The French Letter
Hollywood's blockbuster #MeToo movement took the world by storm, giving voice to women and causing powerful men to hit the speed dial to their lawyers and PR flacks.
Then it met the French resistance.
More than 100 prominent French women – including screen goddess Catherine Deneuve - signed the now famous "Le Monde Letter" denouncing #Metoo. They pledged to "defend a freedom to bother as indispensable to sexual freedom" and sympathised with "men who've been disciplined in the workplace… when their only crime was to touch a woman's knee or steal a kiss".
So what is it about sex and seduction a la francaise? Does #MeToo threaten a proud libertine tradition that differentiates France from stitched-up Anglo-Saxon culture? Or do such ideas belong to the bygone era of lustful cartoon skunk Pepe Le Lew?
Reporter Annabel Crabb goes to Paris to interrogate the Le Monde women and their critics from the French #MeToo movement, as well as some mildly confused males.
"Women like to be protected," says ex-porn star, radio host and Le Monde signatory Brigitte Lahaie. "Wanting to be equal to men takes away this possibility of feeling protected and nurturing sexuality, desire and eroticism."
Crabb asks how that view squares with a recent government survey of female public transport users. How many respondents reported having been harassed while travelling? 100 per cent.
The Macron Government has pledged a new era of equality for women and has introduced a controversial on-the-spot fine for sexual harassment in public. But it baulked at the last minute in its attempt to introduce a legal age of consent in France for the first time.
"Rape is minimised in France. Most people think it's not such a big deal," says Adelaide Bon, a writer and former actress who was raped as a child.
Scientist and philosopher Peggy Sastre co-wrote the Le Monde letter. She spies danger in the naming and shaming promoted by #MeToo and its French counterpart Balance ton Porc – "Call Out Your Pig".
"We must not go back to some medieval logic," she says. "It leads to witch hunts, to a lot of excesses, to a lot of people wrongly accused."
Young YouTube star Marion Seclin, whose anti-harassment videos go viral, dismisses Sastre and the other Le Monde signatories as the old guard of French womanhood.
"I don't need someone to open the door for me or pay for my dinner because I earn my own money," she says.
Trailer
Recently Updated Shows
20/20
20/20 continues to combine hard-hitting investigative reports, newsmaker interviews and compelling human interest and feature stories.
The Gilded Age
The American Gilded Age was a period of immense economic change, of huge fortunes made and lost, and the rise of disparity between old money and new.
Against this backdrop of change, the story begins in 1882 — introducing young Marian Brook, the orphaned daughter of a Union general, who moves into the New York City home of her thoroughly old money aunts Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Brook. Accompanied by Peggy Scott, an accomplished African-American woman, Marian inadvertently becomes enmeshed in a social war between one of her aunts, a scion of the old money set, and her stupendously rich neighbors, a ruthless railroad tycoon and his ambitious wife, George and Bertha Russell.
In this exciting new world that is on the brink of the modern age, will Marian follow the established rules of society, or forge her own path?
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is set in the 32nd century, a time period in the far-future of the Star Trek franchise where Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets are recovering from a cataclysmic event, as depicted in Star Trek: Discovery. Indroduces viewers to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors, they discover what it takes to become Starfleet officers as they navigate blossoming friendships, explosive rivalries, first loves and a new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself.
All American
When a rising high school football player from South Central L.A. is recruited to play for Beverly Hills High, the wins, losses and struggles of two families from vastly different worlds — Compton and Beverly Hills — begin to collide. Inspired by the life of pro football player Spencer Paysinger.
