The subject was appropriate: while two French speakers were invited Thursday evening to the Café Laïque in Brussels to discuss the "
excesses of the transgender movement
", around twenty young activists came to walk the talk and concretely illustrate the intolerance that is sometimes blamed on their cause.
The associative café received child psychiatrist Caroline Eliacheff and Professor Céline Masson about their latest essay,
La Fabrique de l'enfant transgenre
(Observatory editions) which warns about the psychological conditioning of minors confronted with the obsession of certain caregivers around “
gender dysphoria
”.
A commitment that earned them to be regularly taken to task by activists of the transgender movement, for whom the two French intellectuals are "
transphobic
".
The question of trans rights currently divides the feminist cause, pitting intersectional activists against those, universalists, referred to as “
TERFs ”.
- feminists excluding trans rights from their fight.
On several occasions, Caroline Eliacheff was intimidated or had her conferences canceled: in Lille where she was prevented from speaking, in Paris where the deprogramming of an event led her having to hold a symposium only by videoconference, or even in Lyon where one of its conferences had to be moved urgently.
Read also“On the trans question, we live in a climate of intellectual terror”
This time, as usual, the organizers of the conference (which however received relatively little coverage outside of the usual Café Laïque networks) received anonymous messages ordering them to cancel the event, if they didn't want to suffer any consequences.
"
It's always the same process.
“, notes CNRS researcher Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who had invited the two speakers.
But despite a first report to the Belgian police upstream - which was monopolized that evening by a European summit in the same district - the conference was disrupted by two Belgian activists who infiltrated the room.
After half an hour of conference, and taking advantage of the fact that the door of the establishment, locked as a precaution, was reopened by a person going out to telephone in the street, they signaled to about twenty individuals hooded men who violently engulfed themselves in the cafe.
The small group of activists then threw terracotta pots containing litter and excrement at the public, which numbered about twenty-five people, while shouting slogans hostile to the association "
The Little Mermaid
”, founded by Céline Masson and Caroline Eliacheff.
Invited to speak, the activists preferred to flee
“
After the throwing of fecal matter, they overturned the chairs, jostled everyone and tried to approach the back of the room, before people intervened to prevent them from attacking the speakers
”, tells
Le Figaro
Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who says she is “
shocked
” by this unprecedented aggression against her associative establishment.
Beyond the theme of the conference, it is the very existence of the Café Laïque (where conferences by Pascal Bruckner or Pierre Vermeren, in particular, have previously been held) which seemed to be targeted, the mention "
racist
" having been affixed to the word "
transphobic
during a wild collage made during the attack.
A tract published in haste and thrown in the middle of the room by the “
Ursula collective
” which led this action criticizes the whole of the inspiration which led to founding this place of meetings and debates.
Once there, the police arrested one of the activists, while the bulk of the troops had fled, refusing to speak when the participants of the evening invited them to do so.
Florence Bergeaud-Blackler indicates that she has filed a complaint.
She regrets to Le
Figaro
the little echo met by the incident with the Belgian press, while journalists were nevertheless present in the room.
“
I am no longer at peace anywhere
”, regrets Caroline Eliacheff after this new incident.
"
The only solution for me is to be present by surprise at events, like last Friday during a symposium at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, or to ask for an important police force as was the case in Issy-les -Moulineaux where the authorities checked the participants one by one
”.