad because he is mad with grief to see his marriage shattered.

For years now, feminists have been warning about the media construction of this image they feed the collective imagination around violence against women. This same imagery that formats the idea of “crimes of passion”a beautiful formula tinged with romanticism that trivializes femicides so much.

The weight of words

That the aggressor himself recounts the violence he committed should challenge and the chosen words deserve attention. Blurred words. Adrien Quatennens speaks “voltage” in the context of a divorce, “communication breakdown”to several “quarrels”.

There is also talk of a “mutual aggression”a way to install the idea that in this divorce case that would go wrong, the wrongs are shared. He more precisely recognizes some wrongs, such as taking the cell phone from his wife: “Wanting to get it back, she jumped on my back. I walked away and, letting go, she hit her elbow. “ Or furthermore, a “slap”in another topic a year ago.

“It’s not like me and it never happened again”. Prevent your partner from retrieving their cell phone or getting hit in the facewhile underlining the exceptional dimension of the context (“A special and rare moment of tension”), does not deny that it is indeed violence.

“I have sent too many messages” he also acknowledges Adrien Quatennens, a nice formula for saying that we have been a little too insistent. What if it were more accurate to say that we were harassed? In the desire to present himself as a dignified man who does not indulge in violence, who controls himself (except once), this immediately sounds less good.

These are elements of language that we have already read or heard in other cases, which they emphasize the context of rupture passing off as logic, expectations, even natural, outbursts of anger that result in violence. “She leaves him, he kills her”. This slogan brandished in the street, pasted on the walls, is also a reminder of the frequency of domestic violence in contexts of rupture. This is nothing rare, nor anecdotal. It is systemic.

This anger of men is gone, we should understand it, after all, we have the right to get angry to see that so many years of love end. Violence too often stamped with the seal of private lifehere invoked with a vengeance, in particular to remember that the victim himself did not want the media to seize the case.

Victim support … except when the attacker is a friend

We could stop here, with an analysis of the text in all its most revolting and insidious form, but it is also the internal reactions of a part of La France Insoumise that have something to make us angry.

Starting with that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, uncomfortable with indecency, who puts victim and aggressor face to face and finally praises the “courage” of the last. For the courage of the victim who dares to go to the police station, we will return.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon who adds a few hours later in another tweet, as if to underline that despite all this “affection” addressed to Adrien Quatennens, he has not completely forgotten the one who in this case is a victim of violence: “My affection for him does not mean that I am indifferent to Céline. She didn’t want to be mentioned. But I say it: a slap is still unacceptable. Adriano accepts it. All right. “

Men tell us loud and clear, hand on heart, they will support women, that nothing should be missing, that they will listen to the victims… until their friends, colleagues, brothers and fathers find themselves accused of violence. Rising as one man, then they make us understand that in this specific case, their solidarity, their unconditional support, their disgust for sexist and sexual violence, all of this can come to a limit, all of this is suddenly renegotiable. Farewell to the basicsit is no longer a collective problem, but an individual case, apart, for which it is easy to find excuses or mitigating circumstances.

Faced with the reaction of Olivier Faure, leader of the PS, the former minister Aurélie Filipetti cannot help but question him, thus recalling that when he brought the economist Thomas Piketty against his ex-husband for domestic violence, the PS was not been so vocal:

Through this rhetorical question, he indicates the action (or perhaps inaction) of the left to combat sexist and sexual violence, already shaken by other accusations of violence in recent months, first Taha Bouhafs, then Éric Coquerel.

An example that the political world as a whole struggles to achieve.

Photo credit: Capture