Virilité et performance masculine

Masculine virility and performance pressure in Les Choses humaines are not confined to sexual prowess: they take shape in Alexandre Farel’s pursuit of excellence, his father Jean Farel’s demands, and the courtroom’s effort to interpret sexual conduct through wounded masculinity. The novel sets these forms of performance beside one another without making them equivalent. Jean describes the pressure he imposed and the harm it caused, yet, when defending Alexandre, he also presents his son’s need for reassurance about his virility as a possible explanation for the alleged assault. The result is a portrait of masculinity as both a discipline inherited from family and a story used to excuse or make sense of actions.

Achievement as a Masculine Measure

In Alexandre’s account of childhood, Jean’s expectations turn performance into a test that cannot be passed once and for all. Jean had not pursued higher education and, as he later acknowledged, wanted his son to reach the educational heights unavailable to him. Alexandre recalled being pressed to excel in school and in physical activities; a mark of 17 prompted the question of why he had not earned 19. Approval remained out of reach because every success could be measured against a higher one.

The pressure was not only academic. Jean demanded excellence in sport, but Alexandre said that he loved sports and that they helped save him when he was doing badly. That distinction complicates the idea of performance as simple oppression: physical effort could be a source of pleasure and a means of coping, even as it belonged to the same demanding world of standards. Years later, Jean recalled introducing Alexandre to mountain trail running, where his son became a champion and learned to push past his limits. The father’s account thus joins intimacy and pride to a more troubling legacy of relentless striving.

Inheritance, Discipline, and Regret

Jean’s courtroom account connects his expectations to his own upbringing. He said that his father beat him, and that he himself had struck Alexandre on a few occasions because he had been raised that way. He called his conduct inexcusable, insisting that he was explaining rather than justifying it. The distinction matters: violence appears not as a natural expression of masculinity but as a learned practice that Jean recognizes and regrets, while still describing how it passed from one generation to the next.

The same pattern of control extended beyond school. Jean recalled imposing a severe diet for professional reasons, monitoring what the family ate, displaying a list of forbidden foods on the refrigerator, and weighing food in front of Alexandre. When Alexandre developed anorexia as an adolescent, Jean wondered whether his own regime had contributed. He also acknowledged that his obsessions had contaminated his son. In this account, discipline does not produce a secure, self-sufficient masculine subject; the pursuit of control circulates through the household and becomes one more pressure placed on a sensitive child.

Alexandre’s childhood difficulties sharpen the contrast between the father’s ideal of achievement and the vulnerability his testimony describes. Jean remembered a bright, gentle child who struggled to make friends, had obsessive fears, and at three years old said he was afraid of dying. He also recalled reading poems with his mother at bedtime. These details sit beside Jean’s recollection of shared sport and his ambition for Alexandre’s education: affection and pressure coexist, rather than resolving into a single explanation of the son’s later conduct.

Virility as Sexual Reassurance

At trial, a psychologist proposed that Alexandre might have needed reassurance about his virility by persuading himself that he could give a young woman sexual pleasure. The account links his breakup with Yasmina Vasseur to an emotional and narcissistic shock, a fear of abandonment, and a crisis of masculine self-confidence. This is an expert interpretation presented in court, not a definitive account of what happened. Its significance lies in the way sexual performance enters the trial’s explanations of Alexandre’s state of mind.

Jean develops a related account in his own defense of his son. He says Alexandre was devastated when Yasmina left him after becoming pregnant and having an abortion, and that he could not bear being rejected. He then turns to the encounter with Mila Wizman: Alexandre, Jean argues, had been drinking and taking drugs, and may have regarded sex as light and without consequence. Jean suggests that his son may have believed Mila wanted the encounter because she did not clearly say no. This is Jean’s characterization of the event, not an established finding about Mila’s wishes or Alexandre’s understanding.

The distinction between desire, performance, and consent becomes especially stark in Jean’s courtroom rhetoric. He invokes a “gray zone” and casts the absence of a categorical refusal as evidence favorable to his son. In doing so, he places the burden of stopping the encounter on Mila and treats Alexandre’s presumed interpretation as central. The novel therefore makes visible how an account of masculine insecurity can slide from an explanation of a man’s self-image into an argument about a woman’s responsibility.

The Father’s Defense and Its Contradictions

Jean presents Alexandre as a decent, intelligent, loyal young man whose future has already been damaged by the case. He describes social-media condemnation as a collective manhunt and argues that the wider climate of women speaking openly about assault has become hysterical. His defense relies on a contrast between his son’s character and the image of a predatory man, as though good qualities or social standing could settle the question of what occurred. But a claim about character cannot by itself establish consent.

The defense also carries a pointed contradiction. Jean acknowledges the pressures he placed on Alexandre, the violence he regrets, and the ways his own obsessions affected his son. Yet when discussing Mila, he turns to an account in which Alexandre’s sexual assumptions and impaired state soften responsibility, while Mila’s failure to utter a particular refusal becomes decisive. Masculinity is thus represented not only as a pressure that can damage men, but as a framework through which a father seeks to protect his son from the consequences of his actions.

The novel’s treatment of virility resists reducing the case to a single psychological cause. Academic competition, physical achievement, sexual confidence, rejection, and paternal authority all appear in the testimony, but they are not interchangeable, and none independently determines what happened between Alexandre and Mila. By placing expert interpretation beside Jean’s self-interested defense, the trial exposes the difference between describing a man’s need to feel masculine and establishing the meaning or consent of a sexual encounter.