'Me Too'? Perhaps what we really need is 'Mutual Respect' instead, says Biddy Collyer.

Has it all gone too far, as French actor Catherine Deneuve said last week? Are women casting themselves too much as victims when they speak out in support of the 'Me Too' campaign. There has been a predictable backlash against the 100 French women who supported her assertion. But maybe she has a point.

To my mind, it is all a question of keeping clear in our minds who we are as men and women and the complementarity of our lives together.

When I first became a Christian, I got very confused as to the role of women. Was I meant to be submissive as the bible seemed to say? But that went against my instincts that marriage was about an equal partnership. It is only years later that I realised the damage that has been done through biased interpretations of scriptural texts which skewed our understanding of how God means us to relate.

The indescriminate blaming of Eve for the 'fall' meant that women were frequently seen as dangerous, weak and not to be trusted with authority. Denied that authority, women sought to find other ways of influencing their situations. One was through using their 'feminine guiles' to get their own way - something that I abhor and find demeaning. Or to decry men, put them down and then try to climb on their backs in order to get power. Unfortunately, this was my mother's way of relating to my father and an extremely poor role model to me growing up.

I think that men too have been confused and the current outcry against sexual exploitation has revealed that confusion. In some cases, they clearly did not realise that their advances were unwelcome and inappropriate. Obviously, in others, they have used their financial position, influence or brute power to overcome and dominate.

What we need is an understanding of the beautiful balance that God intended all along.

To go back to the Creation story, the name Adam means 'human' not man. When the woman we call Eve was created out of the man, she was actually called Ishah (Hebrew for woman) and it is only at this point, when she has been separated from him, that the man is called Ish (man). We cannot define ourselves as fully human without the other. It is this complementarity that we are missing in so many of the ways that men and women relate to each other. We complete each other, and this is especially seen in the marriage ceremony when the priest binds the newlywed couple together symbolising their 'oneness'.

So, we are not to be victims, nor are we to pull men down in order to scramble over them. It is as we live in mutual respect for our inherent qualities as men and women that we will gain a right balance.