Catherine Deneuve and more than a 100 French feminists go after #MeToo: “This expedited justice already has its victims, men prevented from practicing their profession as punishment, forced to resign, etc., while the only thing they did wrong was touching a knee, trying to steal a kiss, or speaking about ‘intimate’ things at a work dinner, or sending messages with sexual connotations to a woman whose feelings were not mutual.” One of the arguments the writers make is that instead of empowering women, the #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc movements instead serve the interests of “the enemies of sexual freedom, of religious extremists, of the worst reactionaries,” and of those who believe that women are “‘separate’ beings, children with the appearance of adults, demanding to be protected.” They write that “a woman can, in the same day, lead a professional team and enjoy being the sexual object of a man, without being a ‘promiscuous woman,’ nor a vile accomplice of patriarchy.” They conclude, “The philosopher Ruwen Ogien defended the freedom to offend as essential to artistic creation. In the same way, we defend a freedom to bother, indispensable to sexual freedom.”
— Wow, I’ve always felt that something is rotten in the state of France when it comes to sexuality, something that clings stubbornly to narrow, patriarchal, old-fashioned, male-centered ideas of sexual liberation and pleasure, unequivocally drenched in whiteness. Asia Argento’s spot-on comment: Catherine Deneuve and other French women tell the world how their interiorized misogyny has lobotomized them to the point of no return.
This “feminist” take on sexual freedom is very raced and classed. Those at the bottom of the power hierarchy have much less room to deal with messages full of sexual innuendoes, bosses trying to steal kisses, and imposing their “intimate” feelings on them in a work environment. Such white feminist bullshit.
Also, there is a difference between sex (sexuality, sexual freedom, sexual pleasure) and misogyny/structures of power and dominance. Just because there is finally some pushback against sexism and how men feel entitled to the bodies of women, does not mean that people won’t be able to have sex anymore. It’s stunning to me that the very idea of sexual agency for women/women’s ownership of their own bodies is seen as asexual, puritanical, religiously extreme, reactionary, somehow sexually unappetizing. Goes to show what’s normalized in our society.
I am not against providing some context for allegations of sexual harassment. I don’t believe #MeToo is advocating any kind of witch hunt. A lot is coming to the surface because it’s been repressed for centuries. But if we dare to imagine and create a different kind of world, where the dynamics b/w men and women (cis, queer, gender non-conforming) shift dramatically, we will be able to come to a new, more even-handed equilibrium.