Cyberbullying scandal in France: six journalists were dismissed from a secret anti-feminist "league"

The revelation of a cyberbullying scandal against the women in which they are involved reporters and renowned professionals communication is causing a sensation in France.

This Tuesday, new testimonials appeared after the discovery of the existence of a baptized group. League of LOL ("LOLA LOL," an acronym used as a laughter), consisting mostly of men in their thirties, who ridicule their female colleagues for years.

"I am perhaps one of the many victims of the LOL League who is starting to talk", wrote Tuesday on the portal Slate journalist Léa Lejeune, who claims to have been a victim between 2011 and 2013 of the harbadment of members of this closed Facebook group.

The "League" was born ten years ago as a private group in which influential twitterers exchanged jokes. Some of these young people of that time now holds leading positions in the French mediaand the same path they used turned against them, as the victims concerned, most of the colleagues in the profession, reported them.

Women considered to be feminists were the group's favorite goals. The controversy has already led to several job Alexandre Hervaud (who had tried to defend the group) and the creator of the league, Vincent Glad, the two workers of the left newspaper Release. The publisher of the cultural magazine was also fired The Inrocks, David Doucet; Stephen of the Aulnois, founder and publisher of Perfect tag, digital publication on badgraphic culture; Guilhem Malissen, collaborator of the site News Listening; Guillaume Leditjournalist Usbek and Rica.

"Often, they were 140-character jokes, offensive comments, others about my baduality or comments posted on the feminist blog that I had at the time.", says Lejeune, journalist of the French economic weekly Challenges.

Like her, several victims began to make their voices heard. The former journalist Capuchin Piot, who retired from Twitter after the harbadment suffered, said that he was a victim of photo montages or videos of "teasing" and recurrent criticism of their physical appearance "for years".

"I arrived at a point where I hated myself. I had black ideas. By dint of reading horrible things about me on social networks, I thought it was worthless", Said Piot.

One of them, the scientific broadcaster Florence Porcel, said she felt "constantly monitored" and that she had been organizing her life since this "trauma".

Glad said that the group had not been active for years and that it had been "recently" removed. That did not prevent, in a society more aware of feminism and less tolerant of harbadment, was seen in the home as soon as its existence was revealed in a progressive way.

"The goal of this group was not to harbad women, but to have fun, but quickly our way of having fun became very problematic and we did not realize"My group did not have a filter.Today, I'm horrified to see one of my 2013 tweets circulating where I was joking about the rape culture," he said. he declared in his message of contrition.

The case, nicknamed the #MeToo of the French press, provoked the indignation of the French political clbad.

State Secretary for the Digital Economy, Mounir Mahjoubi, criticized those "dudes who thought they were the kings of the Internet" and encouraged the victims to talk "because their testimony will allow the 39, current internet to mature ". His counterpart for equality, Marlene Schiappa, announced that he would discuss with the Justice Ministry of the possibility of extending the prescription of cyberbullying offenseswho is currently six years old and is punished with one to three years in prison and 45,000 euros fine.

(With information from AFP and EFE)