Debate on transience with Dora Moutot: France 2’s bold and boring gamble

“I would like to remind the media that the existence of trans people is a fact, not a debate”

The voice of La Briochee, the show’s first openly trans contestant Drag Race Francerang out loud this Sunday evening at the end of his performance at the Legendary Cabaret Club. Impossible to ignore what he was reacting to: the day before, during the show What an era! on France 2 led by Léa Salamé and Christophe Dechavanne, Dora Moutot, self-proclaimed “feminist” activist and alleged transphobic activist, was invited.

In front of her, an elected official, the first trans mayor in France, Marie Cauwhich testifies to his journey in a book, Madam Mayorposted by Fayard.

Yes, he thought about a broadcast on public service, in an attempt to understand what transience is to invite one of the most explicit personalities in his hatred and rejection of trans people, since he asked for the exclusion of trans people from the law that prohibits conversion therapy, or when he asked for the de-subsidization of Family Planning, with his shoulder Marguerite Stern.

There was no lack of it: from the broadcast of the show this Saturday, October 15, various sequences were shot on social networks showing, for example, Dora Moutot who affirms, peremptory and self-confident, that Marie Cau, sitting in front of her is not a woman.

A constructive debate, what constructive debate?

Under the pretext of wanting to decipher news, television falls into easy sensationalism and talks about a phenomenon to be deciphered as if trans people appeared last month.

During the broadcast, Léa Salamé insists on the commitment of all parties to have a “constructive discussion”but how to build a real discussion when we put face to face a trans woman who has to defend herself from existing and a person whose only job now is to deny the rights of trans people?

Speaking of transience in the media, yes, plus with people who know what they are talking about and have the ability to provide insight. But here, the result in the end is not up to the challenge: we lower the level by limiting ourselves to which in the end resembles a “for or against transience? ” or to a “For or against the genre? “. Yet the subject deserves to be addressed with seriousness, respect and journalistic rigor, which is often still far from being so.

During the show Dora Moutot stood out for the poverty of her argument (on the presence of trans women in sport) and was welcomed by the other guests, not only by Marie Cau, but also by the comedian Jérémy Ferrari as well as only by a member of the public. Yet the mere presence of her on the set of What an era! credits his transphobic speechas if it were legitimate and representative of a popular feminist movement.

However, her speech has become much more radical in recent weeks, through the publication of a “feminist” manifesto (reported in early October from the Le Coin des LGBT + account) to show her essentializing, anti-trans and gender-critical beliefs, placing herself outside feminist activism, which as a whole has understood that transphobia has no place in its ranks.

This violent debate, excerpts of which are repeated in all the media, adds to the violence of another program recently aired on another channel, the service of M6 Trans: one of a kind, but above all the debate led by Karine Le Marchand that followed, to which several transphobic activists were invited. Arcom was seized by several associations.

A debate on television, and very real consequences

In a recent Yougov survey, we learned about this only 47% of the French say that if a loved one comes out trans or non-binary, they would show support.

Basically, trans people have it one in two chance of receiving hospitality, solidarity and affection from those around them.

Faced with this observation, it is clear that the responsibility of the media should be pointed out: refusing to take seriously the spread of hate speech against trans people also means denying the very concrete consequences they can have on the lives of trans people, in particular on the minor.

We regularly receive images of micro pavements from the 70s or 80s thanks to the INA archives, allowing us to see the evolution of mentalities or the persistence of certain prejudices, as regards the rights of minorities, violence against women … it is safe to bet that in about thirty years certain images that will return to us these current “debates” on the shoulders of trans people will put us to shame.

Photo credit: that was it! (France 2)