Leading feminist Sandrine Rousseau turns guns on Elon Musk

Sandrine Rousseau, who previously called for an end to BBQs, says the world’s richest man is the model of white alpha males responsible for human suffering and climate disaster.

Sandrine Rousseau says Elon Musk, pictured, is ‘the archetype of the conquering male entrepreneur who should be considered one of the greatest environmental killers of all time’. Picture: AFP

Elon Musk should be afraid. The fiercest feminist in France has said the world’s richest man is the model of white alpha males responsible for human suffering and climate disaster.

Sandrine Rousseau, a Greens party MP, called the Tesla chief “the archetype of the conquering male entrepreneur who should be considered one of the greatest environmental killers of all time”.

Attacks by the Parisian university teacher have consequences: last week she forced Julien Bayou, her party leader, to stand down after accusing him of “morally” mistreating a woman who had told the party she was depressed after a break-up with Bayou. He denies misconduct and there is no suggestion of physical abuse, but his retreat pending an inquiry is the latest episode in a crisis of the left wing opposition coalition over alleged sexual misconduct by senior figures.

Rousseau is leading the charge as the face of an aggressive feminism of a type that France likes to see as excessive. Backed by Jane Fonda – though denying American influence – Rousseau, 50, has made international headlines this year with calls for an end to barbecues as a symbol of world-destroying “virility” and for the creation of a criminal offence of failing to share housework.

Angling for the party leadership contest in November, she is unrepentant about views that are manna to critics who call her the heir to Maximilien Robespierre, leader the French Revolution’s “Reign of Terror” of the 1790s.

Rousseau unsettles many in her own camp, the “Nupes” [New Popular Environmental and Social Union] coalition led by Jean-Luc Melenchon, head of the radical left Unbowed France, and including the Greens, Socialists and Communists. Few attack her openly, but some leftists privately depict her as a self-publicist akin to Eric Zemmour, the far right television pundit who ran in the presidential race.

Rousseau’s attempt last month to weaponise barbecues for her cause prompted a clash with Fabien Roussel, the Communist party chief, who said there was nothing more French than eating good meat at a barbecue. “You don’t eat meat because of what you have in your wallet or your underpants,” he said.

Yet an opinion poll this week suggested Rousseau may have a point. The more men eat meat, the more likely they are to be sexist, the Ifop survey found. While only 20 per cent of all men think that housework is a woman’s task, the figure was 47 per cent for men who said they eat meat almost every day.

The Times