La réalisatrice américaine Maria Schrader se penche sur la longue enquête de deux journalistes du New York Times. En récoltant les témoignages des femmes abusées par le producteur de cinéma, Megan Twohey et Jodi Kantor ont permis de briser l’omerta des agressions sexuelles à Hollywood.

Nabab d’Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein a régné pendant de nombreuses années sur l’industrie du film. Récompensé six fois aux Oscars, le producteur américain est notamment à l’origine de « Sexe, mensonges et vidéo », « Pulp Fiction » et « Will Hunting ». Longtemps, cet homme de pouvoir a fait et défait les carrières, profité de son statut pour forcer les femmes de son entourage à lui octroyer des faveurs sexuelles. Les rumeurs autour de son comportement inacceptable ont beau circuler, rien ne filtre. L’industrie du cinéma le protège à chaque dérapage et les rares enquêtes à son encontre n’aboutissent à rien.

Une enquête, un livre et une adaptation au cinéma

Deux journalistes du New York Times décident alors de mener l’enquête sur ces agissements. Pendant des mois, elles tentent de récolter différents témoignages de femmes violentées par Harvey Weinstein. Leur enquête est publiée en Une du New York Times en 2017. Jodi Kantor et Megan Twohey remportent le Prix Pulitzer, qui abouti ensuite à l’écriture d’un livre en 2019 baptisé « She Said ». Le film de Maria Schrader est donc une adaptation de cet ouvrage sur le grand écran. Il met en lumière la force des femmes qui ont osé témoigné, après des années de silence. Mais aussi le parcours de ces deux journalistes – et de leur rédaction – qui se sont consacrés corps et âme à faire éclater la vérité.

>> A voir: la bande-annonce du film:

Importance du journalisme d’investigation

« She Said » met en évidence tout le travail qui existe derrière les journalistes d’investigation: coups de fil, e-mails, enregistrements des témoignages, mais aussi protection des sources. Dans un souci d’être au plus près de la réalité, le film a aussi tourné une partie des scènes dans la véritable salle de rédaction du New York Times. La minutie et la rigueur de ce travail donne un véritable poids quand l’enquête est publiée dans le New York Times.

La dénonciation d’un prédateur, mais aussi de tout un système fait effet « boule de neige ». D’autres femmes sortent de leur silence, que ce soit aux Etats-Unis, mais aussi ailleurs dans le monde. C’est aussi à ce moment que le mouvement #MeToo prend toute son ampleur. Après des décennies de sourde oreille, les gens commencent à écouter et surtout croire la parole des femmes.

Un film subtil et épuré

« She Said » suit à la fois la vie professionnelle de Jodi Kantor et Megan Twohey, mais évoque aussi leur sphère intime. On les voit dans leurs familles respectives, avec leurs maris et leurs enfants. La dépression post-partum dont Megan Twohey a beaucoup souffert, après la naissance de sa fille, est aussi abordée dans ce film. Pour le critique cinéma de la RTS Rafael Wolf, cela donne au final une fiction épurée et réaliste, renforcé par la présence de la comédienne Ashley Judd qui y joue son propre rôle de victime.

World Opinions + RTS Culture

L’article Cinéma. « She Said », un hommage aux femmes dans l’affaire Weinstein.. Vidéo est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

A recent incident in Egypt ignited a controversy regarding women’s bodily autonomy and the coercive control that men could exercise. The incident concerned a woman who needed a lifesaving hysterectomy but was entangled in a divorce battle that she initiated. The hospital required the husband’s written consent before operating since she was still legally married. The husband was evasive to gain some leverage in the case.

After the issue spread on social media, a surgeon agreed to perform without the husband’s consent because it was a life-threatening situation. This time the woman was saved. How many women died because they were deemed unfit to make informed decisions about their bodies?

In a scramble to find the right questions to ask to shed light on this moral travesty, I see many issues arise within my mind.

First, there’s the question of why medical professionals advise a mentally fit human to undergo a lifesaving surgery barred from this decision? The obvious answer is because she was a woman. Yet on closer inspection, women are allowed to experience other medical procedures without the written consent of their husbands.

So perhaps we shouldn’t make blanket statements concerning the oppression of women. Instead, we should focus on the particular issue underpinning this incident. Maybe the problem wasn’t relating to women’s bodies in particular and whether we are allowed to have agency over them. Perhaps the issue isn’t anchored in the body’s materiality but in the ethereal dimension of the perception of women.

True, the problem is manifested in a woman who could bleed to death and a husband more interested in negotiating a good deal with his future divorce. One could say it doesn’t get more material than that. Yet, I’d like to claim that the issue doesn’t merely concern women’s bodies but women as a concept.

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The violence impacted on women emerges primarily from their biology, argues Yosry (Stock photo)

A recent video was posted online from a supreme judge confirmation hearing. In the video, a question was put to a judge: define the word woman? The judge declined to answer the question stating that she wasn’t a biologist. The judge manifestly appeared to be a woman, yet she refused to answer the question. It is pretty telling of the problem we are facing when it comes to the understanding of women.

Thus maybe the second question we should ask is what is a woman? And if it takes a biologist to answer this question, then the allusion is that a woman’s identity is the biological differences that set her apart. She can reproduce to bring forth new life and sustain it on her own.

I agree that a tremendous gift and burden endowed to women is exemplified in having children. Pregnancy’s material and spiritual experience is allowed through the particularity of female biology. Suppose you ask any woman who experienced pregnancy. In that case, she will narrate a draining personal experience that is, and at the same time, also a universal experience that we all partake in. It begins with puberty, when young girls experience the first pangs and get the initial glimpse of being a woman. The violence impacted on women emerges primarily from their biology. The pain, the violence, and the struggle mandated by our biology are strictly our own. It defines womanhood and ushers motherhood.

Thence, when the pain associated with our biology is being relegated and authorized by a man who lacks the basic understanding of what we endure, we need to pause. When men, who could never fully comprehend or experience the oppression of female biology, become the legal guardians of our bodies, then we must question what women mean to our society. Women’s value has become effectively associated with their ability to bear children. And though I believe this is the highest and most noble aim. It is our experience. It is our pain. And it impacts our bodies, not our husbands.

Islam tells us that our bodies do not belong. On judgment day, we will be judged on how well we’ve taken care of them, both men and women. Islam also tells us that a mother should be honored partly because of their hardship. Nevertheless, the divinely ordained respect for women, for the Divine miracle of bringing life to the pain mandated by their biology, is met with disrespect. It should enrage all of us.

By Heba Yosry – Al Arabiya

L’article Women’s pain impacts their bodies, not the husbands est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.

I have said it many times, and it is no more true or real than when we think about the events of January 6: We are in a battle for the soul of America.

I have said it many times, and it is no more true or real than when we think about the events of January 6: We are in a battle for the soul of America.

A battle that by the grace of God, and by the goodness and greatness of this nation, we will win. pic.twitter.com/2qDmf3q2tg

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 6, 2022

A battle that by the grace of God, and by the goodness and greatness of this nation, we will win.

Tune in as I deliver remarks to mark one year since the January 6th deadly assault on the Capitol. https://t.co/nvklC2pgl8

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 6, 2022

President Joe Biden forcefully condemned former President Donald Trump on Thursday for promoting a “big lie” that the 2020 United States election was stolen and inciting an angry mob of his supporters to attack Congress on January 6, 2021.

In a blistering speech delivered in Statuary Hall, an ornate and marbled chamber that was choked with tear gas a year ago, Biden delivered a blistering attack on Trump as a “defeated president” who today still threatens American democracy.

“We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie,” Biden said. “Here’s the truth. The former president of the United States of America has spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.”

“For the first time in our history, a president not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol,” Biden said.

In 2020, Trump had refused to accept the outcome of the presidential election that Biden won by a decisive seven million popular votes and 306 to 232 margin in the US’s Electoral College. When Congress met on January 6 to certify the votes – a constitutional requirement – Trump gave a fiery speech to a rally of his supporters and urged them to march on the Capitol.

I’m saddened to learn that Lawrence Brooks – who was the oldest surviving U.S. WWII veteran – has passed. I had the honor of speaking with him last year, and he was truly the best of America. I’m keeping his loved ones in my prayers. pic.twitter.com/HBNLTy8aHL

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 5, 2022

“You and I and the whole world saw with our own eyes,” Biden said, asking his audience to close their eyes and recall what they saw that day, as he described the harrowing, violent mob attacking police, hunting the Speaker of the House, and threatening to hang the vice president.

Thousands of Trump supporters had converged on the Capitol building where Congress was meeting and forced their way past police barricades, smashing windows and doors and marauding through the hallways.

While all that was unfolding shockingly on national television, Biden said, Trump sat at the White House watching. “Here is the God’s truth about January 6, 2021. They were looking to subvert the Constitution,” Biden said.

Since that day, Biden has cast the state of American politics as a contest between democracy and autocracy and he warned on Thursday that voting rights are under attack by Trump’s Republican allies in state legislatures across the country.

“We are in a battle for the soul of America,” Biden said. “I did not seek this fight, brought to this Capitol one year from today. But I will not shrink from it either. I will stand in this breach, I will defend this nation. I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of this democracy.”

Trump issued a statement shortly after the speech calling it “political theater” and accusing Biden of using “my name to further divide America”. He repeated claims that the 2020 election was rigged, and said the “big lie” was the vote itself.

The former president, who still holds great sway among Republican voters, had planned to hold a press conference on Thursday but cancelled it.

Trump has denied any role in the January 6 riot and has accused leaders of a House of Representatives investigation into the events of January 6 of a cover-up.

Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking ahead of Biden at the Capitol on Thursday, compared January 6, 2021 to September 11, 2001 when al-Qaeda hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia.

“What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders,” Harris said. “What they sought to degrade and destroy was not only a building, hallowed as it is. What they were assaulting were the institutions, the values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed, and shed blood to establish and defend.”

Biden and Harris’s speeches were among several ceremonial remembrances organised and attended by mainly Democratic lawmakers at the Capitol on Thursday. Almost every Republican was absent, a mark of the division between the two parties over the meaning of the riot that happened a year ago.

Representative Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican lawmakers attending the Capitol ceremonies on Thursday, warned that “the threat continues”.

Trump “continues to make the same claims that he knows caused violence on January 6,” Cheney said.

“Unfortunately, too many in my own party are embracing the former president, are looking the other way, or minimising the danger,” she told NBC.

Cheney is vice-chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

Republican Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, two allies of the former president, are scheduled to give a rebuttal to Biden at a press conference on Thursday afternoon.

WORLD OPINIONS AND NEWS AGENCIES

L’article Analysis. Biden condemns ‘big lie’, blames Trump for January 6 violence.. Video est apparu en premier sur World Opinion | Alternative Média.