A revolution of respect in France

Readers of the French newspaper Le Monde were confronted with a striking image on the front page Tuesday. It showed 100 public figures with personal stories of sexist or sexual violence implicating some of their country’s most venerated institutions – cinema, government, media, hospitals, and churches. The paper called the visual “unprecedented in our history.”

After years of halting public debate, France may be at a turning point on an issue that challenges some of its deepest social and cultural mores. Rather than unraveling French identity, however, the opening of a more honest public reckoning reveals a society striving to renew its core values of equality and individual dignity.

“We are at the beginning of a transition ... a very profound cultural change,” said President Emmanuel Macron in an interview with Elle magazine last week. “The first stage is that of the liberation of speech, after all these years of suffering and unsaid things. With this listening, grant freedom, trust and kindness to the victims. ... When systems – whether professional, religious, structural – are organized as systems of humiliation, of domination, they betray our values and sully us all.”

The #MeToo movement that catalyzed public debate about sexist and sexual violence in the United States several years ago encouraged intermittent scrutiny within France. But the issue has gained new momentum in recent months since an actor named Judith Godrèche accused two of France’s most prominent directors of abusing her on set when she was teenager. She has addressed Parliament and spoke at the César Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars. A documentary film she wrote and directed on sexual violence debuts this week at the annual Cannes Film Festival, which opened Tuesday.

Her advocacy has broken a dam. More victims are speaking out. Their defenders face fewer attacks on social media. Parliament has agreed to form a commission on sexual violence against minors in various cultural sectors, including fashion, at her request. “The difference now,” Clémentine Poidatz, another French actor, told The New York Times recently, “is people are listening.”

That receptivity coincides with mounting evidence of wider changes in attitudes about equality and acceptable behavior within French society. The film industry is embracing changes that create safer working conditions for actors involved in romantic scenes. In March, France enshrined reproductive rights in its constitution. Younger women are rejecting workplace taboos around feminine hygiene. Vocal critics of sexual violence include the ministers of sport and the armed forces. Mr. Macron has promised a comprehensive bill later this year that would, among other things, redefine France’s legal concept of consent.

Societies are not static. They adopt higher standards when public debate results in “improved interpersonal understanding ... increased respect among participants ... [and] better solutions to a variety of practical, moral and intellectual problems,” a 2019 study on social change published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology concluded. For France, and French women in particular, an honest dialogue marks a renewing of equality, fraternity, and liberty.