2023-04-23 11:36:17
Guest of BFMTV on Saturday evening, the author returned to the incident of the day before, when his speech in a bookstore was interrupted by feminist activists.
“It’s aggression, it’s violence.” Guest of BFMTV on Saturday evening, Frédéric Beigbeder condemned the action of feminist activists who disrupted his intervention in the Mollat bookstore, the day before in Bordeaux.
The 57-year-old author was there to present his latest book, Confessions of a Slightly Overwhelmed Heterosexual (Albin Michel). Thursday evening, already, the bookstore had been covered with militant collages, on which one could notably read “176 pages of misogynistic handjob” or “You have a rapist’s speech”. So much so that a security device had been put in place on Friday for his arrival:
“There were three police cars to protect me,” he says. “I’ve been writing for 35 years…it’s the first time I’ve been to a bookstore and there’s police protection.”
The conference went smoothly until it was interrupted by a dozen feminist activists, chanting the slogan “Victim, we believe you, rapist, we see you”.
“I am called a rapist, therefore a criminal, and I have nothing to do with that”, got annoyed on Saturday on BFMTV. “There is absolutely no question of making an apology for rape (in my book).”
“Censorship always leads to totalitarianism”
“What these people want is to censor,” condemns the writer. “They don’t want to talk about it. These are people who want to prevent a meeting in a bookstore, who ransack a bookstore, in France, in 2023, and who call for censorship. (…) Censorship always leads to totalitarianism , it always leads to physical violence, and this is violence that has taken place.”
A provocative figure since his first writings, Frédéric Beigbeder has been the subject of more insistent criticism in recent years. In particular for his past friendship with Gabriel Matzneff, for certain positions – his support for Roman Polanski – or the representation of women in his works.
A few weeks ago, on the set of What an era!, it was questioned in particular on a quote from his latest book: “It is the truth of man: that you are not touched, it is only because the law forbids it”.
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