When I moved to rural France with my husband in 2002, it was the realisation of a dream I’d nurtured since I was a little girl.
I’d even planned what my house would look like. It would have shutters, stone walls and pots of flowers.
What I never considered when I imagined my French idyll was the predatory nature of Frenchmen.
Over the past 22 years, I have experienced unwelcome advances such as groping, flashing, and exposure to lewd and sexually explicit language. Countless times I’ve been approached with indecent proposals and even invited to participate in group sexual activities, despite my advanced age nearing 70.
No aspect of my life seems immune to these occurrences. As a property owner in need of renovation work, I built relationships with local electricians, builders, and handymen to get the job done.
Even following my husband’s departure six years after relocating, I called upon a local gardener – let’s refer to him as Jean – with the assumption that I would receive quality service without being taken advantage of.
By now aged 51, I was on friendly terms with Jean and his family. I’d had dinner with his wife and they had both been to mine for drinks.
I certainly wasn’t expecting what happened next. Jean assessed the damage, then said: ‘I’ll sort it, you don’t have to pay me. We can just go to bed and it can be our little secret.’
In France, men behave differently towards women and there is little pretence that they respect us, writes MARIA-LOUISE WARNE
That wasn’t what I’d had in mind for good customer service.
But this is France, a country where male attitudes can make it seem like feminism never existed.
I’m not even talking about strangers but neighbours, colleagues – even those supposedly upstanding members of the community.
Let me be clear, I’m no shrinking violet and can usually hold my own in male company. Throughout my 30s and 40s I was a successful saleswoman regularly working with male colleagues in the southwest of England. But in France? Men here behave differently towards women and there is little pretence that they respect us.
Over the past few months male behaviour in the country I now call home has been put under a harsh spotlight.
The world has rightly been horrified at what Gisèle Pelicot experienced at the hands of her husband – who drugged her then invited strangers to assault her while unconscious – and the 50 other men found guilty last week of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault.
What she endured was extreme and almost beyond imagination.
Still, though my own experiences might have been at the other end of the scale, I wasn’t completely surprised.
Though my own experiences were at the other end of the scale from Gisele Pelicot’s, I wasn’t completely surprised at what she endured
At the start of the trial Louis Bonnet, 74, the mayor of Mazan, where the disgusting atrocities occurred, to my mind revealed everything about male attitudes towards sexual violence when he observed somewhat dismissively in an interview to the BBC, ‘after all, no one died’.
He has since apologised for the remarks but it’s notable that the men who assaulted Gisèle were so ‘ordinary’ – firefighters, soldiers, handymen, doting grandfathers – that they have been dubbed Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr Everyman).
Because the truth is that, while France rails against stereotypes that everyone here is indulging in affairs and the like, this is a country where a culture of misogyny has long been allowed to flourish, and accusations of sexual crimes ignored.
Since 1978 France has offered refuge to Roman Polanski, who fled the US after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old. Last year, after French star Gérard Depardieu was accused of rape and sexual assault, allegations he denies, a group of 56 prominent actors, directors and producers – including former first lady Carla Bruni – published a letter saying the accusations were ‘an attack on art itself’. President Emmanuel Macron even described the actor as ‘the pride of France’, who was being subjected to a ‘manhunt’.
And in 2018, as the rest of the world embraced the MeToo movement, 100 high-profile French women, including actress Catherine Deneuve, signed an open letter dubbing the anti-harassment campaign ‘puritanical’ and accusing it of censorship and intolerance. ‘Rape is a crime but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cackhandedly, is not – nor is being gentlemanly a macho attack,’ they wrote.
Instead, they avowed that men should be ‘free to hit on’ women.
As my encounters have shown, this ‘right’ is one that French men are exercising. Though, naturally, I turned down Jean’s proposition of sex in exchange for his gardening services, since then whenever we are on our own he takes the opportunity to slip his hand up my skirt or rub his groin against my bottom.
Once, when I arrived at his home for dinner with him and his wife carrying an apple crumble in both hands, he took the opportunity to cup and jiggle my breasts. I wanted to burst into tears.
I’ve asked him politely (and not so politely) to stop it but it’s like water off a duck’s back. I can only assume he thinks my protests are part of the fun and that as a single woman I’m ‘fair game’.
What makes things worse is that his wife simply laughs at his antics. Like Deneuve & Co and so many other French women, she sees no problem with this awful behaviour and so gives her husband, and the scores of others like him, no reason to stop.
You might ask why on earth I still socialise with them. But while I’ve tried to distance myself, if I cut ties with every man who sexually misbehaved here I wouldn’t speak to anyone.
Some may argue that sexual harassment happens in every country. But I just don’t think all I’ve experienced these last 20 years would have happened to me in Britain – certainly not on such a scale. And if it did, the response of my ‘friends’ would not be to laugh it off with a knowing smile.
Recently I was out for my daily walk with my dogs when a white van stopped in front of me and a portly guy struggled out. He then unzipped his trousers, pulled out his manhood and, after making sure I’d seen it, urinated in front of me. As he zipped up, he smirked in my direction, gripping and thrusting his nether regions as though he was holding on to the crown jewels.
It’s not the first time something like that has happened and while men in the UK might relieve themselves discreetly by the side of the road I struggle to imagine many taking so much pleasure in doing it in front of a woman.
Then there was the businessman who contacted me for lessons after I began teaching English. Though in his 40s and many years my junior, he still tried it on, cornering me in his kitchen, lunging at me and saying: ‘I don’t care if it’s just a one off or regular but we both live alone. We should have sex.’
When I firmly told him no thank you, he immediately backed off and we continued the lesson as though nothing had happened. And that’s the thing with Frenchmen, they will always try it on and occasionally, I imagine, they get lucky.
My latest unwelcome encounter was with an electrician. He was here to check the fuse box but said I need more work.
Now he has started to send provocative emojis and telling me he can’t wait to see me again.
There might be something very Benny Hill about wires and sockets (his line of vulgar jokes, not mine) but each time one of these uninvited messages pop up they remind me how vulnerable I am.
I could get someone else to do the work but I’ve no confidence that they’d behave any better.
You might assume this behaviour is only an issue in rural communities with ageing populations who have never heard of political correctness but I hear of similar episodes happening in Paris and Bordeaux.
So, will the verdict of the Pelicot trial change the behaviour of Frenchmen? While I’d love to imagine it will, I very much doubt it. It is notable that of the 51 men found guilty, only one – Gisèle’s ex-husband – received the maximum jail sentence available.
The behaviour of Frenchmen is making me question my future.
I’m even considering a return to the sleepy Devon village I grew up in. In my youth I would have considered it boring but at least there I know there is little chance of being propositioned at every turn.
- As told to Samantha Brick
