"A victory for all women": a suspended fine for the winemaker who insulted Sandrine Rousseau

A winegrower accused of insulting Sandrine Rousseau in 2023 in the Aude department by shouting "Go make the soup, bitch!" was sentenced this Friday, May 17, to a suspended fine of 2,500 euros, the Green Party MP told AFP. The 65-year-old winegrower will also have to pay the MP a symbolic one euro in damages, as she had requested.

On March 28, at the hearing, prosecutor Géraldine Labialle requested a fine of 3,000 euros, including 2,000 suspended, denouncing in particular comments "marked by unashamed sexism and misogyny" constituting an "insult to a person charged with a public service mission."

"These are not things to say. It's not right. I apologize to Madame Rousseau, if she will accept them," the 65-year-old winegrower declared in court, emphasizing that, "tired" by his long working days, he was not in his "normal state" at the time of the events.

The incriminating remarks were made on June 12, 2023, when the national secretary of the Ecologists Marine Tondelier and Sandrine Rousseau, who had come to support opponents of a golf course project in Aude, were attacked by angry Aude winegrowers who wanted to prevent them from accessing a wine estate to meet activists.

Sandrine Rousseau had highlighted the "physical intimidation" she suffered that day and the "sexist" remarks aimed in particular at "denying (her) mandates" and excluding women from "public debate".

Shortly after the hearing, she also mentioned the disagreements with these winegrowers about the use of pesticides, which environmentalists oppose, specifying that today, "we can neither poison nature nor put women in the kitchen."

The court's decision "is a victory for all women," she said Friday evening. "None of us should be relegated to the soup kitchen or called 'dirty,' which is the origin of the word 'slut,'" she told AFP.