How many times has France’s #MeToo moment been proclaimed? Revelations by actress Adèle Haenel, writer Vanessa Springora, and lawyer and writer Camille Kouchner; the scandal involving TV journalist and writer Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, and more: with each of these powerful testimonies, we were told that this time, the movement had finally arrived in France. But each time, the backlash has been swift and the door seemingly slammed shut again. “#MeToo is a layer cake. You have to keep adding more layers”, observed Hélène Devynck, a plaintiff in the d’Arvor affair and author of Impunité (“Impunity”). 

The movement’s story in France has been one of back and forth, breakthrough and pushback. The chapter we have just witnessed – with allegations against actors Gérard Depardieu and Philippe Caubère, film directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, and writer Gérard Miller – confirms as much. Some, like actress Laure Calamy or the president of the #MeTooMédias collective, Emmanuelle Dancourt, have heralded “a French #MeToo” or a “a second #MeToo”. 

Yet there has been a prolonged counter-offensive on multiple fronts to limit the fallout from footage broadcast on investigative news programme Complément d’enquête, which rekindled the Depardieu scandal in December: fake news circulated by media outlets of the Bolloré group; an open letter of support for Depardieu signed by 56 celebrities from the arts world, published with the help of crisis PR consultant Anne Hommel; and above all, the backing of French president Emmanuel Macron himself who, disavowing his own minister of culture, denounced a “witch hunt” and declared that the actor “makes France proud”. 

The reaction to scandals involving Jacques Doillon and Benoît Jacquot – both of whom, alongside Philippe Garrel, embody a very French notion of the director as auteur – was swift, castigating a return to puritanism and media stunts by attention-seeking actresses. Ever since the first wave of #MeToo revelations in 2017, there has been strong pushback. At the time, while in the US it was not the principle of #MeToo but its limits that were questioned, in France the debate was simply “for” or “against”. 

At the time, while in the US it was not the principle of #MeToo but its limits that were questioned, in France the debate was simply “for” or “against”.

Far-right journalist-turned-politician Éric Zemmour said that  #BalanceTonPorc (“Denounce your pig”, #MeToo’s French equivalent) was akin to exhortations to “Denounce your Jew” during World War II. As he launched his plan to fight violence against women, Emmanuel Macron said that he did not want “a society of informers”, while his minister for the economy, Bruno Le Maire, explained that he would not report a politician if he knew of sexual harassment allegations against them – before rowing back his position. 

Very French resistance 

Three months later, while Oprah Winfrey’s speech at the Golden Globes – hailing a “new day” for women who “became the story” that year – was going viral in the United States, France woke up to the Deneuve letter, which takes its name from one of the signatories, actress Catherine Deneuve. The letter defends a “freedom to pester” against “puritanism”, and was accompanied by the shocking comments by two signatories: “You can orgasm when being raped” (actress and radio host Brigitte Lahaie); and “My great regret is to have not been raped [to show that] you can get over it” (writer and art critic Catherine Millet). 

Two years later, actress Adèle Haenel walked out of the César awards ceremony in protest at the triumph of film director Roman Polanski, accused of rape by six teenage girls. Then followed more controversy and an op-ed by 100 female lawyers denouncing “the triumph of the court of public opinion” and the “worrying presumption of guilt” that they claim hangs over men accused of wrongdoing. Haenel has since quit the career in cinema that had brought her so much success. 

When chef Taku Sekine, accused of sexual assault by several women, took his own life in September 2020, the #MeToo movement found itself back in the dock. “The snitches have won. […] Tell us: how many bodies do you want?”, raged lawyer Marie Burguburu in an opinion piece slamming “the verdict handed down” by the movement. 

Five months later, an avalanche of media revelations (about TV presenter Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, actor Richard Berry, producer Gérard Louvin, and artist Claude Lévêque) led to another open letter penned by lawyers condemning “a trial by media”. “In the United States, people have been responsive; in France, they have been reactionary”, says French historian Laure Murat. 

In post-#MeToo France, we have seen a minister accused of rape receive a standing ovation in parliament, then get promoted; a star actor charged with rape given the red-carpet treatment by TV shows and never questioned on the matter; a director subject to several accusations of rape honoured by the Cinémathèque and rewarded with a César award; a presenter and producer discuss live on air how they would love to “slap” a feminist activist; a famous actor elicit fits of laughter in the TV studio as he explained how, on trips to museums, he used to whip out his penis in front of stunned fellow visitors.  

And all the while, women speaking up about their experiences of sexual violence have been called “sluts”, “whores”, “liars” and “social climbers” trying to pull off a “publicity stunt”. “Social control has to change. Today, it is exerted not over predators, but their victims”, believes author Hélène Devynck. 

A turning point? 

But some think we’ve reached a turning point. In her autobiographical TV series Icon of French Cinema, actress Judith Godrèche did not name the director who groomed her when she was 14 years old. Godrèche finally revealed him to be Benoît Jacquot after an illuminating 2011 interview with the filmmaker surfaced. 

Meanwhile, the open letter in support of Depardieu was a fiasco, with several signatories backtracking and expressing their subsequent “embarrassment” about the text and its organiser, a close associate of Zemmour. “Yes, my signature was another rape”, apologised actor Jacques Weber. 

Under fierce criticism, Emmanuel Macron dispatched his wife Brigitte to news channel LCI to emphasise the “courage” of women speaking out. Later, Macron himself conceded at a press conference that he should have stressed the importance of “the words of women who are the victims of this violence”. 

Another sign of change: only 56 celebrities signed the Depardieu letter, a far cry from the 700 who supported Roman Polanski upon his arrest in Switzerland in 2009. And no fewer than six counter-letters were published, something hitherto unheard of. 

While some well-known figures close to Depardieu were conspicuous by their absence, many famous actors lent their support to the accusers. “Of course I’m with them, and I wholeheartedly support women speaking out”, was actor Daniel Auteuil’s response when asked about #MeToo on France 5’s talk show C à vous. 

“With Gérard Depardieu, we’re missing the wood for the trees: there’s been fifty years of laissez-faire in the cinema world”, lamented actress Emmanuelle Devos on Arte’s 28 Minutes, before going on to applaud – and in so doing contradicting her comments about Woody Allen in 2018: “The ones who are against all this, they’re old and they’ll be off. […] The ones who abused, they’ll be off. That’s how it is. And I think that’s quite healthy.”  

Author and director Iris Brey, who holds a PhD in film theory, sees this series of events as a “turning point”. “Before, most actresses, if asked when promoting a film, would simply say ‘it’s never happened to me’. Today, actresses who themselves haven’t said #MeToo will explain that they believe the women who have spoken out”, she said. 

It’s a shift which, she thinks, has been made possible by images and stories that provide insight into victims’ viewpoints and mindsets. “Judith Godrèche’s series allows us to see the victim’s point of view, unlike Benoît Jacquot’s film or the Gérard Miller documentary in which he [Jacquot] holds forth. Neige Sinno’s story [Triste Tigre, her account of the repeated rape and abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her stepfather] represents a new way to feel words, to examine a point of view. The rushes for Complément d’enquête enable Depardieu to be depicted as an abuser.” 

#MeToo and its “counter-narrative” 

But rather than a genuine turning point, historian Laure Murat sees the Depardieu affair as a “jolt”: “Just as the Deneuve letter united some, the Depardieu letter saw disavowal [from many signatories]. Year One of #MeToo (2018-2023), a sort of great reset, is over. But we’re still a long way from Year Two. You can’t change a society’s mores in six years.” A specialist in cultural and literary history who teaches at UCLA, Murat observes that “for the first time” hostility towards #MeToo – expressed by railing against the “morality police” and “mobs”, a deafening silence about victims, and perverting the presumption of innocence – seems to be “on the wane”.   

The story of #MeToo in France has been told through its “counter-narrative”: it is the pushback against this movement – “against cancelling”, “against lynching” – that has determined its pace and progress.

She puts this down to changing public opinion and growing criticism on social media. “What’s new is that the weight of shifting public opinion has suddenly left signatories of the Depardieu letter afraid for their careers and reputations.”  

But the watershed came in the Depardieu affair “because he went after a child [by sexualising her in footage from ‘Complément d’enquête’]”. “In France, people think, rightly, that the real scandal is going after children. But with women, they always have doubts about consent. They can’t get past childhood.” 

In fact, the scandals that have most rocked France have often involved paedophilia, like actress Adèle Haenel’s revelations regarding director and screenwriter Christophe Ruggia, Vanessa Springora’s book (Le Consentement) about writer Gabriel Matzneff, and Camille Kouchner’s account (La Familia Grande) of the incest perpetrated by Olivier Duhamel. And that’s the case with Judith Godrèche’s shocking story. 

According to Murat, the story of #MeToo in France has been told through its “counter-narrative”: it is the pushback against this movement – “against cancelling”, “against lynching” etc. – that has determined its pace and progress. “It is the counter-narrative to #MeToo that keeps #MeToo going in France,” she wrote. 

An unfinished revolution 

In these swings from breakthrough to setback, sociologist and writer Kaoutar Harchi sees “the rhythm of liberation” in a society where anti-feminism remains “very widespread” and a “hatred of equality” persists. 

This opposition to fighting sexual and gender-based violence goes hand in hand with the pushback against LGBTQI+ and anti-racist activism, she points out: “This type of discourse comes from what is perceived to be authentic French national identity being built through a process of social and political minoritisation of people regarded as dangerous, of supposedly perverted and perverting women, and of foreigners who are allegedly enemies.” Therefore, she argues, “a normative system that is colonial, masculine and bourgeois” continues to hold sway. 

In periods where women’s rights are championed by powerful feminist movements, reports of gender violence increase significantly.

The risk of backlash lies not just in a theoretical anti-feminism, but an increase in sexual and physical violence against women and children. In periods where women’s rights are championed by powerful feminist movements, reports of gender violence “increase significantly”, explains historian Christelle Taraud, editor of Féminicides, une histoire mondiale (“Femicide: A World History”). “Whenever there’s a moment of feminist euphoria, numbers rise. And whenever women bow down and bend the knee, fewer are killed,” she noted, establishing a correlation “between the #MeToo movement and the femicide pandemic sweeping the world today”. 

#MeToo clearly led to historic breakthroughs. The movement’s massive scale, both online and offline, brought the issue of sexual and gender-based violence into homes. It also enabled huge progress to be made in discourse and in feminist thinking, which was both sharpened and democratised.

Yet it remains an unfinished revolution. “When you ask women about their experiences, horrific stories emerge,” stresses Kaoutar Harchi. “There’s a lot of movement, it’s like feeling the ground shake beneath our feet, but the sky stays pretty much the same.” 

This article was originally published in French by Mediapart. It is republished here with permission.

Translation by Kit Dawson.