Joke about female rival’s moustache falls flat
MONTREAL •Jean-François Lisée was coming off a rare good week as leader of the Parti Québécois when he and his deputy leader, Véronique Hivon, sat down for a radio interview Sunday. Then he decided to joke about a woman’s moustache.
Lisée was singing the praises of Hivon, whose appointment as deputy a week earlier had generated positive press for a party slumping in the polls. Hivon’s role is different from that of Québec Solidaire’s Manon Massé, he said. “What’s more, unlike Manon, she does not have a moustache.”
There were immediate boos and shouts of “No!” from the studio audience. “Seriously!” one of the hosts exclaimed. A sputtering Lisée tried to defend himself. “Pardon me, Manon says her moustache is important,” he began. “I am not laughing. Nobody is laughing,” he added, prompting an outburst of laughter from the hosts.
On Twitter, Lisée was accused of being homophobic toward Massé, a longtime feminist and defender of LGBTQ rights. Massé’s cospokesperson with Québec Solidaire, Gabriel NadeauDubois, said Monday that he was not amused by Lisée’s joke.
“I don’t think these kind of comments belong in the 21st century, comments on people’s appearance,” Nadeau-Dubois said. “I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that.”
Massé, who was first elected to the national assembly in 2014, has not commented. She wrote on Twitter Monday morning that she would miss the party’s caucus meeting in Quebec City. “I have been at my mother’s bedside since Saturday, and will be for as long as necessary,” she wrote.
In the past, she has spoken openly about her facial hair, acknowledging that she sees the moustache as a statement. In 2012, when Massé’s election-sign photo featured her visible moustache, columnist Judith Lussier of Urbania asked her about it.
“It says that I am proud of who I am, and it is not my appearance that is important but the ideas that I propose,” Massé said. She said if she were to conform to “the esthetic of politics,” it would betray her activist roots.
“I am a victim of transphobia, that is of a fear of the mixing of genders, because I do not correspond to the stereotypical image of a woman,” Massé said. “However, I was born a woman, and I am proud to be a woman.”
Writing on Facebook Sunday night, Lisée noted that the Radio-Canada show on which he appeared, La soirée est (encore) jeune, features repartee between the hosts and guests.
“It is because I knew that Manon — with whom, it is worth noting, I sat on a committee where together we gave more rights to transgender people — did not consider her moustache to be a taboo but rather a statement, that I took the liberty of bringing it up,” Lisée wrote.
He said he would apologize to Massé if she asks him to. In the meantime, he apologized to all those who, “not knowing the context,” interpreted his remarks as a criticism of her appearance or sexual orientation.
“I claim the inalienable right to make jokes, even bad ones, during humorous shows,” he concluded. “But I admit it was not appropriate, certainly for a political leader, to bring up a physical trait that can be seen as hurtful.”
Hivon said she told Lisée immediately after the show that the joke had been in poor taste. “I think he knew it, and he apologized. That was his initiative. Obviously I thought an apology was called for,” she told reporters in Quebec City Monday.