The journalist and writer Tristane Banon, at her home in Boulogne Billancourt, on the outskirts of Paris, on January 13. BRUNO ARBESÚ
The essayist and novelist Tristane Banon (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 42 years old) was a forerunner of the Me Too movement.
When Nafissatou Diallo, a New York hotel clerk, sued International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn for sexual assault in 2011, Banon said, "Me too."
She and she accused Strauss-Kahn of an assault committed eight years earlier.
The Prosecutor's Office ended up filing her complaint for attempted rape, but recognized a sexual assault already prescribed.
She now publishes in Éditions de l'Observatoire
La paix des sexes
(“The peace of the sexes”).
QUESTION.
Isn't she sick of being
the woman who was assaulted by Strauss-Kahn
?
ANSWER.
It's not that I'm fed up, because it's part of my life.
I can't pretend it didn't happen.
But it poses a problem for me to reduce it to this: the only moment in my entire life, almost, in which I did not decide on anything.
In addition, I militate in favor of leaving the state of victim when you have been a victim of sexual violence, although it is complicated and difficult.
You are not a victim all your life.
Q.
Why do you refuse to be a victim?
R.
Because victimization is a typecasting.
Before you were a plague, they looked at you badly.
With the Me Too there is respect for the victims and it is important.
But now even certain feminists make this status heroic, as if it were a social status.
As if to say: "What do you do for a living?"
And you answered: “I am a victim”.
I think this is harmful to society: victims must be respected, not made into heroines.
And it is disastrous for the person who has been a victim: it locks them up, and there is no beneficial lockup.
It is as if you had a traffic accident and all day they told you: “You are a victim of a traffic accident”.
Well no;
you are a mother, a baker, a researcher, a lot of things.
P.
_
How did you manage to stop being a victim?
A.
I don't like giving lessons.
What worked for me may not work for someone else.
For 13 years I did therapy with an analyst.
I read Simone de Beauvoir and Elisabeth Badinter, philosophers who reflect on our equality, our power and our possibilities, everything we can do.
P.
It took eight years to denounce Strauss-Kahn.
Why?
R.
First of all, by mistake.
I should have reported him right away.
I consulted with an attorney.
He thought it would be useless, that attacking such a powerful man would end up hurting me.
I wouldn't have had to listen to him.
I was at the beginning of my professional life, things were going well for me.
She feared that she would be the girl who denounced Strauss-Kahn all her life.
You see.
Total success!
P.
He ended up denouncing it in 2011, when
the Strauss-Kahn case
broke out .
R.
The atmosphere was not like now.
When Nafissatou Diallo denounced him and later I, rather they lynched us in the media, we were judged.
Now a woman who denounces is respected.
But you have to watch out.
Respect yes, but
heroization
and sacralization of the word of the victim, no.
You have to respect the woman who denounces and listen to her, and not treat her as a liar, but denouncing is not telling the truth.
I'm scared of these people on social media who say, "We believe you, we know you're telling the truth."
P.
Wouldn't you have liked at the time to be told "we believe you"?
R.
No. Both telling me "I believe you" and "you're a liar" is crazy.
People do not know the subject, they were not with Dominique Strauss-Kahn and I, they are not researchers.
We must be honest: cases of lies, of false accusations are rare.
But I feel attached to the rule of law.
As Voltaire said: “I would rather risk saving a guilty person than condemning an innocent person”.
Q.
You no longer consider yourself a victim.
R.
No. In my daily life this does not exist.
If you ask my six-year-old daughter, she doesn't know her name or many things, but she says: "A man was very mean to mom, but mom defended herself."