Fra Dephland mot en form for moralsk selvhøytidelighet
In France today, different feminist groups coexist: the main one is a feminism following the steps of De Beauvoir, one that is not at war with men but rather with machismo culture, gender inequality and the inherent misogyny of religions.
And there is a rather recent American import of feminism, one that often comes across as opportunistic and “man-hating”, one that turns a blind eye to religious misogyny, for instance defending the wearing of the hijab. They present themselves as the new vanguard of French feminism, the new blood, except they can sound to some like Stalinist commissars, or Robespierre in culottes, passing edicts about what is acceptable conduct. We would be wrong, however, to think that the current debate shows a generational fight. Many millennials have signed the Deneuve letter. The divide is political, ideological even.
According to Perrot, “the authors of the letter fear that the #MeToo movement dents creative, artistic and sexual freedom, that a moralist backlash comes and destroys what libertarian thinking has fought hard to obtain, that women’s bodies and sex become again this forbidden territory and that a new moral order introduces a new censorship against the free movement of desire”, and concludes: “There is indeed reason to share their fear.”
This is probably the most interesting and sharpest argument made in the Deneuve letter. As Sarah Chiche, a 41- year-old psychoanalyst and author who signed the Deneuve letter, explained: “The #MeToo victims’ personal stories have proved a powerful magnet and very popular with the public. It has almost become a new norm in public discourse. Unfortunately, this is becoming insidious: now books need to be rewritten, films reshot.”
Last week an opera director in Florence decided to change the end of Bizet’s Carmen so that Carmen now kills her murderer. Ridley Scott edited out Kevin Spacey from his latest film and reshot his scenes with Christopher Plummer in All the Money in the World. Art critics questioned on the BBC whether to boycott the Gauguin exhibition in London because the painter slept with under-age Tahitians. Others want to rewrite Sleeping Beauty so that the final kiss is a consented one.
Since Deneuve signed the letter, Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour has suddenly been described as a rape apologist film, to be banned from cinemas. “This new feminism is now serving the interests of cultural revisionism and doesn’t know when or where to stop,” says Chiche.
It is a French tradition to disturb, to question, to critique, to set ablaze the conflict between two freedoms, that which protects and that which disturbs. Sexuality has become the new battlefield. “Today, in 2018, Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses and Nabokov’s Lolita would never see daylight because of both reactionaries and self-proclaimed progressives who invoke the fate of real victims to shut us all up,” says Chiche.
For all the talk about Deneuve, little has been said of the initiator of this public letter. Her name is Abnousse Shalmani. She is a 41-year-old French-Iranian, born in Tehran. She grew up under Ayatollah Khomeini until her parents fled to Paris in 1985. In a book she published in 2014, Khomeini, Sade et Moi, she revealed that she was the victim of a rape, but also said French authors such as Colette, Victor Hugo and Marquis de Sade taught her how to be free, as a woman and a sexual being, far from the Islamic veil she was forced to wear as a girl in Tehran.
Perhaps we should listen to her when, amid the furore, she tried to make herself heard on French radio: “We do not dismiss the many women who had the courage to speak up against [Harvey] Weinstein. We do not dismiss either the legitimacy of their fight. We do, however, add our voice, a different voice, to the debate.”
One should always listen to the French difference.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...herine-deneuve-metoo-letter-sexual-harassment
