It was entirely predictable that after actress Catherine Deneuve and 100 other French women signed a letter criticizing the excesses of the #MeToo movement, the backlash from hysterical feminists would force some kind of apology.

Yesterday, Deneuve proved to be as susceptible to pressure to conform as anyone else.  She apologized to victims of sexual assault.

AFP:

French film star Catherine Deneuve, who set off a worldwide feminist backlash for bashing the #MeToo movement, has apologi[z]ed to victims of sexual assault, saying there [is] "nothing good" about harassment.

She was one of 100 prominent French women who signed an open letter last week defending men's freedom to "hit on" women, and inferring that women fondled on public transport should just get over it.

But the screen legend distanced herself "from certain signatories who have distorted the spirit of the text by expanding upon it in the media," and apologi[z]ed "to the victims of these hideous acts who might have felt offended by the letter[."]

"It is to them and them alone that I offer my apologies," the actress said in a letter published Sunday on the website of French daily Liberation.

What Deneuve and the other French women were trying to accomplish with their open letter was to differentiate between sexual assault and sexual harassment.  "Rape is a crime," the letter said, "but insistent or clumsy flirting is not an offense, nor is gallantry macho aggression."

The letter continued:

To make matters worse, they wrote, "[T]he movement chains women to the status of the eternal victim" by framing them as "poor little things who are dominated by demon phallocrats."

Not only that, but the movement has spawned a wave of hatred toward the accused, they said, who are mentioned in the same breath as sexual aggressors without being given the chance to defend themselves.

This new type of "swift justice" has already claimed its victims, they wrote, citing men forced to resign "when all they did wrong was touch a knee."

This comment is a clear reference to the resignation of former [U.K.] [d]efense [s]ecretary Michael Fallon, who stepped down in November after admitting to touching journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer's knee in 2002.

The vicious backlash against Deneuve, a pioneering feminist in the 1970s, reveals the modern feminist movement as more ideologically conformist than anything the "patriarchy" has ever come up with.  Deneuve and the other French women are simply trying to inject some common sense and reason into a debate that has gone off the rails.

For this, she must be punished:

The Le Monde letter triggered a wave of indignation worldwide, with a group of leading French feminists branding Deneuve and the other signatories as "apologists for rape[."]

Italian actress Asia Argento, who has accused [Harvey] Weinstein of rape, was equally excoriating.  "Deneuve and other French women tell the world how their interiori[z]ed misogyny has lobotomi[z]ed them to the point of no return," she tweeted.

And the letter's assertions that being "fondled on a metro ... was a non-event" to some women, and a man's right to hit on a woman [is] fundamental to sexual freedom, sparked particular fury.

Against this, Deneuve said in her letter to Liberation that the solution to sexual harassment "will come with the upbringing of our boys and girls," adding that businesses must also be tougher.

How can anyone believe that what was written in the letter was an "apology for rape"?  Only those seeking to impose stifling, deadening conformity of thought on others would make such a hysterically outrageous statement.

The one hope is that this kind of tyrannical conformity of thought will eventually be defeated.  Even a powerful entity like the Soviet Union couldn't maintain total control over the thinking of its citizens forever. 

But until that day comes, straying from the approved narrative will come with a cost.