In France, The #MeToo Movement Has Yet To Live Up To Women's Hopes
"The excuse we hear in France is that we have the French seduction type. ... it's in our culture and our tradition and blah, blah, blah," says a former member of parliament.
As a budding young soprano in the 1990s, Anne-Sophie Schmidt was selected to sing the lead role in an opera conducted by the renowned Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit and the National Orchestra of France. It was a great honor to work with Dutoit, she says.
But then the harassment started.
After one concert, Schmidt says, Dutoit pushed her up against a wall and forcibly kissed and groped her.
"At first, I just tried to brush it off and I took my distance from Dutoit," Schmidt says. "But I had the leading role, so I had to work with him very closely on breathing and tempo. He understood I was trying to rebuff him and he began being really nasty, trying to humiliate me in front of the orchestra by saying things like I was singing off-key."
