Feminists and Weinstein accuser lash Deneuve for attack on #MeToo

PARIS: Feminists and one of the women who accused fallen Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein of rape turned on French actress Catherine Deneuve Wednesday after she signed an open letter attacking the #MeToo movement for leading a witch-hunt against men.

France´s legendary star Deneuve and some 100 other women put their names to a declaration condemning the avalanche of "denunciations" that has followed claims that the Hollywood producer sexually assaulted women over decades.

But Italian actress Asia Argento, who was among the first to accuse Weinstein, led a backlash, tweeting: "Deneuve and other French women tell the world how their interiorised misogyny has lobotomised them to the point of no return."

A group of leading French feminists also excoriated Deneuve in a counterblast letter to French radio, branding her and the other signatories as "apologists for rape".

To say that #MeToo was puritanical and driven by a "hatred of men" was "contemptuous" of the victims of abuse and harassment, the feminists insisted, accusing the signatories of trying to "slam back the lid" blown off by the Weinstein scandal.

They claimed most of the women who signed the letter to Le Monde daily were "recidivists in defending child abusers", a reference to film director Roman Polanski, who Deneuve has supported in his long fight against extradition to the US on rape charges.

"Their letter is like a tired old uncle who doesn´t understand what is happening," the feminists said.

"The (male chauvinist) pigs and their allies have reason to be worried. Their old world is fast disappearing," they added.

The Deneuve letter had complained that "men have been punished summarily, forced out of their jobs when all they did was touch someone´s knee or try to steal a kiss."

It was also signed by Catherine Millet, whose explicit 2002 memoir, "The Sexual Life of Catherine M.", was a defence of libertine lifestyles.