“Men, I Hate You”, the book by a French feminist who thrills

If there were no man, the literary beginnings of Pauline Harmange, I hate men (Men I hate them, is the title given in Spanish), it could have gone unnoticed. The feminist essay, in which the author advocates the rejection of men as a legitimate defense mechanism against widespread misogyny, was originally published in French by the non-profit publishing house Monstrograph. Only 400 copies were printed. However, on the day of its launch last August, an employee of the French Ministry of Gender Equality, Ralph Zurmély, emailed Monstrograph from his government account.

In the mail he wrote that the book was obviously “An excuse for misandry“. Zurmély, who had not read it, compared it to “Sex-based hate speech” and concluded: “I ask you to immediately remove this book from your catalog, which is liable to criminal prosecution.” The threat turned against him. As soon as it was made public, Men I hate them has become a famous cause in French media and has drawn attention to misandry, aversion or mistrust of men, as a social phenomenon. As Monstrograph could not keep up with demand, a large French publisher, Seuil, won a bid to reprint the book, which has sold 20,000 copies since. Translation rights for seventeen languages ​​were also sold.

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In the United States, HarperCollins will launch I hate men, translated by Natasha Lehrer, January 19. Meanwhile, France’s gender ministry has struggled to distance itself from the Zurmély threat. A spokesperson for the current minister, Élisabeth Moreno, said that “strongly condemned this isolated act ” and added that they were transferring Zurmély to another post “at his request”. For Harmange, who is 26, the whole experience was like a boost. “It was the launch of my career, which seemed to me like an almost unattainable dream.He said in a video interview in December from his home in Lille, northern France. However, with attention came the harassment on social media and the daily slurs that now come in multiple languages. “There are times when I tell myself that I did not go into this business to be vilified,” she said.

Men I hate them started in 2019 as a blog post on feminist exhaustion. Harmange had obtained a bachelor’s degree in communication a year earlier and was working as a freelance writer. His personal essays, on topics ranging from personal care to environmentalism, had reduced but constant follow-up, which helped her survive thanks to Tipeee, a French alternative to the Patreon crowdfunding service. Monstrography editors Martin Page and Coline Pierré saw the message and they asked him to turn it into a book. For Harmange, a volunteer in an association supporting rape victims, misandry had become the concept who better expressed their frustration with structural gender-based violence.

“If you were a feminist they said it as an insult,” she said. “Whatever you say, as soon as you criticize men, they accuse you of being a misandric person. It was then that I realized it really was. “The short and fluid Men I hate them it’s part of a recent revival anti-masculine sentiment in French feminist literature. Like Harmange, Alice Coffin, elected councilor of the city of Paris, addressed the issue of misandry Lesbian genius (lesbian genius), published by Grasset at the end of September. If the book is above all an account of her experience as a journalist and lesbian activist, accompanied by a series of interviews with American journalists of the LGBT movement, there is a section dedicated to the “war of men” against women. Coffin maintains that man-made art is “an extension of the system of domination” and writes that she avoids it.

The frankness of Coffin and Harmange’s work struck a chord in France. The country has been slow to give its place to the #MeToo movement, in part because of the generational gap between older feminists who belong to the dominant group and younger and more energetic activists, highlighting a lack of progress. “Feminists have spent a lot of time and energy reassuring men that we don’t really hate them, that they are welcome,” Harmange said. “You didn’t get much in return.” Disillusionment with French policies has contributed to the change of the younger generation. Although the French president, Emmanuel Macron, once declared that gender equality would be “the great cause of my tenure,” her government has been criticized for implementing few feminist policies. Last year, Macron appointed a man accused of rape, Gerald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior.

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In an interview from his home in Paris, Coffin said men “had their chance” to generate equity. “They could’ve taken the clues a long time agoBut apparently it didn’t generate much enthusiasm ”. In this context, Harmange and Coffin argue that putting brotherhood on the appeasement of men is the next logical step. Some women still believe that criticizing men as a group is more harmful than beneficial. In an opinion piece for the newspaper Sunday Newspaper, the philosopher Élisabeth Badinter criticized the “binary thought” of “Belligerent neofeminism”. Others support Harmange and Coffin, but do not say they are misandric.

Rokhaya Diallo, a prominent black journalist and activist for racial and gender equality, said in a phone interview that she did not want to focus her “activism on men.” Diallo noted that it is also more difficult for black women to follow Harmange and Coffin’s lead. “When you are a non-white feminist, the fact will be analyzed quickly like a kind of hatred towards white men “, he pointed out. “They will give misandry a racial accent.” Harmange has three other books scheduled for publication, including a novel he wrote previously. Men I hate them, entitled Limoges to die for, to be published this year or in 2022, and an essay on your difficult experience with abortion. Most importantly, your success means you can pay off your debts. For the first time in years, Harmange said, she didn’t have to think about whether she was going to have to return to live with her parents. “I never had the courage to be a model, an ‘inspiring’ woman,” she wrote two years ago in the blog post that led to Men I hate them. For a generation of French feminists, this may be the case now.

By Laura Cappelle, © 2021 The New York Times Company.