© Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty ImagesFemale members of the Assemblée Nationale arrive late in protest at the clucking aimed at Véronique Massonneau a day earlier.
It's raining machismo in France. Chucking it down, in fact.
From parliament to local councils, via national media and regional newspapers, storms have erupted as French men indulge in misogynist outbursts that could have come from the cave age.
Now, thanks to the name-and-shame tactics of social media networks, France's long-suffering women, who might previously have shrugged off such attacks as everyday sexism and machismo, are hitting back.
The backlash came after a banal enough event: a male member of the UMP opposition in the Assemblée Nationale humiliated a female opponent by making clucking noises as she spoke during a late-night debate on the Socialist government's controversial pension reforms.
The noise suggested she was a poule, an insult that can be translated as bird, but conveys in French a woman who is, among other things, an airhead.
The man had apparently returned to the house of parliament after a "well-oiled" dinner with male colleagues who were laughing and egging him on.
Véronique Massonneau, who was speaking at the time and was the subject of the insult, insisted the fowl noises stop. Philippe Le Ray, the MP making them, carried on, until the furious speaker of the house called for an adjournment for tempers to cool.
"He was a complete idiot. He just kept on making these animal sounds, even after he was asked to stop," Massonneau told the Guardian.
"During the suspension I went over to where he was sitting and asked him why he was being such an idiot. He didn't reply. He was clearly, how can I say, uninhibited."
The parliamentary session resumed and there the matter might have rested, as so many have before.
The newly appointed housing minister, Cécile Duflot, of Europe-Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV), has also been the target of sexist behaviour. She was lambasted by centre-right female MPs for "lacking respect" by wearing jeans for her first cabinet meeting, then jeered and wolf-whistled in the Assemblée National when she turned up in a flowered dress. Duflot told the Guardian she was shocked and surprised at the "mediocrity" of the behaviour.
"To be honest, I found it quite incredible that this was the level of behaviour. But the reaction that there has been has shown that sexism is not acceptable.
"I think the political milieu is behind society on these things. In real life, it would be hard to imagine that a woman in business would be treated as a poule when she spoke."
Former sports minister Chantal Jouanno, then a UMP member, has claimed she was subjected to smutty comments whenever she wore a skirt to parliamentary sessions. Female ministers have become used to being asked about their hair and makeup, often by female television and radio presenters.
However, something about Poulegate captured the public imagination. The following day a group of mainly leftwing female MPs decided to arrive late for the sitting as a mark of solidarity. The opposition UMP accused them of using "theatrics", and staged their own walkout.
"The invective and insults I suffered were no worse than normal, but it symbolised a general fed-up-ness at the way women are treated. The moment was badly chosen. We were discussing a serious subject, pensions, that concerns everyone and he did that," said Massonneau.
"If it is about what I am saying, or someone disagrees with me, I have no problem with that at all. It's different when it's about physical looks, dress, or way of speaking just because you are a woman."
Le Ray, 45, apologised and was fined one quarter of his monthly salary - a rarely used, thus symbolic, penalty.
A few days later, Éric Zemmour, a writer and political journalist, went on France's equivalent of Radio Four's Today programme, on France Inter, to discuss the incident and dismissed sexism as "feminist nonsense". He also suggested women had slept their way into parliament.
"How did women get into the Assemblée Nationale and the Sénat? ... By laws of parity that forced people to put them on [voting] lists ... and they put friends, women, mistresses, etc."
Then Bernard Ronsin, conseiller général of the canton of Crécy-sur-Serre in the Aisne, made clear he was vehemently opposed to the law making gender parity in local election lists obligatory from 2015.
"Parity, it's bullshit," Ronsin told his local newspaper. "We're going to force women to go into politics when they don't necessarily want to. In my profession [blacksmith], I deal with more and more women. There are some who are very competent, but they ruin our lives. They'd be better off with pans making jam."
Parity in parliamentary elections has been the rule in France for 13 years but the parties prefer the fines to more women. In the 2012 election, the UMP ended up with just 14% female MPs and lost €4.5m. The Socialist party had 45% and was fined €500,000. EELV had 50%. Of the 577 deputies in the Assemblée Nationale, only 155 are women (Britain is only slightly better with 503 male and 147 female MPs). Of the 348 seats in the upper house, the Sénat, only 77 are occupied by women.
The former justice minister Rachida Dati, who served under the previous president, Nicolas Sarkozy, faced immense scrutiny of her private life after refusing to name the father of her daughter.
"Politics is a very masculine universe, like all places of power," said Dati, adding that the default masculine attitude was that women were "a priori incompetent until they proved otherwise. We don't 'convince', we 'seduce'; we are not 'ambitious', we are 'conspiring'. If we wear clothes that are slightly feminine, we are attacked.
"I am the only UMP vice-president out of 20. That is regrettable for the first party in France."
Duflot suggested the answer is to bring more women into politics by strengthening the rules on parity by making the fines levied against parties who do not conform even higher.
Julie Muret of the feminist group Osez le Féminisme, which advises the government, agreed that parity is the answer.
"It's a necessary evil because you have to have penalties as a stick to beat them. We'd rather not have to do this, but it seems we must. The parity law is generally a good thing, the penalties are there and it hits parties where it hurts. Unfortunately, some prefer to pay.
"Where there is less parity, women feel vulnerable. Where there is more parity, it encourages women. The poule incident was particularly important because it made the headlines and it was quite clear to the whole world who was in the wrong. People were shocked, mainly thanks to Twitter."
At the news website Mediapart, the political journalist Lénaïg Bredoux has been instrumental in setting up Machoscope, an attempt to name and shame those guilty of sexism in public life.
"People have finally woken up to this machismo, which is very much a French thing. I am sure it is recurrent, permanent, and structural in politics in France. There is a tolerance of this machismo and sexism. I worked in Germany and I can't see it happening there."
France's Socialist government has appointed a women's rights minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, and announced that all ministers will attend an hour-long course on "male-female equality" in order to do away with stereotypes.
"Many ministers have announced they want to reduce inequalities but certain figures might have escaped them," said Vallaud-Belkacem at the time.
However, for Esther Benbassa, a Turkish-born EELV representative in the Sénat, the bias in parliament only represents the prejudice of society as a whole - deeply ingrained preconceptions that only women themselves can change.
"My male colleagues respect me because I stand up to them and shout at them. That's the only way. You stand up to them and they back down," said Benbassa. "The only way forward is with education and more women in parliament. There's no miracle solution. That's it."
"It's raining machismo in France. Chucking it down, in fact." Hilarious start to the article.. Chuckle chuckle