Good Lifestyle

This week, the famous French actress Catherine Deneuve, with a hundred other significant French women,written an open letter Defend "right to pester" of a man in the French newspaperTHE WORLD.

The letter recognized the Weinstein scandal and the #metoo movement following as "necessary" forces for the good in the fight against sexual harassment, especially in the workplace, but the letter also alleges that the movement has swung too much. Far and too fast, and in this kind a way that really slows female sexual empowerment:

"Rape is a crime. But trying to pick up someone, however persistently or clumsy, is not he or a machismo attacker. The scandal Harvey Weinstein has sparked a legitimate awakening on sexual violence than women are subjected, especially in their professional lives, where some men abuse their power ... But what was supposed to release voices has now been lit his head: we are told what's worth saying and what we need to stay silent - And the women who refuse to fall into the line is considered traitors, accomplices! "

The open letter, a complete English translationwhich can be found here, offers examples of what the authors consider overcoming the #Metoo movement. He lists the male victims of the "witch hunt" or men who lost their jobs when their "single crime was to touch the knee of a woman, trying to steal a kiss, to talk about things" intimate " During a work meal or to sees sexually loaded messages that have not returned their interest. "The authors also refer to a petition to remove a famous painting with aYoung girl reverie in a "suggestive" position of the Museum of Metropolitan Art, as well as a proposed Swedish law that would make the verbal consent mandatory before any sexual intercourse.

Just say that the letter printed inTHE WORLD has been encountered without shortage of indignation. According toThe New Yorker: "We did not have to read far from knowing that the statement was just another apologia for sexual assault and harassment." And the French feminist Caroline de Haas slacked him,Cnn"Feminism is not to protect sexual liberation, but to protect women."

At this last point, however, I have to ask, why should it be a choice between one or the other? Why can not we protect women from sexual abuseAlthough Provide traditional seduction methods?

In my opinion, it's easy to imagine a world where these two things coexist-where men can freely express their interest in a woman and respect her too when she says no. When I went to Europe the last fall, it felt liberation and exciting to be in an environment where a man felt comfortable approached me on the street. "Hello, Madam," he said. "I was walking right in the street and I saw you and I saw you further before deciding that I had to come back and talk to you. You are very beautiful. Do you want to have a cup of coffee?"

More often than no, I said, "Of course, why not?" I usually felt flattering and eliminated at the unexpected encounter. The moments I smiled and said politely, "No, I'm sorry", they always responded by lifting their hands in a "ok, no problem" gesture and continuing with their day.

In fact, I felt more comfortable saying "no" to them that I do not do it for American men because, in Europe, all the interaction feels so much more relaxed. If I had to guess, the men who asked me probably about 37 other women whom they thought were "very beautiful" that day, so transforming them from a reaction as much a croissant of a baker local. (Now, it should go without saying that I speak to interact in public and not in the workplace, where power dynamics and other factors require a completely different set of rules.)

I'm not clear alone in my fear that #Metoo is a little out of hand. InThe New Yorker, writerMasha Gessen Averts that punishing men to "express interest" will transform a watershed moment into a "sexual panic". In hisnew York Magazine test On the "Excess of #Metoo", Andrew Sullivan took to target "McCarthyist" journalists on Twitter who protest an article planned inHarp This would be potentially blaming Moria Donegan for creating the list of men's media men now infamous and controversial: "

"The same people who spat up in a possible online harassment of the organizers of the list, went online to call rohe 'pro-rapac", "human scum", a ghaul, "a" bitch "... they now believe to the free speech suppression, even before knowing his content! That also strikes me as worrying for journalism as a whole. When journalists themselves are wage campaigns to remove the writing of other journalists and intend To destroy a magazine to not make ideological tail, you can see how much the word is really on the line. "

We can all agree that each type of sexual abuse must end. We can all agree that its inserve in the workplace must be addressed and treated quickly and completely. But it gives me a break - and many of my friends are pausing - to think that we create a society in which the only acceptable way for a man to express interest in a woman is on the Amadou or the Bourdon.

There are too many feminists in both different colors and creedes - who really want a man to make the first gesture, to have the opportunity to be knight, to deliver welcome compliments and give them a cup of coffee Free to have a beautiful smile. The greatest grape of Deneuve is the one I have shared for a long time: that when the feminists say that women, what to want and how to act, they are as oppressive as the patriarchate they try to overthrow.

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