‘All they did wrong was touch a knee’

This blog has been going for some time now and I am sure you’ll be as surprised as I was when it dawned on me that I’ve not gone fully postal with a Feminist Rant (TM).

So strap yourselves in. Here it comes.

I didn’t expect I’d be moved to break the dam on this particularly subject because of something a woman had said, but it would seem the world is full of surprises.

Imma come right out and say it. Catherine Deneuve what the actual fuck is wrong with you?

Of all the things you could put pen to paper to write about, of all the things you could use your influence to change, you choose to defend a man’s ‘freedom to bother’ women?

Is your own self-worth so tied up in the imagined male gaze that you can’t bear the idea a man might ever look at you as an equal and not a sex object?

Have you ever considered, and I mean properly sat down and thought it through, what it might feel like to turn up to work every day and be subjected not just to casual flirting by a man you find unattractive, or even insistent sexual innuendo, but actual hands-on sexual assault? To depend on the money coming from that job so much that you felt you couldn’t speak up in case you lost your income?

I’m guessing that you haven’t, otherwise you surely wouldn’t have written that open letter with your friends and colleagues, undermining the progress of the #metoo movement and everything it stands for.

Most of you come from positions of relative privilege – singers, actors, artists, journalists, doctors. No cleaners, nurses, secretaries, bus drivers, hotel workers.

You write: ‘A woman can, in the same day, lead a professional team and enjoy being the sexual object of a man, without being a ‘slut’, nor a cheap accomplice of the patriarchy. She can insure that her salary is equal to a man’s but not feel forever traumatised by a frotteur in the Metro,’

HOW GOOD OF YOU TO MANSPLAIN THAT FOR US.

I think what you’re trying to say is, to paraphrase that well-known feminist poet Ludacris, you can be A LADY IN THE STREET and still be A FREAK IN THE BED.

But, you also seem to be undermining even that little shitnugget by implying that if a woman happens to like sex they also nullify their rights to only want to be touched sexually:

a) when it suits them

b) by someone they want to touch them

c) in a place (both on their body and in terms of location) of their choosing

‘COME ON MESDAMES’, you and you pals are saying. ‘Men might actually lose their jobs because one time, ages ago, like in the 60s before sexual assault was actually bad, they put their hand on a woman’s knee. Do we actually want that to happen?’

Answer is Cath, no, probably we don’t.

But you know what else we don’t want to happen? (And this is by no means an exhaustive list and in no particular order):

• Rape.
• Creepy weirdos thinking it’s totally okay to say ‘smile’ to you in the street.
• Squeezing of our arses or tits on the tube or indeed LE METRO.
• Asking us out on a date more than once or twice after we’ve politely declined.
• Eye-rolling at utterance of any vaguely feminist statement
• Any phrase of the nature ‘you can’t say anything to ’em these days’
• Ditto ‘are you on your period?
• Systemic abuse of power by people with penises over people with vaginas

That should do for now.

It is fucking exhausting being a woman. Even those of us lucky enough to live in countries where we are free from brutal patriarchal regimes or sexual violence have enough to battle through every day – casual sexism, unequal pay, emotional labour, childbirth, burden of care, menstruation – without having to negotiate your internalised misogyny too.

If you like it when a man looks at you in a bar and then looks away, and then looks back, and then comes over and casually rests his hand on your knee, and then strokes your thigh and then says ‘I like your dress but I think it would look better on my bedroom floor’ then fucking good for you. I think you might need to widen your social circle but you know, whatever floats your boat.

That doesn’t mean that if the same guy were to approach me that there’s something wrong with me if I’m a little bit sick in my mouth and then kick him in the cojones and tip his Campari all over his slip-ons.

You do you, Catherine, but don’t EVER tell me where my limits should be.

You and your pals warn that we’re turning this #metoo thing into a witch hunt, but actually, it’s you who are doing that.

The ‘witches’ who have been hunted throughout history are never the people with the power. Never the men or the women who, like you, are in control.

The witches are always the people on the fringes. The outsiders. The women who are unusual, who are ‘other’.

And until you know what that feels like then you have no right to tell us we’re in the wrong.