The ambiguity is no longer acceptable. In reaction to the video widely relayed on social networks of a Iranian student arrested in Teheran on Saturday by the morality police – in protest against the compulsory wearing of the headscarf – much of the French political class hailed the young woman’s courage. Notably the right and the Rassemblement National (RN), who saw her as a strong symbol in the fight against Islamism. However, one comment broke this near-unanimity: that of the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau.

Although she expressed her support “to Iranian women, to Afghan women, to all those who suffer oppression”, the Paris MP awkwardly extolled on X the free will of women, regardless of their singular situations: “Our body, and everything we put on – or don’t put on – to dress it, belongs to us.” Viewed in just a few hours nearly five million times on the social network, the publication was showered with criticism. Both political and intellectual figures accused the ecofeminist of equating the struggle of Iranian women against the mullahs’ regime since 2022 with that of women wishing to wear the veil in France.

As soon as the ecologist’s reaction was published, her Macronist colleague Aurore Bergé did not beat about the bush: “Shame, nausea”. “This young woman is taking all the risks to show us the way to freedom and emancipation. She deserves better than a capitulation to Islamism or small accommodations that are so many defeats, mocked the Renaissance deputy from Yvelines. On the right, the LR senator Valérie Boyer denounced a “infamous tweet” and a “feminism with variable political geometry”. “By no means an embellishment but the instrument of mysogin oppression, of sexual apartheid.”criticized the Bouches-du-Rhône elected representative.

“An abjection and a spit in the eye

Alongside the political sphere, several civil society and media leaders have raised their voices. Such is the case of the France Inter humorist Sophia Aram who denounced a “disgrace”or the former president of the secular movement “Printemps Républicain” Amine El Khatmi: “An abjection and a spit thrown in the face of all the women who, from Kabul to Teheran, risk their lives by standing up to their Islamist tormentors.”

Part of the cultural world was also agitated. Like the Franco-Iranian Marjane Satrapi, known for her comics Persepolis, who went ballistic on Instagram. “Everyone has the right to be a jerk, but in this case it’s better to keep your mouth shut.”said the artist. Recalling that Sandrine Rousseau had been loudly hissed at two years ago, at the first Parisian rally following the arrest and death of young Mahsa Amini for wearing a veil the wrong way: “You had taken the floor, and everyone booed you because a few days before, you had declared that the veil is the beautification of the woman. Everywhere, you explained that you were booed because you’re a woman (…) If you were booed, it’s because you were an asshole.”