Dominique Strauss-Kahn has not been convicted of any crime. Neither would it be appropriate to indict French society — the pervasive sexism parading as a celebration of “difference,” the self-indulgence of the “caviar left,” of which he is a prime exemplar — for his behavior. To do so, after all, would be to fall into the same facile trap as the various French commentators who, in the days since the International Monetary Fund chief’s arrest in New York City for sexual assault and attempted rape, have fallen all over the case as an example of American sensationalism and, of course, classic “Puritanism.”
But still.
The arrest of the “great seducer,” as Strauss-Kahn is commonly known in France — on shocking charges of notably unseductive behavior toward an immigrant single mother working as a hotel housekeeper — didn’t come entirely out of the blue for those who have closely observed his behavior toward women over the years. And that behavior has occurred in, and perhaps been encouraged by, a culture that takes a complacent, even complicit attitude toward inappropriate, sometimes predatory sexual action on the part of powerful men, normalizing it, even occasionally romanticizing it, under the catchall clich of Gallic seduction.
Seduction is a ubiquitous word in French culture, used for everything from selling yogurt to flaunting the electric relations between the country’s men and women to marketing the prowess of politicians. That there could be a creepy side to that much vaunted ideal isn’t all that surprising; after all, built into the very concept of seduction is the understanding that someone of lesser power and agency is being seduced. And indeed, over the years, as Strauss-Kahn’s political star rose and he approached his own peak of power and political influence, climbing the ranks of the Socialist Party, serving as Finance Minister and, until this weekend, emerging as the most likely front runner for the 2012 presidential election, observers began to note a growing creepiness in his relationships with women.
In their 2006 book Sexus Politicus, authors Christophe Deloire and Christophe Dubois dedicate a whole chapter to Strauss-Kahn, in which they delicately relate the story of a young journalist who claimed that “DSK” had, in a private interview, shown himself to be “very enterprising, even unseemly, to the point where she thought of bringing charges.” In 2007, when Strauss-Kahn’s candidacy to be the managing director of the IMF was announced, the website Rue89 spoke of his “too pronounced” taste for women. Jean Quatremer, a reporter for the left-wing daily Libration, wrote in his blog at the time that Strauss-Kahn’s “relationships to women” were a “real problem.” “Too insistent … his actions often border on harassment,” Quatremer wrote. “A failing that everyone in the media knows about, but which no one talks about. “
