Release the heterosexual love of the inheritance of the patriarchy receive the last hour alerts of the duty

After Witches: the undefeated power of women (Zones, 2018), an ode to female independence through the centuries which has sold more than 200,000 copies, journalist and essayist Mona Chollet publishes Réinventer love. How patriarchy sabotages heterosexual relationships. Is love above all a woman's affair? How to make men become authentic heterosexuals, so that they begin to love women for what they are and what they can become?

“These were questions related to my personal life, mixed with everything I saw in my entourage, in discussions with friends, explains Mona Chollet, contacted in Paris. And more broadly also to everything that I could see by observing society, the question of domestic violence or feminicides, which very often begin with love stories or what looks like it, "says the author. born in 1973 in Geneva, who did not particularly want, at the beginning, to look into the subject.

“For everyone, love is always a bit like a secret garden. We do not necessarily want to question the representations we have. We want to believe that everything is spontaneous, that it escapes social laws, power relations. And it's always hard to realize that's not the case. It is a reality that we do not necessarily want to look at, ”she adds, stressing that she has never had a toxic romantic relationship herself.

But the theme ended up imposing itself on the essayist, after having explored subjects such as the beauty injunctions of the fashion and cosmetics industry or the domestic space. Drawing above all on the sources of a certain feminism of the 1970s and 1980s, replete with readings and references, without fear either of resorting to personal experience, Réinventer l'amour thus examines the "cultural background" on which love unfolds, most often marked by “cautiousness and lack of imagination”.

To finish with Tristan and Iseult

Uncovering the workings of patriarchy (“a system of social organization where men exercise power and hold authority in all areas”), she recalls how our romantic representations are built on the sublimation of the inferiority of women, examines the mechanisms of domestic violence as well as the very different values ​​that men and women place on love.

Mona Chollet regrets that, in our societies, love is too often seen (and experienced) as a woman's affair. Whereas, conversely, passion — in the manner of Tristan and Iseult — would be the great business of men. Which in his eyes testifies to “a kind of conditioning in defiance of love”.

About Belle du seigneur, by Albert Cohen — a writer whose personal misogyny was beyond doubt — often considered one of the great romance novels of the 20^th century, she thus points out that the idealized passion allows the male protagonist of this novel-river to remain locked in his immature vision of women. It was by rereading it, years later, that she was able to measure all that feminism made her gain in lucidity...

Summoning novels and essays as well as comics and television series, the essayist, who has also been editor-in-chief at Le Monde diplomatique since 2016, is firing on all cylinders. “It’s a bit like the current place of audacity. This is where we see innovative characters appear, it upsets the stereotypes to which we are accustomed. It is an inexhaustible reservoir of stimulating, new and modern representations, more in tune with society”, she will say, speaking of television series, from Normal People to Sex Education, passing by Mad Men.

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In a disturbing chapter on women who fall in love with serial killers, evoking St. Bernard Syndrome, she recalls that the "world turns far too much on female devotion, and far too many people abuse it".

How to get out? “Simply by paying attention to it. What is often valued in women is the gift of self, gentleness, understanding, the fact of being a kind of recourse for all the people around them. I think it's very destructive, because we are taking away a kind of alarm signal, which should invite us to take care of ourselves also and above all. Girls should be taught that they have the right to think about themselves, the right to protect themselves and to do what is necessary to defend their own interests. »

Necessary inner revolution

Certainly, in today's feminist nebula, she knows well that there is more radical. And the least compromising critiques of patriarchy and gender relations often come from queer essayists (think Alice Coffin's book, The Lesbian Genius).

Without invalidating certain extreme observations, the essayist felt the need to add a more nuanced grain of salt to this lucid reflection. If she does not think, like some, "that heterosexual love exists simply to serve as a Trojan horse patriarchy in the hearts of women", Mona Chollet believes in "a way out of the stubbornly patriarchal world in which we live" .

Because she makes no secret of it, love “is worth the trouble, it deserves to be given space, time, attention”. “Love gives me, she writes, the feeling of greatly increasing the flame under the cauldron of life, to the point of expanding it, making it denser, a bit like writing does. But it also seems to her that this is a more widespread disposition among women than among men.

Will the young people know how to bend the old unequal relations in the relations between men and women? Mona Chollet allows herself moderate optimism. “It seems difficult to me to judge as a whole, but what seems clear to me is that the younger generations, just like the older ones, today have many tools at their disposal to reflect on the relations between men and women. . There is an extraordinary editorial production, Instagram or Twitter accounts. For those who want to question themselves, take an iconoclastic look at what they have learned and integrated in childhood, all the means are there, you just have to seize it. »

An urgent call for an inner revolution, which concerns both women and men.

Reinventing love. How patriarchy sabotages heterosexual relationships

Mona Chollet, Zones, Paris, 2021, 272 pages

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