Paris
The French capital
You'd be hard-pressed to find a place where quite
so many conflicting expectations are placed on the modern Western woman
Home to a fashion industry that can be described as liberating and oppressive
in the same breath and somehow well wrapped up in notions
of just what it means to be French
No small wonder then that the #MeToo movement
so overtly American in genesis and a rocky welcome in France to begin with
But in recent months there has been a regrouping along with a video that went viral
"You freeze, you freeze. Even if you know how to fight you can freeze.
So that's what happened but I knew he was going to punch me..."
In July, 22-year-old Marie Laguerre
told a man making lewd suggestions to her in the street
to shut up
First he threw an ashtray at her and he
followed her and punched her in the head
to the evident shock of those who witnessed it
Her assailant was allowed to carry on his way but the owner of a
nearby cafe had it on tape
"I was very lucky that he gave me the video because
he helped me press charges and then I also posted it on social media
with a text, I explained how it made me feel how it's a systematical thing
that happens to all women that I don't have a single friend who it didn't happen to
Her ordeal coincides with new laws against sexual harassment in the street
Just coming into effect in France
Giving police the power to impose on the spot fines
Part of the French president Emmanuel Macron's pledge
to champion gender equality
He took a page out of Justin Trudeau's book
when he was elected in 2017 filling half his cabinet with women and calling
the fight against sexism of cultural battle in France
Most critics, Laguerre included
agree he'll have to fight a lot harder that a law against public
catcalling there's nothing to change behavior behind closed doors
"It sends a strong message, it's a symbol but
it's more of a symbol than something that
can actually be applicated, applied"
The answer to the #MeToo movement here was
something called hashtag "balance ton porc," rat out your pig
A message to French women to speak up
Something that hasn't always been culturally easy to do here
Witness the backlash that took place against it last January
when more than 100 prominent French women
including the iconic Catherine Deneuve denounced the
#MeToo movement as having gone too far
in a manifesto published in Lamone newspaper
"Rape is a crime," they wrote but trying to seduce someone even
persistently or cack-handedly is not
Nor is being gentlemanly a macho attack."
"Men have been punished summarily were forced out of their jobs when all they
did was touch someone's knee or try to steal a kiss."
"You are building a narrative of victimhood..."
Journalist Anne Elisabeth Moutet is one of the signatories
"Anti-feminists" according to their critics
Moutet refuses the moniker or to apologize
Saying the #MeToo movement has succumbed to American prudery
with the potential to rollback the sexual freedoms
won by previous generations of of French feminists
"I think women and men can be friends, we like flirting without anything coming out of it,
we like sex without slut-shaming anyone and we like the whole
gray area in between where you do not know yet
whether things are going to happen or not."
It's known in France as "la galanterie"
Part of the art of seduction
The philosopher Genevieve Fraisse calls it a very old story in France
"The end of love if we have gender equality...
Gender equality is a contradiction with seduction, love, whatever."
But love it or hate it says Fraisse,
#MeToo has changed something in France
Young women in particular, no longer afraid
to call themselves feminists, as she does
#MeToo is an event with a capital 'E'
I believe in this new generation."
And it's a generation talking about Beyoncé
One sign that the distance between American and French discourse on feminism
isn't as white as you might think
This is a launch party for a new book asking the question
Is Beyoncé a feminist?
It's built as a handbook for young people who want to learn about
feminism from the great French thinker Simone de Beauvoir to, yes, Beyoncé
Young women say #MeToo has started a different kind of conversation here
"I think that in France we have quite a conservative culture
And it's difficult to change people's habits. and behaviours."
Co-author Raphaelle Remy-Leleu is also critical of the anti #MeToo letter
"We teach women to distrust eachother, to judge each other
And so sisterhood is the first step
in order to create a more equal society."
The canvas of inequality across France of course
is by no means limited to sex
but it is another reason some critics have railed against the French letter
The notion of privilege, lecturing women without
Cecile Farrah runs tours of feminist street art in Paris
"Upper class or middle class women and also educated women and white women
They couldn't talk for the whole of society."
And Marie Leguerre now an activist with a cause agrees
"So I don't think they have a very clear view about...
this shitty society we live in
And then I think they...
they don't know what they're talking about
I think they completely don't know."
But given the challenges still ahead in achieving gender equality in France
women on both sides of that letter do have common cause,
especially given the many still unfulfilled promises
of the Macron government
There is common cause too on both sides of the Atlantic
Margaret Evans, CBC News, Paris