Debouttes!

In 2007, feminist activist Marjolaine Péloquin published En prison pour la cause des femmes: la conquête du banc des jurés. In it, she recounts the story of the Front de libération des femmes du Québec and the dramatic action carried out in court in 1971 to demand the presence of women on juries—then strictly male—which earned her, along with six of her comrades, a prison sentence. In Debouttes!, Péloquin expresses her astonishment at discovering that this event had been forgotten—erased—not only by historians, but also by feminists. L’histoire des femmes au Québec depuis quatre siècles, by the Clio collective, makes no mention in either of its editions (1982, 1992) of the bold action or of the imprisonment endured by the feminist activists. “That story was taboo. We were attacking the justice system, which is a sexist system, a class system. […] Something must have happened in the collective unconscious for even women historians to obscure that act. We were erased from history.”

It therefore took two generations for the story to resurface and for the collective action to be recognized and celebrated. One must grasp the extraordinary courage it took for this small group of women to confront the almost sacred institution of Justice in this way, in the midst of the October Crisis, with prison as the likely outcome. One must also acknowledge the gains that followed this remarkably strategic political action. The law was amended a few weeks after the activists were released from prison—quietly, of course, without recognizing their influence. But beyond the change in the law, the women of the FLF had acted above all to “put feminism on the map.” And it must be said: they succeeded brilliantly.

Following in the footsteps of her most recent audio work Nous sortirons de nos cuisines, about the Théâtre des Cuisines, Jenny Cartwright once again delivers a vital audio documentary for transmitting the memory of feminist struggles. A lesson in political action, organization, and sisterhood, Debouttes! proves to be the perfect antidote to reinvigorate the ranks at a time when backlash is once again trying to isolate us from one another. Nothing is more galvanizing than an intergenerational story of feminist courage to make us want to take part in the struggle.

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director