We have rarely understood and especially felt so strongly from the inside what it means to be harassed.
That lump in your stomach, that feeling that some are only looking at your chest, or that your words as a sports journalist are disqualified before they even come out of your mouth.
When Cécile Grès, rugby specialist at France Televisions, passed through other channels, very calmly lets go: "It's hard to have to explain why you are a victim, and to have to convince", when she only has a desire, to talk about sport, we feel all the weight that has weighed on so many women for so long.
Marie Portolano has met many of them, in "I am not a slut, I am a journalist", broadcast this Sunday at 6 pm on Canal +, before the "Canal Football Club" and the Lyon-PSG match.
These are serious cases, going as far as the threat of rape or death, sometimes simple daily jokes, distressing remarks - an editor in chief who lets go "You could have put on a cleavage, anyway" -, or fear to turn on his phone again after a broadcast.
Like Charlotte Namura, former co-presenter of "Téléfoot" on TF1, who trembled when reconnecting to social networks.
Dumpers of insults and physical remarks
Marie Portolano, 35, pillar of the sports department of Canal + for many years, but who has just joined M6 after showing her support for the comedian Sébastien Thoen, fired from Canal for a parody of "L'Heure des pros », Thus delivers a sort of testamentary documentary on women's sports journalism, and what several generations of pioneers have endured.
Of her, she does not speak, but shows the dumpsters of insults and physical remarks that have been her daily life on social networks.
History, the documentary begins at the end of the years 1970, when Georges de Caunes welcomes in a program a former athlete and the first woman journalist of his program by what he believes to be gallantry: a bouquet of roses and a tribute to his smile ".
This is nothing compared to the wickedness of Thierry Roland vis-à-vis his colleague Marianne Mako, who died of cancer in 2018, but also Frédérique Galametz, then a young journalist from L'Equipe, whom he both curls in his autobiography "Totally Thierry".
The latter, who became editor-in-chief of her newspaper twenty years later, remembers an entry in the offices when she was hired: “Women are prohibited in this camp.
“His diary will still allow him to respond in an open letter to the unbridled sexism of Mr. Foot from TF1.
All have experienced "the syndrome of the sham"
We are ashamed to see certain images again.
The "Stade 2" stars sneering at women's football, their canines sticking out.
Big names making the most beautiful words.
There is also "a Marianne Mako tragedy, a syndrome", recalls Nathalie Iannetta, the first woman to join the sports service of Canal +, then all-powerful in the sports and cathodic world, in 1997. She did not. no right to the slightest mistake.
For a man, it is a slip of the tongue.
For a woman, proof of innate incompetence.
All of them have experienced "the syndrome of the imposture".
The 2000s do not change anything.
We are far, so far away, from the #MeToo era.
A journalist from a very large group who, alone in the office with a colleague, blurted out: “I want to fuck.
"A face of BeIN Sports, created in the early 2010s, which confides:" I will not give the names, but there are very, very insistent consultants.
Threats too: "I was stuck in an office to tell me it was wrong to talk."
Finally, the fear of denouncing a leader who is going to take a warning and with whom he will have to live together, or even co-present an hour later.
Impossible mission.
We need "vases" on the air
This generation also suffers from the jar syndrome.
Women are now on the air.
But Clémentine Sarlat, co-presenter of "Stage 2", who will help to free the floor with a shock interview in L'Équipe in April 2020, remembers that she sometimes discovered just before the broadcast that she would have not the slightest word to say: "But we have to see you all the same," my editor told me.
“A form of moral harassment which, after a long internal investigation, will lead to three dismissals.
The journalist had left the channel in 2018.
There is light.
The new generations of male journalists, say several of them, are joining their fight overwhelmingly.
Sometimes the miracle comes from the supporters.
Isabelle Ithurburu, presenter of the "Canal Rugby Club", tells of very difficult beginnings on Canal +, where she succeeds a star.
Until that day when, at half-time in a Top 14 match, she heard her first name chanted throughout the stadium.
Not mockery, but support.
“I understood that if the public liked me, if they had decided that I had my place, they would also accept me internally.
"
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The anonymous crowd is not always that of social media trolls.
Fear, a word that comes up so often, does not always triumph.
From Estelle Denis to many other faces of TV less known to the general public outside of sports fans, they are numerous to participate in this film.
Hoping that one day, as Marie Portolano says, he will no longer have any reason to exist.
In the meantime, on Twitter, some are calling for the unencrypted release of this public health documentary, which can help change the outlook of many.
After all, the CFC is not just reserved for Canal + subscribers.
EDITOR'S RATING: 4.5 / 5
"I am not a slut, I am a journalist"
, documentary by Marie Portolano and Guillaume Priou (2021), this Sunday at 6 pm on Canal + (1:16).