Once Haenel publicly accused film director Christophe Ruggia of harassment and “inappropriate sexual contact” that began when she was 12, women in France began speaking out in large numbers. “My story was like the last gram in a chemistry experiment that made everything fall out of solution,” she said. She’s clear about the problem: “Many artists blurred, or wanted to blur, the distinction between sexual behavior and abuse. The debate was centered on the question of [men’s] ‘freedom to bother,’ and on feminists’ purported puritanism. But sexual abuse is abuse, not libertine behavior.” – The New York Times