Radical Feminisms in the U.S. and France: #BalanceTonPorc, #MeToo, and the Migration of “Dangerous” Gender Ideologies

This essay traces the movements of radical feminist work between the U.S. and France, arguing that the long dialogue between American gender studies and French Feminisms has reached a new and extremely important point with the emergence of the #BalanceTonPorc, #MeToo, and the rise of the far Right in since 2016. More specifically, I analyze the transatlantic exchange of radical feminist theoretical work with two specific contexts in mind. The first is the flow of ideas between French and American feminists during the 1970s and 1980s and the profound impact of French feminisms on the U.S. academy and on American feminist political thought. “French Feminism” was instrumental in reorienting academic disciplines to the study of the social construction of gender and language and in the institutionalization of Women’s Studies and Gender Studies programs in the U.S. I then explore how more recently, politicians and popular figures in France have accused French feminists of importing “dangerous” gender ideologies from the U.S. and lamented the “Americanization” of the French intellectual tradition. As panic spreads about what Macron’s education minister deemed the “intellectual matrix from American universities,” we have witnessed the rise of #MeToo in the U.S. and #BalanceTonPorc in France, both of which aim to name and publicize the quotidian experience of sexual violence.