Flirts of the world unite..!

THERE is something deliciously French about 100 femmes serieuses standing up for the right of men and women to flirt, for the right of men to try it on and for women to have the right to say “non merci”. It’s as French as a post-coital Gauloise on a rainy afternoon in Paris. And it is perfect that their leader is Catherine Deneuve, 74, the film actress who has played so many cool and complicated women.

In a magnificent rebuke to the dour, modern mood of man-hating, pearl-clutching puritanism which has taken hold in Britain and America these French gals have written an open letter criticising the #MeToo campaign which wants to have all men castrated with a blunt knife by next Wednesday.

OK that’s a slight exaggeration but it’s beginning to seem that way. Since Harvey Weinstein’s casting couch operations were revealed in all their terry-towelling nastiness women have been queueing up to share stories of bad male behaviour at work, in Westminster and in Hollywood using the hashtag #MeToo. Some have described violent sexual crimes. That’s surely a matter for the police. While others have described an inept pass or an invitation to dinner in the same tone of choking moral outrage. Though how there can be any equivalence between the two baffles me.

Make an off-colour joke and a man can find his career in ruins overnight. Part of Tory activist Kate Maltby’s complaint against the politician Damian Green was that he sent her a text after

she posed in a corset for a newspaper article. Should I ever pose in a corset (and I fear my posing in a corset days are over – at least in public) I’d be gutted if none of the men I know sent me a flirty text.

The French 100 say: “Clumsy flirting is not a crime, nor is gallantry chauvinist aggression.” The letter oozes Gallic contempt for the way modern women now embrace victimhood and urges them not to confuse a come-on with sexual assault.

It seems extraordinary that this needs to be said. But even more extraordinary is that anyone would take issue with it.

BUT Asia Argento, the woman who says Weinstein raped her 20 years ago, lashed out. “Deneuve and other French women tell the world how their interiorised misogyny has lobotomised them to the point of no return.” “Interiorised misogyny.” “Lobotomised.” “Point of no return.” Mais, c’est drivel!

This is not a brave new word, this is a timid new world of wilting violets who press a panic button if a man looks at them twice or cracks a joke. It is a world where all men are deemed predatory and all women in need of protection and special treatment. It is a world where wolf whistling is about to become a hate crime. It is a world in which women who dare to acknowledge the complexity of malefemale relationships are somehow guilty of misogyny. It is a world where Hollywood actresses are applauded for being brave because they wear a black frock to a party.

So hooray for Mme Deneuve.