You knew what you were doing. You took a picture of her without her knowing during a sexual act. You shared the photo in a chat group, with your fellow hockey players. You wanted her to be identified. You took the time to specify his name and age in the chat. You circulated on the Internet a photo of her, taken without her consent during a sexual act, along with her identity. It is impossible that you did not know that it would be deeply hurt, humiliated, traumatized.
You said in an interview that you sent her photo as a “trophy”, to “impress” your teammates. You couldn’t ignore that you were going to traumatize her, but you felt that impressing your teammates was more important. Your desire for social validation had to come first. How important is the suffering of a trophy? A trophy is an object, not a human being.
You’ve been playing hockey since you were little, and you felt that sending a photo taken without a woman’s consent to your teammates, along with her name, was going to impress them. You know hockey, you know your teammates. If you thought they were going to be impressed by sharing this photo, it’s because you’ve seen misogynistic behaviors and heard a lot of misogynistic talk in the past, and they’ve elicited positive reactions. If you’re somehow endowed with rationality, there is no way you could have anticipated an approval, unless you have been working for years in a sporting environment rotten to the core.
You are Canadian. You made your disgusting gesture in Sweden, at the age of 17. There you were fined for invasion of privacy and defamation. If your crime had happened in Canada, and our laws had been enforced, you could have been charged with sexual assault. You know. Marc Bergevin also knows it. When your new boss refuses to use the word “criminal” to describe what you’ve done, it’s knowingly.
You traumatized her. Since she never wanted to see you again, she asked you to send her your sincere apologies, but in writing. In interview with The Athletic, she tells us that she only received a simple text from you, of “no more than three sentences”, which smacked of “insincerity”. Then you waited until one minute before midnight, when information about your past was already circulating, before releasing a short statement stating that you did not consider yourself worthy of being drafted by the NHL this year.
We would have to believe the Montreal Canadiens public relations team, which assures us of your “personal development” and your “sincere awareness”. We should believe them more than she, who tells us that you are not sincere. Canadians tell us that they understand the importance of respecting women, while ultimately burying her word. Are you okay with that, Logan?
The Montreal Canadiens, boy club if there is one, assure us that they will “accompany you” on your journey. I’m looking for a clue that the Canadiens, as an organization, are completely against the rest of the hockey world in which you have been socialized, the environment that convinced you to send a photo of a woman taken without her knowledge. during a sexual act, dehumanized, reduced to the status of a trophy object, was a gesture that could impress your colleagues. I look for in the leaders of the team who speak with more empathy about you, who committed this disgusting and criminal act, that they spoke of PK Subban, guilty of “flamboyance”, a trace of conscience of the injustices and doubles standards that dirty professional sport. I’m looking for a word dropped here and there that would hint at a critique of North American sport, which systemically trivializes the sexual misconduct of privileged male athletes, from high school to professional leagues, in just about every discipline. possible. I am still searching.
On the contrary, I hear that your talent justifies your draft, as the talent of countless athletes has been invoked to trivialize the suffering of women in their path. I hear that sport is an industry. You know how to skate, you’re worth the money. The dignity of women has a value, but less than what you can pocket your business by being on the ice. After the analysis of risk, costs and benefits, her dignity, to all of us, is no match. Is that the message? Do you agree with this message, Logan?
Obviously, you will soon arrive in Montreal, whose hockey club has long carried a symbolic, even political, charge that goes far beyond sport. Canadians create more than players. He also manufactures icons, “heroes” on which part of the population projects their ambitions. What does it mean to make you a star, a model for young people? Do you understand the heartbreak that your arrival arouses not only for the fans who are women, but also for all the men who care about these women, just after the semi-finals of the Stanley Cup? Do you have the same idea of what you set foot in?
You may soon learn that like elsewhere in North America, the #moiaussi movement has left a deep mark here. You arrive in a company that has quickly gained a lot of experience, in recent years, decoding press releases from public relations firms, proofread ten times by a platoon of lawyers. As elsewhere in the world, the survivors here often seek, more than anything, a process of reparation which shows that the person really understands the gravity of their gesture and will not do it again. I have been fortunate to see men around me undertake such a process of introspection, therapy, rehabilitation and justice. When the approach is sincere, the survivors feel it in their guts. In particular, they are entitled to more than a three-sentence text message.