French national assembly act like construction workers towards female minister

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People are late on the pickup. This stuff is last week's news.

Anyhow, people would do well to understand the specific backstory to this incident and the incessant buzz about Duflot's fashion before trying to use this story to make some personal point.

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It's also worth noting that the guys who did this include the likes of Patrick Balkany, who is a creepy old sexist man who probably wants to hit on women like Duflot. And I'm pretty sure that the UMP's parliamentary cohort of old men are having sadistic fun tormenting Duflot, who is half their age (or more), like a bunch of Grade 12 football team jocks/bullies ganging up on some Grade 9 girl.

You must admit that when you're a 65 year old right-winger who has been used to having only similarly old and stuck-up women as cabinet ministers (most of them - MAM, Bachelot, Morano - of limited intellect), it is quite a sea change to get an avalanche of young(er) women like Duflot, Vallaud-Belkacem, Batho, Fillippetti and Pinel all at once; especially when Duflot acted like a high school student council rep until not too long ago and seems to enjoy pissing people off by wearning jeans and acting 'hip' like a greenie.

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(And I don't get the jeans thing - women can't have pants in France?)

The jeans thing is, yes, unbelievably retarded and largely the work of the Morano gang, who has desperately been trying to score political points by getting enraged over tiny things like the jeans incident or the Algerian flags on May 6. But the jeans thing was, sadly, taken pretty seriously. A lot of people considered that a cabinet minister can't wear casual clothes like jeans, especially to the first day, and should dress in a 'formal' manner or whatever. It's part of the fairly disgusting double standards which seem to apply to women politicians in France and elsewhere (but a lot in France, true enough), who get scrutinized on their physical appearance and fashion tastes. I don't give a crap what a woman minister like Duflot wears, as long as it is decent, and there is no problem with wearing jeans.

Also, on a last note about Duflot, she's really hated by right-wingers and not all left-wingers are fond of her either. Probably plays a role too.

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So basically French right wingers are sexist tools, and also throw a fit about wearing jeans? Wow, those are some Horrible People right there. Honestly if it was reversed and a right wing politician was wearing jeans and some leftist one bashed her for it I'd have a hard time voting for the critic, though I would believe the French left would never be that stupid (not to mention the attitude is very right wing in nature, "tradition" and all that.)

As always, you're generalizing and applying your biases to an entire group based on a small sample. While I have no great love for the UMP, calling the entire French right-wing a bunch of sexist tools is obviously intellectually dishonest and stupid. The jeans thing, as I said, was the work, largely of a small gang of right-wing UMP-Sarkozyst tools led notably by Nadine Morano, who has been a walking self-parody and dictionary defintion for "mentally retarded" since May 6. The whistling and hissing thing, again, as I mentioned, was the work of the old machos/creepsters like Patrick Balkany (find a picture of him, and you'll see just from his face that he's a creepy old macho crook) and a few others. Please note that the decent right-wingers, like Fillon, Juppé, Wauquiez, Le Maire, Baroin and the 'smart' UMP women like NKM and Pécresse all stayed clear of this (even if some might have partaked in the jeans brouhaha).