Frenchwomen — including Catherine Deneuve — come out in defense of sexual freedom and the freedom to importune.

Oh, now we must struggle with a long letter, written in French, by some French women who apparently have some reservations about some aspects of the American enthusiasm for something we sometimes call #MeToo. Do they understand us better than we understand them? I don't know! I've seen the full letter in French — here — but I can't read French enough to catch nuance.

Le philosophe Ruwen Ogien défendait une liberté d’offenser indispensable à la création artistique. De même, nous défendons une liberté d’importuner, indispensable à la liberté sexuelle. Nous sommes aujourd’hui suffisamment averties pour admettre que la pulsion sexuelle est par nature offensive et sauvage, mais nous sommes aussi suffisamment clairvoyantes pour ne pas confondre drague maladroite et agression sexuelle.

I can put that into Google translate:

The philosopher Ruwen Ogien defended a freedom of offense indispensable to the artistic creation. In the same way, we defend a freedom to annoy, indispensable to the sexual freedom. We are now sufficiently warned to admit that the sexual drive is by nature offensive and savage, but we are also sufficiently clairvoyant not to confuse clumsy drag and sexual assault.

That's obviously an awful translation. But in what ways is it awful? There is an English word "importune," which means "To ask or request something of (a person) persistently or pressingly; to accost with questions or requests; to beg, beseech" (OED). So why say "annoy"? I've also seen "pester" and "bother"?

The New Yorker article about the letter begins with an anecdote in which a woman leaning against a wall in Paris, suddenly had a man "running his hands over my breasts and my belly." The writer of the article, Lauren Collins, continues with:

I hadn’t thought about it again until I saw, yesterday, that a hundred Frenchwomen, including the actress Catherine Deneuve and the writer Catherine Millet, had signed an opinion piece in Le Monde, defending “a freedom to bother, indispensable to sexual freedom.” “A freedom to bother”—it was the first time I’d heard that one. (The word that the women used, “importuner,” ranges in connotation from bugging someone to really disturbing her. Whatever the level of offense, the behavior is clearly unwanted.) 

But the English word "importune" is about speech, not touching, and we don't have the same kind of idea that people aren't allowed to say things to us unless we consent. I'd guess that what the letter meant is that people need to be free to ask about sex. How can a sexual encounter begin? Isn't verbal consent what is recommended? It's really wrong to conflate speech and behavior here! The letter itself warns us not to "to confuse clumsy drag and sexual assault" — or so Google translates it. I can see that "drague" doesn't mean "drag" but is slang for "flirting." It seems to me that the letter is trying to preserve the pathway toward sexual behavior and wanting some tolerance about the awkward and imperfect overtures we make toward each other.

There's much more to the letter and to the Collins article, but I'm going to stop here for now. I am very uncomfortable with the translation, and I'm also very uncomfortable with the torrent of English language reports about sexual accusations. It's easy to say no touching without consent. Words are much more complicated, and I've struggled with them enough for one blog post and will self-silence for now.

"One can’t help but wonder what Trogneux’s ex-husband must make of the double freak occurrence of losing his wife to a teen-ager, only to have him turn out, decades later, to be the... Président de la République."

"Her elder daughter, Laurence, was in Macron’s class.... [W]hen Macron’s parents heard about the affair, they initially thought their son was seeing Laurence. 'You don’t understand, you already have your life,' Macron’s mother reportedly told a tearful Trogneux, who refused to promise to break off the affair. 'He won’t have children!' He has no biological children.... [Now that] he is elected, the leaders of France, Germany, and the U.K. will have zero biological children among them. (Angela Merkel has two stepsons; Theresa May and her husband of thirty-six years were unable to have children. May spoke about the pain of that realization after a political rival suggested that she had more of a stake in the future than May by virtue of being a mother.)"

From "Emmanuel Macron and the Modern Family," by Lauren Collins (in The New Yorker).

ADDED: The Prime Minister of Italy,Paolo Gentiloni, 62, also has no children, so "With Macron, the leaders of Europe's 4 biggest economies have a combined 0 biological children."

President Trump, by contrast, has 5 children, the youngest of whom is named Barron, which is pronounced the same as "barren."  (I was going to say Trump is not barren, but "barren" is a word that applies only to women, and interestingly enough, the etymology is, according to the OED,  based on the root bar which means "man, male," so that what when you say a woman is "barren," it means "male-like.")