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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

And yet, given the scale of the backlash against Deneuve, especially against her suggestion that men should have the ‘right to hit on women’, you could be forgiven for thinking she had put her name to a letter asserting that a women’s place is in the home. We’ve had French women’s rights activists denouncing Deneuve as ‘a bit like the awkward work colleague or annoying uncle who doesn’t understand what’s happening’. And we’ve had actor and director Asia Argento tweet: ‘Catherine Deneuve and other French women tell the world how their interiorised misogyny has lobotomised them to the point of no return.’ In other words, if you refuse to fall in line with our victimhood narrative, we’ll casually rebrand you as out-of-touch, ignorant and mentally ill. Nice. It seems the irony is lost on them that the only misogyny being perpetrated here is against female #MeToo dissenters like Deneuve.

Emily Dinsmore

20 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Paul Marks

    Good post.

  • Don't tell my wife

    Sigh, Catherine Deneuve. I’ve carried a torch for her since the Umbrellas of Cherborg. And she’s still beautiful. And with common sense.

  • Thailover

    Feminism isn’t only against (“Toxic”) masculinity; it’s also against femininity. They want everyone to be unattractive sexless blobs with short blue hair. And of course, inept and not very intelligent, lest you would be an “ablest”. Dealing with the Left always involves some sort of race towards the bottom.

  • Eric

    Heh heh. “Interiorized”? Argento needs to step up her feminist game.

    “Deneuve and other French women” (all of them?) are to be cherished.

  • terence patrick hewett

    Lizzie Borden with an axe,
    Gave her mother 40 whacks,
    When she saw what she had done,
    She gave her father 41.

  • Lloyd Martin Hendaye

    Recall Rebecca Sophia Clarke, 1833 – 1906, an American writer of 45 “children’s fiction” books, including the long-running, vastly popular “Little Prudy” series inspired by her tribe of nieces and nephews.

    The most lasting of these, resonating to this claptrap feministical day, was titled “Little Prudy Keeping House.”

    You say, “Kinder, Kirche, Kuche”. We say, “The Marine Corps needs men.” Go ahead, girls– breed yourselves out of the population.

  • the other rob

    Go ahead, girls– breed yourselves out of the population.

    That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.

    I suspect that those criticizing Deneuve are but a tiny minority of French women. Wasn’t it only recently that a survey showed that the majority wouldn’t trust a politician who didn’t have a mistress?

  • Any woman who refuses to give the cringing apology the twitter-mob demand will thus prove herself to have more civil courage than the guy why landed the probe on a comet, or Lewis Hamilton, or many a supposedly brave and/or intelligent man in the public domain who, on been targeted for a remark (or a shirt), swiftly caved.

  • CaptDMO

    Who were “The Ellen Jamesians”?
    NOT to be confused with “The Ellen James Society”
    Real life women that had their “message”, and work, usurped by the bat-5hit crazy….
    Erin Pizzey

  • Alisa

    That is France, Niall – see other-rob’s comment. The attitudes of the French towards relationships between the sexes are very different from those in the Anglosphere. I suspect that like with many other things, it is both a blessing and a curse. One consequence of these attitudes is that France does not seem to be nearly as infected by feminism as the Anglosphere, while the other is the fact that Deneuve saw fit to say something in defense of Roman Polanski, among the other things she said with which I do agree.

  • Schrodinger's Dog

    Niall Kilmartin,

    Spot on. I’ve always wondered why people surrender to the Twitter mob. Why not just tell them to … well, unless they’re hermaphrodites, they’d find it impossible. It’s not like they’re going to actually do anything about it. And they also have very short attention spans: in a day or two, they’ll have found another victim.

  • I believe Alisa (January 13, 2018 at 3:56 pm) is correct to say that it may require less (maybe a good deal less) civil courage in France than it does in the anglosphere.

    (I also could not agree more with Alisa as regards any praise of Roman Polanski – commenting in haste, I missed that bit. Thanks for pointing it out.)

    By all means laud civil courage shown in the anglosphere according to its greater desserts in this field. (I see Perry lauds Amy in the very next post.)

  • Alisa

    “It’s a case that has been dealt with, it’s a case that has been judged. There have been agreements between Roman Polanski and this woman,” she said on a French television network in March

    Not exactly praise, but it still bothers me. I just hope that bringing up that pedophile in that context wasn’t her own idea, but rather that she was specifically asked about him. And even if so, I would disagree with that specific opinion. But hey, nobody’s perfect, especially not the French 🙂

  • bobby b

    “Spot on. I’ve always wondered why people surrender to the Twitter mob.”

    If you have the freedom to ignore it, great.

    But if you depend upon your paycheck and are employed by or market yourself to other people, mob hysteria can easily leave you broke and jobless and without prospects.

    Or if you cannot abide a solitary life, and every one of your social connections lies on one side of the political continuum, and you are accused of some heresy via Twitter, you could be left a solitary outcast.

    If you have the ability and the predilection to sever yourself from social and economic dependencies, Twitter-Rage can be entertaining to watch. If you don’t, it can be terrifying.

  • Snorri Godhi

    Schrodinger’s Dog:

    I’ve always wondered why people surrender to the Twitter mob.

    bobby b:

    If you have the freedom to ignore it, great.
    But if you depend upon your paycheck and are employed by or market yourself to other people, mob hysteria can easily leave you broke and jobless and without prospects.

    The one statement is not incompatible with the other: mob hysteria can leave you with few if any prospects, but surrendering to the Twitter mob can ruin the few prospects that you might have. Take a stand, and at the very least you’ll feel good about yourself; hopefully, you’ll get substantive support.

    if you cannot abide a solitary life, and every one of your social connections lies on one side of the political continuum, and you are accused of some heresy via Twitter, you could be left a solitary outcast.

    If everyone of your social connections lies on the wrong side of the political “”spectrum””, you should have isolated yourself from them a long time ago.

  • Snorri Godhi

    WRT Asia Argento, it should count as a mitigating circumstance that, apparently, she has herself been the target of mob hysteria in Italy, for coming out about the sexual abuse that she suffered; as a result of which hysteria, she moved from Italy to Germany. (Moving out of Italy was probably a wise decision; not sure about the chosen destination.)

    It seems to me that there are at least 4 kinds of western countries, when it comes to sexual harassment:
    * countries like the US, where ruling-class men are above the law (unless Republican), and middle-class men are guilty even if proven innocent;
    * countries like the UK and probably Sweden, where middle-class men are guilty until proven innocent, while Muslim men are above the law until their racket is discovered by the press;
    * countries like France and Italy, where harassment is condoned within limits, the limits being obviously broader for the ruling class;
    * countries where the boundaries for the ruling class are actually stricter than for the middle class, and few if any excuses are made for Muslims. I like to think that this is the case for Nordic countries other than Sweden, as well as the Netherlands; but am not sure.

  • Thailover

    “Deneuve and other French women (all of them?) are to be cherished.”

    Given impeccable hygiene and all the appropriate shaved bits…yes.

  • Thailover

    And lest we forget, Polanski didn’t merely seduce a 13yr old girl. He drugged her while mixing it with alcohol ( a huge no-no), then a*s raped this virgin girl and then ignored her pleas to go home and take her much needed epilepsy medicine to avoid having a potentially fatal grand-mal seizure (a lie she invented to escape this creep). Yes, he refused to take her home even though the eminent health risk (i.e. he believed her, but ignored the apparent risk). That is, he refused to take her home until he was through using her like a fleshlight.

    And Angelica Houston walked in on them (it was Jack Nicholson’s apartment and Jack was away), then quickly walked back out, even though the petite little girl was obviously an early teen if not preteen.

    If DC is a swamp, then “Hollywood” is a scum pit.

  • I like to think that this is the case for Nordic countries other than Sweden. (Snorri Godhi, January 14, 2018 at 8:19 pm)

    My impression is that nordic countries other than Sweden are all better than Sweden but far from free of PC in this area – or in others. It would be good news of that is too harsh a summary – but being saner than the Swedes leaves room for many a PC victim.

  • Snorri Godhi

    Niall: i doubt that any country is free of PC; and of course, the local news-media get the international news from the BBC, NYT, etc, so their views of eg Trump are heavily biased.

    Some anecdotal evidence: i know a Danish professor who got alimony from his wife when she asked for a divorce, and shared custody of the children.
    OTOH i read about a Swiss/British man whose Finnish wife eloped to Finland with her lesbian lover; the wife proceeded to drink herself to death, after which Finnish courts granted custody of the children to the lesbian lover. (Appeal to the European Court of Justice was pending when i read about it.)
    The moral seems to be: if you want to marry a Nordic woman, marry a Dane if you can stand the language (i can’t), or a Norwegian if you want to share in the oil wealth.