Forced marriage is the MeToo generation’s ‘no go’ subject

By now you’ve probably heard of Marie Laguerre. The 22-year-old student was punched in the face last week by a passer-by, a sickening attack that was caught on CCTV and has since gone viral. It’s caused uproar around the world, and is being seen as evidence of the physical and verbal abuse with which Frenchwomen have to contend all too often.

Laguerre was struck because she gave short shrift to the obscene comments of a man who crossed her path on a busy Parisian street. Marlène Schiappa, France’s gender equality minister, described the incident as an assault on the “freedom of women”; Schiappa deserves much praise for her dominant role in driving through a bill that was passed by parliament on Wednesday, and which will introduce fines of up to €750 for sexual harassment in public. “The political response must be strong and it is, because for the first time in France we will fine those responsible for street harassment,” said Schiappa.

Which makes Schiappa’s silence on another case of a Frenchwoman suffering at the hands of male aggressors all the more disappointing.