Backlash against French women’s claimed of #MeToo ‘witch hunt’

A DECLARATION by 100 high profile French celebrities that outing sexual harassers has gone too far has been dismissed by Australia’s Tracey Spicer.

Catherine Deneuve’s declaration that men should be ‘free to hit on’ women has sparked backlash. Picture: Gregor Fischer/AFP Photo

AUSTRALIAN journalist Tracey Spicer has dismissed as “ridiculous” an argument from 100 high profile French women that the ##MeToo movement has gone too far.

A declaration published in a prominent French magazine and cosigned by the nation’s most revered actor, Catherine Deneuve, argued men should be “free to hit on” women, and said the recent outpouring of sexual harassment claims against men were a “witch-hunt”.

“Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cack-handedly, is not — nor is being gentlemanly a macho attack,” the letter published in Le Monde read.

“Men have been punished summarily, forced out of their jobs when all they did was touch someone’s knee or try to steal a kiss.”

The letter, which directly attacked the #MeToo campaign as “puritanical”, sparked debate among French feminists, and the backlash has made its way to Australia.

I think it's ridiculous. There's a huge difference between a clumsy attempt at seduction and the deliberate, calculated and predatory sexual assault of women with less power in the workplace.

— Tracey Spicer (@TraceySpicer) January 10, 2018

Addressing the attack, Spicer, whose support of #MeToo has sparked investigations into sexual harassment claims against high-profile and powerful Australian entertainment figures, said: “I think it’s ridiculous.

“There’s a huge difference between a clumsy attempt at seduction and the deliberate, calculated and predatory sexual assault of women with less power in the workplace,” she wrote on Twitter.

In France, a group of 30 feminists struck back at Deneuve and her supporters for “using their media visibility to trivialise sexual violence”.

Feminist activist Caroline De Haas led the group in publishing a counter letter, saying the group was like “an embarrassing colleague ... who does not understand what is happening”.

French feminist Caroline de Haas excoriated Deneuve in a letter to French radio, branding her and the other signatories as ‘apologists for rape’. Picture: Joel Saget/AFP Photo

“In France, every day, hundreds of thousands of women are victims of harassment,” Ms De Haas wrote.

“Accepting insults against women means allowing violence … the signatories deliberately confuse a relationship of seduction, based on respect and pleasure, with one of violence.”

Appearing on ITV’s This Morning program, one of the signatories to Deneuve’s letter, journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, spoke out against the backlash saying claims coming out as part of the #MeToo movement were “risking a social media lynching of everyone at the same time”.

“People guilty of something wrong by law and people clumsily going through men and women relationships — they should not be lumped together.”

Originally published as Backlash against French women’s claimed of #MeToo ‘witch hunt’