Smash hit

Homosexual and feminist groups welcomed the law, which the Government drafted in an attempt to regain credit with gay and women’s groups after it opposed homosexual marriage last spring. One of the first steps planned by SOS homophobie, a campaign group, is the prosecution of football supporters who chant pédés (queers) at players who do not meet with their favour.

According to Les Chiennes de Garde (Guard Bitches), a feminist group, the law would act as a brake on the physical abuse of women “by first outlawing verbal violence”.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the UMP leader, said that the new law was “reasonable and respects liberty”. However, a dissident minority of his own conservative MPs said that the Government was trying to police speech and legislate on language. Christine Boutin, a conservative Catholic UMP member, said that the Government was “setting up a morality police”. Jean-Pierre Ricard, head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, also took issue. “Will it still be possible to say that we do not consider heterosexuality and homosexuality to be on the same level?” he asked. “Debate should be free.”

France is returning to moral legislation of the type that led to the 19th-century prosecution of Gustave Flaubert for publishing Madame Bovary, his novel on female adultery, Michel Erman, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Burgundy, said. The best reaction to an insult was not prosecution but a witty rejoinder, he wrote in Libération. Le Nouvel Observateur, weekly bible of the thinking classes, offered readers a list of “insults that can still be used without risk of ruin or prison”. Blonde jokes are out “because they are a degrading attack on a category of the female gender which does not always have the means to choose its hair colour”.

LES BONS MOTS

Do not say: femme de ménage (cleaning lady)
Say: technicienne de surface

Do not say: gonzesse (bird, babe)
Say: femme

Do not say: homo
Say: gay

Do not say: nain (dwarf)
Say: personne de petite taille (person of small stature)

Do not say: clochard (tramp)
Say: SDF (sans domicile fixe)

Do not say: avortement (abortion)
Say: IVG (voluntary interruption of pregnancy)

Do not say: cité (sink estate)
Say: quartier sensible (sensitive district)

Do not say: videur (bouncer/doorman)
Say: physionomiste

Do not say: vigile (security guard)
Say: agent de securité

Do not say: noir (black)
Say: black (in English it’s PC)

Do not say: arabe du coin (corner shop)
Say: service de proximité

Do not say: le peuple (the people)
Say: la France d’en bas (grassroots France)

How can you legislate for political correctness?
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