No Sex Jokes Please, French Government Advises Travelers to U.S.
Source: Bloomberg News
The French shouldn’t be too French when they visit the U.S.
That’s the advice being doled out by the French government to its citizens visiting America. Along with warnings about slower speed limits, higher drinking ages and hurricanes in Texas, the French foreign ministry adds a note of warning against being too “Latin.”
“It’s recommended to adopt a reserved attitude toward those of the opposite sex,” it says. “Comments, behavior, and jokes, which might be harmless in Latin countries, can lead to criminal cases,” the ministry’s website says.
Reinforcing French views of American prudishness, the website notes that even minors can be accused of sexual harassment, and asks that children use toilets reserved for their sex in the U.S.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-18/no-sex-jokes-please-french-government-advises-travelers-to-u-s-
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JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I would add (and especially for the attention of Austrian women), don't take off your top in hotel, municipal or other public swimming pools. You could be arrested.
And don't let your children go naked in public places.
Plus, nudism is restricted to areas that are posted. You may even need to wear your swimming suit or wrap yourself in a towel at the sauna.
Watch out.
Because God and the morality police will be watching you.
thesquanderer
(13,006 posts)...thinking how backwards it seems that we are so concerned with keeping everyone covered.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Never forget going to the local swimming pool. I'm a woman, a thoroughly American woman. Being surrounded by bare-breasted women sunning on blankets on the grass at the swimming pool made me feel rather embarrassed.
So then I hear my name. And there beside me is an old friend, an Austrian I knew from the US, as bare as God created her, lying on the blanket next to my very proper lawn chair. I was fully dressed. (I don't swim; I was with my children.)
Honestly. It rather shattered the shell of propriety I had built around myself in my imagination.
Different folks. Different strokes.
We are pretty worried about sex and modesty in the US. But some other countries are more extreme than we are. Not just Muslim countries.
NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)
pnwmom
(110,261 posts)We have enough of our own.
And not liking this kind of attention from strangers or office mates has nothing to do with "prudishness" for most women.
This was written by a French woman, but I had the same experience of encountering "daily amorous logorrhoea" at work as she did, at the same age. It's impossible to believe that a man could think a woman would like this; so the only conclusion is that men do this on purpose to be obnoxious -- whether they're French or American.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/01/france-sexual-harassment-law-grey-area
As Libération put it last week: "The end of harassers' licence to hunt freely is imminent." Yesterday, France's parliament approved a new law on sexual harassment, making it a criminal offence on a par with moral harassment, with the most severe cases punishable by a three-year prison sentence and €45,000 fine.
SNIP
The old law restricted sexual harassment to "obtaining favours of a sexual nature" and was punishable by up to a one-year prison sentence and €15,000 fine. The new law defines harassment as "imposing on someone sexually connoted words or actions". Under the old law, harassment was defined by repetitive acts. Not anymore: one single act can give way to prosecution. In other words, the new law is far-reaching, and harsher on offenders.
SNIP
My generation, born in the 1970s, was subliminally taught (it was never put into words) to endure the "homage" of the opposite sex and shoo them away with charm and firmness whenever they got too heavy. Sexual harassment was an American concept made up by men and women at war with each other, not for the French, heirs of Marivaux and Ronsard.
As a 21-year-old student on a summer internship at a French weekly magazine, I had to tolerate the daily amorous logorrhoea of a well-known journalist twice my age. I didn't know what quite to do and feared finding myself alone with him. Luckily, there were three of us in the office. The third man, a veteran writer and highly distinguished journalist more than three times my age, protected me by not leaving me alone with him, and telling him to shut up when needed (I only realised this later). I was precisely in this grey zone where the courts cannot always go.
Chemisse
(31,346 posts)The line for sexual harassment is in a different place here than for a lot of other countries. It has nothing to do with prudishness.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I have my mother stare, as my children call it. It's like "eat your broccoli and then go clean your room." I was in a university situation my first time in France. Too many opinionated women who were more interesting to me and I was too young to understand the comments.
My second year there I had two babies and was for obvious reasons either oblivious or too busy to pay attention.
But you are right. I don't know how French and Italian women deal with that.
It's not such a problem in German, Austria or England although I had problems in the Tube in London on my way to and from work. Mostly with foreigners, not with the proper British.
I still think the fact that they have to warn French men to be courteous is all too funny.
We are prudish, but I include myself in that "we."
goldent
(1,582 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)They do it for their health. And the majority are well over 40, so I don't get it, but it does not attract a lot of unwelcome attention.
Things may have changed since I lived there.
cstanleytech
(28,471 posts)of fatal auto accidents?
mwooldri
(10,818 posts)As for safety... Safer than American roads, that's for sure.
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/wcm/road_safety/erso/safetynet/fixed/WP1/2008/BFS2008_SN-KfV-1-3-Main%20figures.pdf
kentauros
(29,414 posts)Dual cariageway: 110 km/h, if raining 100 km/h (70 mph, 60 mph)
Open road: 90 km/h, if raining 80 km/h (55 mph, 50 mph)
Town: 50 km/h (30 mph)
If your licence is less than two years old, the speed limits are reduced to :
Highway: 110 km/h
Dual cariageway: 100 km/h
Open road: 80 km/h
Town: 50 km/h
http://english.controleradar.org/france-speed-limits.php
I didn't see anything about accident rates.
Maybe they'll soon figure out just how few Americans actually obey posted limits and then that they rarely get pulled over in major cities, except just before rush hours (I see that locally, before the roads get too congested.)
cstanleytech
(28,471 posts)If its all roads I wonder if that might be one of the key differences?
kentauros
(29,414 posts)I just quoted from that page 
Look for the round signs with black numbers in a red circle. That's your speed in km/h.
I remember when I was in New Zealand that even on the motorways (what we'd call highways here) I never saw a posted speed limit higher than 100 km/h. I wonder if the French are cautioned that their speeds are "slow" too...
goldent
(1,582 posts)think the nationwide 55 mph speed limits are still place.
davidthegnome
(2,983 posts)if things are really all that different in France. Can't say because I've never been - and don't really know many people from France that I could ask. Are they a lot more open about their sexuality and such than Americans are?
pnwmom
(110,261 posts)And have succeeded till fairly recently, when their own sexual harassment laws were strengthened.
This is by a French writer:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/01/france-sexual-harassment-law-grey-area
As Libération put it last week: "The end of harassers' licence to hunt freely is imminent." Yesterday, France's parliament approved a new law on sexual harassment, making it a criminal offence on a par with moral harassment, with the most severe cases punishable by a three-year prison sentence and €45,000 fine.
SNIP
The old law restricted sexual harassment to "obtaining favours of a sexual nature" and was punishable by up to a one-year prison sentence and €15,000 fine. The new law defines harassment as "imposing on someone sexually connoted words or actions". Under the old law, harassment was defined by repetitive acts. Not anymore: one single act can give way to prosecution. In other words, the new law is far-reaching, and harsher on offenders.
SNIP
My generation, born in the 1970s, was subliminally taught (it was never put into words) to endure the "homage" of the opposite sex and shoo them away with charm and firmness whenever they got too heavy. Sexual harassment was an American concept made up by men and women at war with each other, not for the French, heirs of Marivaux and Ronsard.
As a 21-year-old student on a summer internship at a French weekly magazine, I had to tolerate the daily amorous logorrhoea of a well-known journalist twice my age. I didn't know what quite to do and feared finding myself alone with him. Luckily, there were three of us in the office. The third man, a veteran writer and highly distinguished journalist more than three times my age, protected me by not leaving me alone with him, and telling him to shut up when needed (I only realised this later). I was precisely in this grey zone where the courts cannot always go.
Moonwalk
(2,322 posts)...but they strike me as very sound. Especially the "don't yell at the police, they have guns..." part. I can see Americans advising other Americans of these same rules 
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)In most of the rest of the modern world women go topless at the beach and there are nude beaches for couples and families. In America a woman who went topless at most beaches would be arrested. Women AND men would be arrested for going nude. If parents exposed their children to nudity they would be prosecuted for child abuse, and people on the Right and the Left would cheer on the parents being prosecuted.
Playboy magazine got started in America 61 years ago by Hugh Hefner and he made millions of dollars, predicated on the simple idea of showing women's bare breasts and buttocks. Numerous imitators followed.
In America strip clubs are everywhere making millions of dollars in taxes and fees for governments. Yet, prostitution is illegal, and both prostitute and customers are arrested and prosecuted. The exception is a few counties in Nevada where female prostitution is legal. So the message America gives in it's OK to look and leer, but don't touch, don't actually do anything.
In America sex is used to sell everything in the Media, yet even mild portrayals of real human sexuality in the Media bring harsh reactions.
In America the exposure of a female nipple on broadcast TV is forbidden and can bring national controversy and serious legal consequences for the broadcaster. In most of the rest of the modern world exposed female nipples are seen regularly on broadcast TV.
If an oppressive world-wide Patriarchy were the problem, we would see the same sort of aberrations in the rest of the world we see in America. We don't see this. In fact, the only places where similar actions take place to Americas are those nations with either authoritarian political regimes or authoritarian religious regimes.
The real problem is right here in America. We have a repressive belief system. Based on an archaic belief system. A system that states that the human body, human sexuality, in fact almost ANYTHING dealing with human physical pleasure, is dirty and filthy and should be hidden or tightly regulated or simply prohibited. And there are Prohibitionists on the Left just as bad as those on the Right.
Don't dare to tell me this country is not full of prudes.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)Porn's new capitals: Romania and Colombia?
Telecommuting is shaking up the porn industry.
Camgirls—models who earn their living by stripping (and more) in front of a computer webcam for hundreds of people watching live online—are taking advantage of the Internet's freedoms to work anywhere.
The adult webcam industry currently tops $1 billion in revenue a year and is growing fast. Collectively, the sites are estimated to be visited daily by some 5 percent of the Web's global users. And the number of models is increasing.
But while many of those models may claim to be from the U.S., the large majority operate overseas. The percentage of cam girls who are based in the U.S. ranges from 15 to 35 percent, says Theo Sapoutzis, chairman and CEO of AVN Media Network.
...
Before the recession, the number of U.S. models was actually a lot lower, said Ross Love, owner of the Best Kept Secret Talent Agency, which focuses exclusively on the webcam market. At that time, Eastern Europe made up the majority of the market, and still has a sizable stake.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102355771
marym625
(17,997 posts)goldent
(1,582 posts)when traveling abroad. Good for the French foreign ministry trying to educate its citizens to prevent the tourist faux pas
seveneyes
(4,631 posts)
Township75
(3,535 posts)I'm not sure why so many people from different countries litter but he French are Amon the worst.
underthematrix
(5,811 posts)tsites
(36 posts)and how many places in the US it is not permitted. And even places where it is permitted, that you should ask before lighting up.
Also that urinating in public can get you arrested.