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Devastatingly, 100 French women – writers, artists, actresses and academics – signed an open letter last week that denounced victims of sexual assault by branding the #MeToo movement a “witch hunt” against males. Of them was 74-year-old actress Catherine Deneuve, her views that the campaign also compromised and limited a woman’s sexual freedoms were published in French publication Le Monde.
“Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cack-handedly, is not—nor is men being gentlemanly a macho attack,” the petition 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, speaking of intimate things during a professional dinner or sending sexual messages to a woman who doesn’t reciprocate.”
International outcry was (obviously) widespread. Today Deneuve apologised to the victims who were offended.
“I’m a free woman and always will be,” Deneuve told Liberation newspaper. “I send my sisterly regards to all the victims of abject acts who would have felt attacked by this column in Le Monde, and it is to them, and them only, that I offer my apologies.”
“Yes, I signed this petition, and yet it seems to me absolutely necessary today to emphasise my disagreement with the way some petitioners individually claim the right to spread themselves across the media, distorting the very spirit of this text.”
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.
