Catherine, Harvey and Me Too

Catherine Deneuve, I feel you.

I get that you are worried that “what began as legitimate protest against sexual violence has evolved into a movement that threatens our sexual freedom”.

I too felt the threat of neo-puritanism, when powerful men began to fall over a little knee patting,  In fact, I thought oh, bugger, this gender blending, snowflake generation is going to take away all the fun.  I get it.  Like you, I too am from a generation that put up with a lot of 'inappropriate behavior' and yet never thought of ourselves as victims. Hell, Harvey offered me a back rub during a job interview when I was twenty-six. I just said no and never really thought about it again. 

But Catherine, you and I are wrong.  I have come to see that I was able to say no to Harvey Weinstein’s come-on because he had no power back then. He certainly had no power over me.

 So this is where women like you and I need to expand our point of view.   #MeToo and #BalanceTonPorc (call out your pig), are not man hating, witch hunts, they are not puritanical tyrannies designed to ruin our sex lives. They are anti-bullying campaigns.

And we sex pots need to support them.

Yes, there is going to be collateral damage along the way. A few men might go down unfairly, but this is not about them. It’s about women speaking up at last.  What is happening is a rebalance of power and it is bigger than any individual.

I know you have a good twenty years on me but I still think there might be some crossover in our mindset.  First of all, let’s be clear, my perspective is of a woman who got off lightly.  In fact, another reason I have been late to the party is because I thought - who am I? I can't hashtag MeToo because of simple everyday pestering.   I only started to really get it when I looked back.

Like many women of my generation, my mother taught me that it was the predators who were to be pitied. The men were the ones with the problem. It was a little trick of the mind. It is the reason I am sure I never saw myself as a victim.  However, I recently remembered, having had to pass that little trick on to my twelve-year old daughter. One day she asked me why men thought they had the right to 'bother' her on her way home from school. I had a momentary glimpse of the black pit of rage and despair that we all must carry. Then, like my good mother before me, I collected myself and taught her the trick.  Then I told her the rules: If a man is bothering you, don’t confront them, the smart thing to do is to change subway carriages, get off the train, find a police officer, cross the street, call for help, or if you are really stuck, pretend to throw up.  

Thanks to the brave women of #MeToo I can now allow myself to see that the subtext of my advice to my daughter was akin to ushering her into a kind of good girl prison.  I remember feeling terrible after that conversation.  I know she did too.  But nine years ago that was the best I had for her.

I have also been thinking of my own 'uncomfortable' experiences.  I grew up in New York city in the late seventies.  At the time, there was a man who used to approach my girl's school regularly as we were going home for the day.  He would walk up the street as we were going down - and he would systematically put his hand between our legs as we walked by.  Some girls would shout, "pervert". I never did. What was the point?  I always just kept walking.  I thought of the men who used to feel free to take their dicks out on a crowded subway and rub them against me as I travelled underground. It was disgusting, but I didn’t protest. It wasn’t the smart thing to do.  Instead, I just moved away.  

Several years later, I remember my English husband coming to New York with me for the first time.  We went for a midnight stroll.  My eyes roamed the dark city like an SAS officer.  According to him, I would suddenly cross streets without warning, duck into shop fronts, change direction if I felt I saw a threat ahead.  He still laughs about how it was the most unrelaxing walk of his life.  Oh, and I forgot about the American college friend, who thought it was okay to come uninvited into my bedroom and lay on top of me after a big night out.  When I would push him off, he simply went down the hall into one of my housemate's and did the same. He was later done for rape. I could go on, but most of you know this stuff as routine.

Catherine, let’s be honest, we didn't need this movement to hate men.  We've been secretly hating men for a long time. If anything movement is going to burst a very big boil.  Outing the bullying is the first step to ending it. This isn't about sex. It is about the abuse of power; physical power, societal power, professional power. Women coming together in this great act of creative destruction is not an admission of victimhood; it is an act of courage. It means a sixteen-year old girl on a crowded subway will no longer remain voiceless if a man tries to rub up against her.  She will be fueled by the righteousness of every woman who has dared to come forward and say, ‘me too’. She will stand up for herself and she will know that it’s the smart thing to do.  If we join this movement, we will no longer be isolated from one another through the complicity of silence. We will be released from good girl prison.  And women like you and I can begin to tear down the part of the patriarchy that we internalized to keep us safe. It means that my daughter and her daughter won’t have to fool themselves with ‘the trick’.  They will know that society is on their side.  The chain will be broken and they will feel free to be fully themselves - in the workplace, on the subway, walking home from school.  

I know this to be true because I felt it.  It was just after Matt Lauer and the other anchors went down in the States. I walked out onto my West London street that morning and suddenly I felt taller.  For the first time in my fifty-five years, I was certain that other women had my back. It was a wonderful feeling. 

So Catherine, let’s slip into something loose and do this thing: 

#MeToo. #BalanceTonPorc, #quellavoltache, #YoTambien