French actress Catherine Deneuve stood by her criticism of the #MeToo movement while apologizing to abuse victims who felt attacked by a letter that she co-signed.
Deneuve has taken heat from feminists after co-signing a letter calling the movement a “witch hunt.” She responded to the criticism in a letter to the Liberation newspaper, according to Reuters.
“I’m a free woman and always will be,” Deneuve wrote Monday. “I send my sisterly regards to all the victims of abject acts who would have felt attacked by this column in Le Monde, and it is to them, and them only, that I offer my apologies.” (RELATED: Rose McGowan Slams Meryl Streep For Silent Protest Planned For Golden Globes)
Cast member Catherine Deneuve poses during a photocall for the film “La tete haute” out of competition before the opening of the 68th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, May 13, 2015. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
She complained of a “climate of censorship” and “media lynching” taking place.
“An actor can be digitally removed from a movie, the director of a great New York institution can be forced to resign for groping somebody’s buttocks 30 years ago with no other form of trial,” she wrote Monday. “I don’t like this pack mentality, all too common these days.”
But she stopped short of defending a comment made by one of the signers of the original letter, Brigitte Lahaie, who said during a TV interview that a woman can “orgasm during a rape.”
“Saying on a TV channel that you can orgasm during a rape is worse than spitting in the face of all those who suffered from this crime,” Deneuve explained.
The remarks come after Deneuve and close to 100 other women published a letter defending men’s rights to “hit on women” and calling the #MeToo movement nothing but a new form of “puritanism.”
“Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cack-handedly, is not —
nor is men being gentlemanly a macho attack,” the letter read.