Ezekiel: Open Forum
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all the aforementioned conflicts, another theme has occupied equal
symbolic space: the defence of seduction à la française and of the
supposedly harmonious relationships between the sexes. ‘Eroticism
versus feminism’, as Christine Bard has written, ‘that duel so dear to the
French, who are so attached to a libertine tradition they assume to be
spontaneously egalitarian’ (Bard, 1999: 311). Attempts to preserve these
relations, to defend la douce France, here in the role of a talisman to ward
off evil, appear at the very outset of the movement.
‘In France . . . men and women have a taste for each other’, a 1971 Paris
Match article explains, quoting proto-feminist Evelyne Sullerot. ‘They like
being together in so many areas. In America, no!’ (Martory, 1971).
Contrary to American feminists, ‘afflicted with hideously ugly leaders’,
Françoise Giroud, later to be Secretary of Women’s Status, explains in a
1970 article, French women ‘have little taste for the war of the sexes’. Even
if, she says, French men are ‘surreptitious tyrants’, ‘the nature of the
relations between men and women in France, insofar as one dares gener-
alize [sic], is relatively harmonious’. And a good thing, too, since Giroud
warns us of an ominous peril directly resulting from American-style
feminism: male impotence (Giroud, 1970).
In the first decade of the movement, these conservative positions had
little impact in the circles I examine; 20 years later, however, they have
been resurrected. In their lightning rod form, they protect French women
and the women’s movement and help establish two opposing models.
Françoise Picq, author of an authoritative book on French feminism,
rightly terms this the ‘nationalization of feminism’ (Picq, 1995: 333).
An amusing detour via the right-wing Figaro points to an underlying
fear among anti-amér-féministes. Deploring the ‘years of systematic
confrontation between men and women’ and the ‘lack of sexual differen-
tiation’, the journalist complains: ‘Nothing is more uniform than a crowd
of American tourists. Men and women alike wear the same shorts, the
same t-shirts, the same sneakers, and the same caps.’ As a result, ‘pleasure
is a taboo subject’ in America, ‘the most sexually unsatisfied society in the
industrial world’ (Marchand, 1995). (The theme of New World men’s
impotence dates back centuries, as does the idea that the lack of sexual
differentiation marks a backward civilization.)
The arguments espoused by the Right are adopted by left-wing intel-
lectuals in the 1990s. For the authors cited, anti-amér-féminisme works as a
primitive lightning rod, dissociating themselves from Americans, and
they remain faithful to the dominant heterosociality threatened by this
feminism. On the theme of sameness, Sylvie Kauffman laments in Le
Monde how American men, ‘paralysed’ by the threat of sexual harassment
accusations, must keep their eyes lowered and walk home everyday with
a single image, that of thousands of women’s jogging shoes, ‘hopelessly
alike’ (Kauffman, 1996). Elisabeth Badinter declares that