Republica Press

Your Business & Political News Source

REPUBLICA PRESS
Your Business & Political News Source

#MeToo Movement

Prominent Chinese #MeToo Figure Vows to Appeal After Losing Case

by

A former television intern who became a prominent voice in China’s #MeToo movement against sexual assault and harassment has vowed to fight on after a court in Beijing ruled that she had not produced sufficient evidence in her harassment case against a star presenter.

The former intern, Zhou Xiaoxuan, told supporters and journalists outside the Haidian District court in Beijing that she would appeal after judges ruled against her claim late Tuesday night.

Ms. Zhou asserted in 2018 that Zhu Jun had assaulted her in a dressing room four years earlier. Mr. Zhu denied that accusation and sued Ms. Zhou, and she countersued him. Their legal battles became a focal case in China’s expanding movement against the sexual coercion of women.

The court in Beijing rejected Ms. Zhou’s case in a terse online statement that did not go into the substance of her claims. She had “tendered insufficient evidence to prove her assertion that a certain Zhu had engaged in sexual harassment,” the court stated.

crack their heads and spill blood” if they tried to stop its rise.

  • Behind the Takeover of Hong Kong: One year ago, the city’s freedoms were curtailed with breathtaking speed. But the clampdown was years in the making, and many signals were missed.
  • One Year Later in Hong Kong: Neighbors are urged to report on one another. Children are taught to look for traitors. The Communist Party is remaking the city.
  • Mapping Out China’s Post-Covid Path: Xi Jinping, China’s leader, is seeking to balance confidence and caution as his country strides ahead while other places continue to grapple with the pandemic.
  • A Challenge to U.S. Global Leadership: As President Biden predicts a struggle between democracies and their opponents, Beijing is eager to champion the other side.
  • ‘Red Tourism’ Flourishes: New and improved attractions dedicated to the Communist Party’s history, or a sanitized version of it, are drawing crowds ahead of the party’s centennial.

    • Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has moved to rein in public protest and contention over women’s rights, and fewer such cases have burst onto the internet.

    An exception was in July, when the police detained Kris Wu, a popular Canadian Chinese singer, after an 18-year-old university student in Beijing accused him of offering young women like her help with their careers, and then pressing them to have sex. He has denied the accusations.

    Mr. Wu was formally arrested last month on suspicion of rape. His case became one in a number of scandals that have prompted the Chinese government to crack down on youth celebrity culture and warn actors and performers to stick to official rules for propriety.

    Ms. Zhou has been barred from Weibo, the popular Chinese social media service where her claims against Mr. Zhu first spread. (His lawsuit against her has still not gone to trial.)

    Traditional state-run media outlets were ordered not to cover Ms. Zhou’s claims and lawsuit, according to three journalists who received the instructions and asked for anonymity because of the risk of repercussions. But word of Ms. Zhou’s loss in court rippled across Chinese social media on Wednesday. Many reactions that remained on Weibo were critical of her, some accusing her of making up her claims and acting as a pawn for forces hostile to China. Her supporters said that, despite the setback, she had set a lasting example.

    “I was very disappointed, but it didn’t surprise me,” said Zheng Xi, 34, a feminist in Hangzhou, in eastern China. “Her persistence in the last three years has educated and enlightened many people.”

    View Source

    >>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

    Activision, Facing Internal Turmoil, Grapples With #MeToo Reckoning

    by

    More than 1,500 workers for the video game maker Activision Blizzard walked out from their jobs this week. Thousands signed a letter rebuking their employer. And even as the chief executive apologized, current and former employees said they would not stop raising a ruckus.

    Shay Stein, who used to work at Activision, said it was “heartbreaking.” Lisa Welch, a former vice president, said she felt “profound disappointment.” Others took to Twitter or waved signs outside one of the company’s offices on Wednesday to share their anger.

    Activision, known for its hugely popular Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and StarCraft gaming franchises, has been thrown into an uproar over workplace behavior issues. The upheaval stems from an explosive lawsuit that California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed on July 20, accusing the $65 billion company of fostering a “frat boy workplace culture” in which men joked about rape and women were routinely harassed and paid less than their male colleagues.

    Activision publicly criticized the agency’s two-year investigation and allegations as “irresponsible behavior from unaccountable state bureaucrats.” But its dismissive tone angered employees, who called out the company for trying to sweep away what they said were heinous problems that had been ignored for too long.

    Hollywood, restaurants and the media — the male-dominated video game sector has long stood out for its openly toxic behavior and lack of change. In 2014, feminist critics of the industry faced death threats in what became known as Gamergate. Executives at the gaming companies Riot Games and Ubisoft have also been accused of misconduct.

    Now the actions at Activision may signal a new phase, where a critical mass of the industry’s own workers are indicating they will no longer tolerate such behavior.

    “This could mean some real accountability for companies that aren’t taking care of their workers and are creating inequitable work environments where women and gender minorities are kept at the margins and abused,” said Carly Kocurek, an associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology who studies gender in gaming.

    She said California’s lawsuit and the fallout at Activision were a “big deal” for an industry that had traditionally shrugged off claims of sexism and harassment. Other gaming companies are most likely watching the situation, she added, and considering whether they need to address their own cultures.

    spared little detail. Many of the misconduct accusations focused on a division called Blizzard, which the company merged with through a deal with Vivendi Games in 2008.

    The lawsuit accused Activision of being a “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women.” Employees engaged in “cube crawls” in which they got drunk and acted inappropriately toward women at work cubicles, the lawsuit said.

    In one case, a female employee died by suicide during a business trip because of the sexual relationship she had been having with her male supervisor, the lawsuit said. Before her death, male colleagues had shared an explicit photo of the woman, according to the lawsuit.

    on Twitter.

    Employees reacted furiously. An open letter addressed to Activision’s leaders calling for them to take the accusations more seriously and “demonstrate compassion” for victims attracted more than 3,000 signatures from current and former employees by Wednesday. The company has nearly 10,000 employees.

    “We no longer trust that our leaders will place employee safety above their own interests,” the letter said, calling Ms. Townsend’s remarks “unacceptable.”

    a $155 million pay package that makes him one of the country’s highest-paid executives, added that the company would beef up the team that investigated reported misconduct, fire managers who were found to have impeded investigations and remove in-game content that had been flagged as inappropriate.

    Employees said it was not enough.

    “We will not return to silence; we will not be placated by the same processes that led us to this point,” organizers of the walkout said in a public statement. They declined to be identified out of fear of reprisal.

    View Source

    >>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

    Tarun J. Tejpal, Journalist in India, is Acquitted of Rape

    by

    A court in India on Friday acquitted a prominent journalist of charges that he raped a junior colleague, bringing an end to a politically charged case that had been closely watched as a test of a new sexual assault law.

    The journalist, Tarun J. Tejpal, was accused of sexually assaulting a staff reporter for Tehelka, a well-known investigative magazine that he edited, in 2013.

    Mr. Tejpal, 58, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, initially apologized to the reporter but later said the encounter had been consensual. “The truth will come out,” he told an Indian news channel in 2019.

    In a statement on Friday, Mr. Tejpal thanked the judge in the court in the coastal state of Goa and repeated his assertion that he had been targeted for prosecution as part of a political vendetta against him.

    has been slow to take hold in India, where public discussions of sex are frowned upon and traditional ideas of gender roles predominate in homes and workplaces.

    Still, some women have gone public about sexual harassment and assault, and some have won victories in court. In February, a journalist successfully fought off a defamation suit brought by a former public official whom she had accused of sexually harassing her.

    Mr. Tejpal was one of India’s best-known editors when he was arrested and charged. Tehelka, the liberal-minded magazine he led, is known for crusading public-interest journalism and has broken major stories over the years. Two decades ago, Tehelka reporters posed as arms dealers and caught Indian Army officers and members of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party — then, as now, India’s governing party — accepting bribes.

    said in a statement after the accusation became public.

    Mr. Tejpal initially expressed remorse about the incident, saying it had resulted from “an awful misreading of the situation.” But after the charges were filed, he said he was the victim of a right-wing “political vendetta,” and that security camera footage taken outside the elevator supported his version of events.

    Mr. Tejpal, who resigned as editor of Tehelka, spent six months in jail before India’s top court released him on bail in 2014.

    Since then, as the case made its way through India’s justice system at a typically glacial pace, Mr. Tejpal has largely disappeared from public life. A recent streaming series on Amazon based on a novel wrote did not include his name in the credits.

    View Source

    Leslie Moonves Receives Nothing From CBS Exit Package

    by

    Leslie Moonves, who led CBS as chief executive for 15 years before he was ousted in 2018, will receive nothing from the $120 million the company had set aside in a potential severance package, according to a federal filing on Friday.

    Mr. Moonves left CBS on Sept. 9, 2018, after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct, allegations that appeared in two articles in The New Yorker by Ronan Farrow. Mr. Moonves has denied the allegations.

    That October, as part of a separation agreement, the CBS Corporation board placed $120 million in a so-called grantor trust. That money would go to Mr. Moonves if the company found that there had been no grounds to fire him under his contract.

    In December 2018, the board said it had determined that Mr. Moonves was indeed fired for cause, citing “willful and material misfeasance, violation of company policies and breach of his employment contract” in a statement at the time. Mr. Moonves disputed that finding and started arbitration proceedings concerning the possible exit package in January 2019.

    it said.

    The filing came from ViacomCBS. Mr. Moonves’s previous employer merged with a sibling company, Viacom, in December 2019, after protracted negotiations. Mr. Moonves adamantly opposed the merger plan when he was at the helm of CBS.

    “The disputes between Mr. Moonves and CBS have now been resolved,” ViacomCBS said in a statement on Friday. It added that the company and Mr. Moonves would have no further comment on the matter.

    Mr. Moonves, 71, was one of the most prominent figures to be toppled by the #MeToo movement. Other powerful men in the media and entertainment businesses whose careers came to an end after they were accused of sexual misconduct included the Fox News chief executive Roger E. Ailes and the film mogul Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Ailes died in 2017, months after leaving the network he had helped create, and Mr. Weinstein fell from power in 2017 and was sentenced last year to 23 years in prison for sex crimes against six women.

    View Source

    BAFTA Rescinds Award for Actor Noel Clarke

    by

    LONDON — The body that awards Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars has suspended a prominent actor and director weeks after he received one of its top awards, following accusations of sexual assault, sexual harassment and bullying from 20 women.

    Producers, actresses and production assistants said the actor, Noel Clarke, secretly filmed auditions in which they were naked, groped or forcibly kissed them, and sent unsolicited intimate pictures. The testimonies were detailed in a lengthy exposé published by The Guardian on Thursday evening.

    Mr. Clarke, 45, grew up in London and established himself as an actor in the 2000s with the television series “Doctor Who.” He is well-known in Britain as a filmmaker and performer for his trilogy “The Hood,” about the lives of teenagers in West London, and for the TV police dramas “Bulletproof” and “Viewpoint.” His production company, Unstoppable Film & Television, has made more than 10 movies and television shows.

    Mr. Clarke denied the all accusations through his lawyers, according to The Guardian, with the exception of an episode in which he was accused of making inappropriate comments about a woman. He said he later apologized in that case.

    revelations about Harvey Weinstein in The New York Times that touched off the #MeToo movement. Mr. Clarke is one of the first prominent actors to face such allegations in Britain.

    In a statement provided to The Guardian, Mr. Clarke said, “In a 20-year career, I have put inclusivity and diversity at the forefront of my work and never had a complaint made against me.”

    “If anyone who has worked with me has ever felt uncomfortable or disrespected, I sincerely apologize,” Mr. Clarke said, denying any sexual misconduct or wrongdoing, and dismissing the accusations as false.

    The extent of the potential consequences for Mr. Clarke became clear on Friday when the television network ITV took the unusual step of saying in a statement that it would not air the finale of “Viewpoint,” a drama starring the actor, on its main channel Friday night because of the accusations against him.

    rising star award in 2009, said in an earlier statement, released shortly after the article was published, that it had suspended his award and membership of the academy “immediately and until further notice.”

    The Guardian report cited nearly two dozen women in the movie industry who said they had been subjected to a range of abuses that include unwanted physical contact, groping and forced kisses, as well as unsolicited sexual behavior on set, including eight on the record.

    The Norwegian film producer Synne Seltveit said Mr. Clarke slapped her buttocks in 2015, and later sent an unwanted explicit sexual picture. The actress Gina Powel said Mr. Clarke exposed himself to her in a car and later groped her in an elevator, also in 2015. Anna Avramenko, an assistant film director, said Mr. Clarke had forcibly kissed her on set in 2008 and had tried several times again after the incident.

    intimacy coordinators,” are becoming a common presence on set. Their job is to ensure sex scenes don’t compromise or exploit the performers, and recent British and Irish shows like “It’s a Sin” and “Normal People” have featured intimacy coordinators among their crew.

    Onscreen, the plots of some recent British hits, like “Sex Education” and “I May Destroy You,” have turned on questions of sexual consent.

    The British actress and writer Michaela Coel, who created “I May Destroy You,” in which she plays a young Londoner who investigates her own rape, said in a statement she supported the women who accused Mr. Clarke.

    “Speaking out about these incidents takes a lot of strength because some call them ‘gray areas.’ They are, however, far from gray,” Ms. Coel said.

    “These behaviors are unprofessional, violent and can destroy a person’s perception of themselves, their place in the world and their career irreparably.”

    In his speech at the BAFTA Awards this month, Mr. Clarke, who is Black, dedicated his award to the “underrepresented, anyone who sits at home believing that they can achieve more.”

    last year announced a series of changes in its nomination and prize-giving process.

    For this year’s awards, BAFTA’s 6,700 voting members had to undergo unconscious bias training and watch every nominated movie before they could cast their ballots for each category — an attempt to deter voters from focusing on the most hyped films.

    In the statement on Friday, BAFTA said it had asked individuals to come forward with their accounts and identify themselves.

    “We very much regret that women felt unable to provide us with the kind of firsthand testimony that has now appeared in The Guardian,” it said. “Had we been in receipt of this, we would never have presented the award to Noel Clarke.”

    View Source

    Norton Takes Philip Roth Biography Out of Print

    by

    In her email to staff on Tuesday, Ms. Reidhead acknowledged that Norton could have done more to look into the allegations. “As a publishing company we are limited in our investigative abilities,” she wrote, “but we recognize that there may be situations, such as allegations of potentially criminal conduct, where we should actively consider bringing in outside assistance.”

    Some of the allegations against Mr. Bailey were reported earlier by The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate and The Los Angeles Times, and additional accusations have been reported since.

    In an email to the Times last week, Mr. Bailey denied the allegations, calling them “categorically false and libelous.” A lawyer for Mr. Bailey, Billy Gibbens, called Norton’s response to the allegations “troubling and unwarranted.”

    In an email on Tuesday, Mr. Gibbens added: “Norton made the drastic, unilateral decision to take Mr. Bailey’s books out of print, based on the false and unsubstantiated allegations against him, without undertaking any investigation or offering Mr. Bailey the opportunity to refute the allegations.”

    Norton did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

    Since the #MeToo movement began, publishers have canceled contracts with a number of authors who have faced charges of sexual harassment and assault. In 2018, Simon and Schuster canceled a forthcoming book on the 2016 election by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, authors of the best seller “Game Change,” after Mr. Halperin was accused of sexually harassing women at ABC News, where he once directed political coverage.

    And in March 2020, Hachette Book Group dropped a forthcoming memoir by Woody Allen amid a wave of criticism, including a walkout by employees, who cited the longstanding accusations that Mr. Allen had molested his adopted stepdaughter Dylan. (Both Mr. Allen and Mr. Halperin later found other publishers.)

    Pulling books that have already been published is less common, and even Norton’s initial “pause” last week drew concern from free expression groups. In a statement last week, the National Coalition Against Censorship said books must be judged “on their content.”

    View Source

    Philip Roth’s Biographer Blake Bailey Is Accused of Sexual Assault

    by

    “I can assure you I have never had non-consensual sex of any kind, with anybody, ever, and if it comes to a point I shall vigorously defend my reputation and livelihood,” he wrote in the email, which the Times reviewed. “Meanwhile, I appeal to your decency: I have a wife and young daughter who adore and depend on me, and such a rumor, even untrue, would destroy them.”

    Norton took the allegation seriously, a spokeswoman for the publisher said Wednesday. “We did take steps, including asking Mr. Bailey about the allegations, which he categorically denied, and we were mindful of the sender’s request for a guarantee of anonymity.”

    Former students recall him as a charismatic role model who treated them as intellectual peers. But he also created an atmosphere of intimacy that could cross the line, like encouraging students to write about romantic relationships in journals that they submitted to him for comments. “There was an environment of dirty jokes and permissiveness,” said Elizabeth Gross, a former student who now teaches at Tulane University. Some students said his remarks and behavior were attempts to “groom” them for sexual encounters years later.

    Eve Peyton, 40, a former student who now works in publicity at a high school in New Orleans, said that Mr. Bailey raped her when she was a graduate student. When she was his student, he treated her as “one of his special girls,” she said, attention that felt flattering and reaffirming at the time.

    In June 2003, she was a graduate student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and engaged to be married. She and Mr. Bailey both happened to be visiting New Orleans at the same time and met for drinks. Afterward, he invited her back to the place he was staying, where he kissed her, initiated oral sex, and when she squirmed away, he pinned her to the bed and forcibly had sex with her, she said. He finally stopped when she told him she wasn’t using birth control, she recalled.

    After he drove her to her father’s house, where she was staying, Mr. Bailey said he had “wanted her” since the day they met, when she was 12, Ms. Peyton said.

    She told two friends about the assault shortly after it happened but didn’t go to the police, in part because she was overwhelmed and wanted to move on with her life, she said. She later began seeing a therapist with experience in sexual assault counseling.

    View Source

    Could the Pandemic Prompt an ‘Epidemic of Loss’ of Women in the Sciences?

    by

    Like many women during the pandemic, Alisa Stephens found working from home to be a series of wearying challenges.

    Dr. Stephens is a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, and the technical and detail-oriented nature of her work requires long uninterrupted stretches of thought. Finding the time and mental space for that work with two young children at home proved to be an impossibility.

    “That first month was really hard,” she recalled of the lockdown. Her infant daughter’s day care was closed, and her 5-year-old was at home instead of at school. With their nanny unable to come to the house, Dr. Stephens tended to her children all day and worked late into the evening. In the fall, when her daughter was set to begin kindergarten, the schools did not reopen.

    Things eased once the family could safely bring in a nanny, but there was still little time for the deep thought Dr. Stephens had relied on each morning for her work. Over time, she has adjusted her expectations of herself.

    studies have found that women have published fewer papers, led fewer clinical trials and received less recognition for their expertise during the pandemic.

    Add to that the emotional upheaval and stress of the pandemic, the protests over structural racism, worry about children’s mental health and education, and the lack of time to think or work, and an already unsustainable situation becomes unbearable.

    “The confluence of all of these factors creates this perfect storm. People are at their breaking point,” said Michelle Cardel, an obesity researcher at the University of Florida. “My big fear is that we are going to have a secondary epidemic of loss, particularly of early career women in STEM.”

    Female scientists were struggling even before the pandemic. It was not unusual for them to hear that women were not as smart as men, or that a woman who was successful must have received a handout along the way, said Daniela Witten, a biostatistician at the University of Washington in Seattle. Some things are changing, she said, but only with great effort, and at a glacial pace.

    steep for mothers. Even during maternity leave, they are expected to keep up with lab work, teaching requirements, publications and mentoring of graduate students. When they return to work, most do not have affordable child care.

    Women in academia often have little recourse when confronted with discrimination. Their institutions sometimes lack the human resources structures common in the business world.

    it will be far from enough.

    “It’s sort of like if you’re drowning, and the university tells you, ‘Don’t worry if it takes you an extra year to get back to shore,’” Dr. Witten said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, that’s not helpful. I need a flotation device.’”

    study on female scientists was published in the influential journal Nature Communications, suggesting that having female mentors would hinder the career of young scientists and recommending that the young women instead seek out men to help them.

    The response was intense and unforgiving.

    Hundreds of scientists, male and female, renounced the paper’s flawed methods and conclusions, saying it reinforced outdated stereotypes and neglected to take structural biases in academia into account.

    “The advice from the paper was basically similar to advice your grandmother may have given you 50 years ago: Get yourself a man who will take care of you, and all will be fine,” Dr. Cardel said.

    Nearly 7,600 scientists signed a petition calling on the journal to retract the paper — which it did on Dec. 21.

    The study arrived at a time when many female scientists were already worried about the pandemic’s effect on their careers, and already on edge and angry with a system that offered them little support.

    “It’s been an incredibly difficult time to be a woman in science,” said Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. “We’re already on the ground, we’re already on our knees — and then the paper just comes and kicks us to say: ‘We have the solution, let’s move the graduate students to a senior man.’”

    reconsidered their dude walls, Dr. Vosshall said. “There are some traditions that should not be perpetuated.”

    View Source

    Amid Sexual Harassment Scandals, Australia Plots a ‘Road Map for Respect’

    by

    SYDNEY, Australia — After two months of sexual assault scandals, including an alleged rape inside Parliament House, Australia’s conservative government agreed on Thursday to accept a series of recommendations that aim to prevent gender-based abuse and increase accountability for misbehavior in the workplace.

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison called his response to the report from the country’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner “a road map for respect” that would improve workplace culture in the public and private sectors. It includes more education in schools and the promise of new legislation to end exemptions for judges and members of Parliament from the country’s Sex Discrimination Law, and allows victims to file complaints for up to two years.

    Mr. Morrison’s announcement was his most comprehensive effort so far to tackle a problem that has been festering for years in Australian politics, with women mistreated, demeaned or sexually harassed, usually without recourse.

    A federal review focusing on Parliament’s workplace culture has also just begun, led by the same official, Kate Jenkins, and it may produce additional calls for reform as the demand for demonstrable change has continued to intensify.

    the initial report was published in March 2020, with much of its findings overlooked by Mr. Morrison’s government until now, many women demanded more details and a clear timeline.

    “It’s going to take more than just words from this government to correct the impression that they don’t care about these issues,” said Louise Chappell, a political science professor at the University of New South Wales. “This is not going to go away.”

    Emma Husar, a former member of Parliament with the opposition Labor Party, said the government was still delivering only “the bare minimum.”

    marches for justice that drew tens of thousands of women to the streets of Australian cities.

    Mr. Morrison appeared on Thursday to leave some wiggle room for himself and his Liberal Party. He said his government accepted all 55 suggestions laid out in the report “in whole, in part or in principle,” leading his critics to question which measures would be put in place at the federal level, or passed on to states or given little more than lip service.

    Many of the recommendations — from the creation of a national sexual harassment research agenda to “respectful relationship” training in schools — could take years to develop. And some of the changes announced on Thursday would simply bring Australia in line with other developed democracies — such as Britain, Canada and the United States — that have also passed legislation in the past few years tightening workplace standards for lawmakers.

    Professor Chappell said the exemption for members of Parliament, for example — a carve-out in the sex-discrimination law also given to religious organizations — seemed especially outdated. Like many others, she welcomed the prime minister’s promise to ensure that lawmakers and the legal profession would no longer get special treatment.

    “With all the cases we’ve seen so far, they have been able to act with impunity because they are not accountable in the same way that people outside Parliament are,” she said. “There’s been pressure to change that for many years.”

    But the complaint process is still not clear. When Mr. Morrison was asked what the consequences would be for a sexual harassment complaint against a lawmaker, he said that was not yet decided.

    “There are many issues that we’re still going to work through as we draft this legislation,” he said.

    Professor Chappell said Mr. Morrison still seemed to be struggling with how far to go with policy and how to talk about the issue. In his news conference on Thursday, he emphasized that to change the culture of disrespect in the workplace, all Australians needed to take responsibility, but not “in a way that sets Australians against each other.”

    “What does he mean here?” Professor Chappell asked. “That women are being too strident? Is it possible to address sexual harassment without some level of confrontation? I don’t think so.”

    View Source

    Powerful Men Fall, One After Another, in France’s Delayed #MeToo

    by

    The executive, Eric Brion, did not deny making such comments. But because the two did not work together, Mr. Brion argued the comments did not amount to sexual harassment and sued Ms. Muller for defamation. A ruling in 2019 that ordered Ms. Muller to pay 15,000 euros in damages, around $17,650, was overturned last week.

    In 2019, the court said that Ms. Muller had “surpassed the acceptable limits of freedom of expression, as her comments descended into a personal attack.” This time, the judges found that Ms. Muller had acted in good faith, adding that the “#balancetonporc and #MeToo movements had drawn a lot of attention, had been hailed by diverse officials and personalities and had positively contributed to letting women speak freely.”

    Camille Froidevaux-Metterie, a leading feminist philosopher, said that it was significant that the men now under investigation were leaders in a diversity of fields. Revelations surrounding them have undermined the myths of Frenchmen as great seducers and of a refined romantic culture where “we, French, in our interplay of seduction, know how to interpret nonverbal signs and we have this art of seduction, a gentle commerce between the sexes,” she said.

    “These are men who all embody, in some ways, the old patriarchal order of things — of men of power and men who have used and abused their power to sexually exploit the bodies of others, whether they be women or young men,” Ms. Froidevaux-Metterie said, adding, “Perhaps we are experiencing the first real shock to that system.”

    Some conservative intellectuals regard the ever-growing list of accused prominent men as evidence of the contamination of French society by American ideas on gender, race, religion and postcolonialism.

    Pierre-André Taguieff, a historian and a leading critic of the American influence, said in an email that “neo-feminist and neo-antiracist ideologues denounce universalism, especially French republican universalism, as a fraud, a deceitful mask of imperialism, sexism and racism.”

    View Source

    Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy