Actress Deneuve slated over attack on #MeToo
FEMINISTS and one of the women who accused Harvey Weinstein of rape turned on actress Catherine Deneuve yesterday after she signed an open letter attacking the #MeToo movement for leading a witch-hunt against men.
France’s legendary star Deneuve and about 100 other women put their names to a declaration condemning the avalanche of denunciations that has followed claims that the Hollywood producer sexually assaulted women over decades.
But Italian actress Asia Argento, who was among the first to accuse Weinstein, led a backlash, tweeting: “Deneuve and other French women tell the world how their interiorised misogyny has lobotomised them to the point of no return.”
A group of leading French feminists also excoriated her in a counterblast letter to French radio, branding her and the other signatories as “apologists for rape”.
To say that #MeToo was puritanical and driven by a hatred of men was contemptuous of the victims of abuse and harassment, the feminists insisted, accusing them of trying to “slam back the lid” blown off by the Weinstein scandal.
“The [male chauvinist] pigs and their allies have reason to be worried. Their old world is fast disappearing.”
The Deneuve letter complained that “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”.
Reaction on social media was equally vociferous.
The letter’s assertions that being “fondled on a metro . . . was a nonevent” to some women, and a man’s right to hit on a woman was fundamental to sexual freedom, sparked particular fury.
American novelist Laila Lalami said such thinking was “the clearest explanation yet of how men like Woody Allen and Harvey Weinstein lasted”.
But not all were hostile. American academic Christina Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism?, said Deneuve was calling out “the excesses of the #MeToo crusade”.