Both a city doctor and a successful writer, Baptiste Beaulieu became known for his commitment to minorities, with the desire to "change the world" in particular after the homophobic attack he was recently the victim of in his office.
A few weeks after the release of his latest work "All silences do not make the same noise" (ed. L'Iconoclaste), the Toulouse doctor, who became a father in 2023, "feels a kind of urgency to change the world quickly".
"I write books that sell more than very well, and so I have power and I want to use that power to try to change things. Otherwise, it's not success, it's just splashes," he told AFP.
"Being homosexual made you a better human being," he asserts in his latest essay, written in the second person singular, where the use of the familiar form is addressed as much to himself as to the reader, who is referred to his certainties.
– “Stereotypes and prejudices” –
The 39-year-old doctor describes his personal journey to "see, at each stage of the life of a person belonging to a sexual minority, where stereotypes and prejudices can nestle."
Among the themes covered are terrible moments, such as this account of sexual violence experienced in childhood.
"A lot of my books talk about sexual assault, sexual violence, in the meantime I became a father, I needed to leave that behind me," confides the man who practices in the office in the morning and writes in the afternoon.
The recent Mazan trial, where 51 men appeared for the rape of Gisele Pelicot, who was drugged by her husband, affected him, "like all victims of sexual violence."
"I hear everyone say that the trial will change everything, but it will not change anything at all. People will continue to be as they are, men will continue to rape, not to question themselves, to tell themselves that the rapist is the other person," says the doctor, who says he is "pessimistic" on the issue.
He, who has published several books for children and until June held a column on France Inter, has long been present and involved, at the local level, in the Toulouse LGBT+ community, but assures that he was not an activist when he began practicing medicine.
"I challenge any man to do this job, to see 25 patients a day, including a number of female patients, and not end up feeling overwhelmed by the amount of privilege that we have because we were born with a penis and testicles in this society," he says.
Homophobic attack
An awareness that led him to an increasingly assertive politicization, as when he left his former publisher Fayard following the takeover by billionaire Vincent Bollore or when he sent barbs against Gerald Darmanin in his publications on social networks.
It was on his Instagram account, where he has more than 420,000 subscribers, that he spoke at the beginning of November about an attack he was the victim of in his office.
One of his patients, who had been followed for a long time, wanted to go before the others, and when Baptiste Beaulieu refused, he insulted him and threatened to physically attack him, prompting the doctor to file a complaint.
"Being called a faggot in front of patients I care for on a daily basis is not possible," laments the attending physician, who has been in practice for eight years. "If I didn't file a complaint that day, it would go against everything I'm trying to do in my latest book," in which his experiences as a practitioner regularly come up.
Anecdotes that push him to question himself as a doctor, ten years after the end of his studies, when routine could lie in wait for him.
"Our job is to welcome faces with stories, and in the evening, we are ashamed that all these faces merge together," he says. "I feel like there is a risk, and I try to fight against this risk every day, which is that of anesthesia to the other."
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