PARIS — They appeared like pure allies. Each are girls within the male-dominated world of French politics. Each companions within the leftist alliance governing Paris. Each feminists.
However the two girls have come to outline the competing strains of French feminism from totally different generations and lately discovered themselves at reverse ends of an old style political brawl.
Anne Hidalgo, 61, the second-term mayor of Paris recurrently talked about as a future presidential contender, embodies a practice of French feminism that fights for the rights of girls inside the authorized framework in step with the nation’s universalist values like equality and liberty.
Alice Coffin, 42, a freshly elected metropolis councilor and longtime feminist activist, is part of France’s latest wave of feminism, which locations the difficulty of violence in opposition to girls on the core of the motion and isn’t afraid to tackle a strong, entrenched male institution.
Their most up-to-date flash level was Christophe Girard, a feared energy dealer in Paris who was the mayor’s deputy for tradition and have become a spotlight of controversy this yr for his longstanding help of Gabriel Matzneff, the author celebrated by a sure French elite regardless of overtly acknowledging that he engaged in intercourse with teenage ladies and prepubescent boys.
For Ms. Coffin, dislodging Mr. Girard from energy lay on the coronary heart of her feminism. For months, Ms. Hidalgo defended Mr. Girard, even after Ms. Coffin and different feminists pressed him to step down as deputy mayor in late July, distancing herself solely after The New York Times reported fresh accusations that he had sexually abused a teenage boy years in the past. Mr. Girard denied the accusations, and is now below investigation by prosecutors.
The case has reignited a fierce debate over feminism in France, a rustic the place the #MeToo motion was gradual to take off, however the place girls like Ms. Coffin have made different feminists more and more uneasy by searching for to publicly confront males suspected of abuse.
“We’re focusing on highly effective males, which matches over badly in France,” Ms. Coffin mentioned. “It’s a brand new step — it’s totally different from the feminism that was practiced earlier than.”
The mayor’s tweets — defending her deputy and singling out Ms. Coffin and one other councilwoman for criticism — led to such an avalanche of threats in opposition to Ms. Coffin that she was positioned below police safety for 15 days.
Ms. Hidalgo declined interview requests for this text.
“The Girard affair has been some extent of crystallization,” Camille Froidevaux-Metterie, a number one feminist thinker, mentioned. In her view, it dramatized the primary divide in French feminism at the moment: “the tensions between feminists who’ve made the battle in opposition to sexual violence the true coronary heart of their wrestle” and a political feminist institution that has exhibited “relative deafness” to these aspirations.
Impressed by #MeToo, youthful feminists have led the cost in opposition to Mr. Girard who, to them, represented an outdated order that sanctioned, or on the very least turned a blind eye to, the abuse of girls. To them, conventional feminists had been generally complicit.
“A pillar of feminism at the moment is to take heed to victims and to name into query the impunity of aggressors or doable aggressors, and the way the justice system treats them,” mentioned Chloé Deschamps, an 18-year-old scholar who had carefully adopted the case involving Mr. Girard.
In France, Black and Muslim feminists have particularly clashed with conventional feminists — largely older white girls who, in step with France’s universalist beliefs, are inclined to oppose robust racial and ethnic identification.
In 2017, Mayor Hidalgo grew to become embroiled in a feud with a Black feminist group known as Mwasi after she threatened to close down their convention as a result of a number of the panels had been restricted to Black girls — or, as she described it in a tweet, “forbidden to whites.”
Fania Noël, a pacesetter of Mwasi, mentioned that she didn’t have any widespread floor with the mayor’s imaginative and prescient of feminism. However she discovered “factors of convergence” with Ms. Coffin, who has expressed her admiration for Black feminists.
“The feminism of Alice Coffin is a radical feminism that’s in opposition to patriarchy, and never for an lodging of it,” Ms. Noël mentioned.
However extra conventional feminists fear that, in a deeply patriarchal society, the pointed assaults in opposition to Mr. Girard will gasoline a backlash amongst males. Additionally they see the denunciation of highly effective males as an American-inspired technique deeply alien to their imaginative and prescient of feminism, one which has sought, in France’s universalist custom, equality for ladies by insisting that they had been no totally different from males.
The mayor’s feminism produces concrete motion, addressing issues with public coverage, mentioned Hélène Bidard, the deputy mayor for equality. Every of the previous three metropolis budgets had elevated funding for teams supporting victims of gender violence, Ms. Bidard mentioned.
In regards to the divergences in French feminism, Ms. Bidard mentioned, “There are variations within the strategy, however all of us have the identical aim, the identical imaginative and prescient of society.”
From the beginning, #MeToo has confronted resistance from some main Frenchwomen, most notably in a public letter signed by the actress Catherine Deneuve and different well-known figures, and the motion has had restricted impression.
However previously yr, a brand new era of feminists has denounced highly effective males who’ve been accused of sexual misconduct, together with the movie administrators Roman Polanski and Christophe Ruggia, and Gérald Darmanin, a politician who was lately appointed France’s new inside minister and head of the nationwide police.
Early this yr, in a guide known as “Consent,” Vanessa Springora recounted being trapped in an abusive relationship with Mr. Matzneff when she was 14 and he was 50. After Mr. Girard’s help of the author was revealed in an article in The New York Instances, Ms. Coffin and different feminists successfully pressed him to resign.
Ms. Hidalgo, a political veteran of the Socialist Occasion who grew to become the primary feminine mayor of Paris in 2014, initially strongly backed Mr. Girard, whereas singling out Ms. Coffin and one other feminist councilor, Raphaëlle Rémy-Leleu, for criticism.
That was so despite the fact that Ms. Hidalgo has lengthy recognized herself as a feminist. She served as a deputy mayor overseeing equality within the early 2000s, and, in her campaign for re-election early this yr, talked about turning Paris right into a “feminist capital” that may prolong companies for ladies and ladies, together with in education, well being and help for victims of home violence.
“No one denies the feminism of Anne Hidalgo,” mentioned Christine Bard, an knowledgeable on the historical past of feminism.
However she contrasted Ms. Hidalgo and her “universalist feminism’’ with Ms. Coffin, whom she described as a “pure product” of the most recent wave of feminism.
Ms. Coffin lately received a seat on the Paris Metropolis Council as a Inexperienced Occasion member, however had beforehand carved out a reputation for herself in Paris as an activist and journalist. She co-founded an affiliation for L.G.B.T. journalists. She was a pacesetter in La Barbe, a feminist affiliation that deploys political theater, together with staging protests with girls sporting beards.
In a two-hour interview, Ms. Coffin was cautious to emphasise the continuity of French feminism. However she additionally made it clear that additional progress for ladies might solely be made by a brand new type of feminism that “turns the mirror on males” and that’s unafraid to precise its anger.
“To efficiently cross new levels, now we have to have the ability to say, sure, males are waging struggle at us,” she mentioned.
In France, feminists confronted strain to say males as allies and categorical love for them, she mentioned, including, “We’re all the time requested to reaffirm that we’re not indignant. However, me, I’m very indignant.”
When Mr. Girard resigned abruptly as deputy mayor, he blamed a “new McCarthyism” and “cancel tradition” — language instantly adopted by some conventional feminists who attacked Ms. Coffin.
One of the crucial revered historians of feminism, Michelle Perrot, described Ms. Coffin’s model of feminism as “an extra that may solely hurt the reason for girls.” One other main determine in French feminism, Élisabeth Badinter, derided Ms. Coffin and #MeToo as consultant of a motion that results in “a totalitarian world.”
One other critic, Belinda Cannone, a author and feminist, mentioned youthful feminists had been obsessive about victimhood whereas her era’s universalist feminism was in regards to the empowerment of girls. Whereas Ms. Hidalgo didn’t make feminism central to her identification, her profitable political profession spoke for itself, Ms. Cannone mentioned.
The deal with violence by males was a feminism that’s “very emotional and never fastidiously thought by,” Ms. Cannone mentioned.
“Was getting Girard kicked out that essential?” Ms. Cannone mentioned.
For a lot of youthful feminists, the reply was apparent.
Specializing in the violence in opposition to girls is central to re-examining the imbalance of energy inherent in lots of relationships.
“It goes to the center of the lives of women and men,’’ mentioned Victoire Tuaillon, the creator of a preferred podcast that examines masculinity and gender relations. “Everyone is pressured to look again and mirror on one’s life and generally discover such horrors that you just need to depart the monsters below the mattress.”
After prosecutors started investigating the sexual abuse allegations in opposition to Mr. Girard, he introduced that he was withdrawing from lively politics, no less than for now, although he saved his seat on the Metropolis Council.
Placed on the defensive, Mayor Hidalgo modified her tone in her tweets. “Because the mayor of Paris and a feminist activist for equal rights,” she mentioned, she would all the time help the victims of rape and sexual violence.
“She must reassert her solidarity with the feminist trigger,” mentioned Ms. Bard, the historian.
As for Ms. Coffin, she is now spearheading efforts to push Mr. Girard off the council altogether. Lengthy an activist, Ms. Coffin mentioned she was conscious that she was now a feminist working within the political institution — not in contrast to Mayor Hidalgo.
“I imagine within the advantage of feminists contained in the state equipment as a result of I’m satisfied that it will possibly work whereas retaining a radical kind,” she mentioned. “And for now, I haven’t been confirmed fallacious.”
Théophile Larcher contributed reporting.
