The infection of France by le wokisme continues apace. Last year, president Emmanuel Macron vowed to stand against intersectionality only to see his parliamentary majority swept away in the recent National Assembly elections in part by the leftist coalition of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Now a new woketarian front is opening against the mores of traditional France as transgenderism asserts itself with a campaign by Le Planning Familial, the non-profit association influenced by the movement created originally in the United States, active in France for 62 years and that has recently transitioned itself.

The movement, which is subsidised by the government, has moved from offering advice on contraception and abortion to a new focus on racism, white privilege and transgenderism. It has declared that the penis is not a male organ. Its latest efforts declaring that men can get pregnant have been defended by the government minister for equality, Isabelle Rome.

‘Let us not allow the far-right to stir up hatred by exploiting a communication campaign,’ she declared.

That seems a futile plea.

A leading female deputy of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, Laure Lavalette, countered by condemning ‘highly subsidised activists who seek to spread a grotesque and mendacious ideology.’ The culture war is raging on francophone Twitter where Le Planning Familial is being denounced by some as Le Planning Sataniste.

The family planning association has responded by threatening legal action against its critics, whom it describes as ‘instigators of hatred.’ When trans people ask for advice on contraception, abortion and transitioning, ‘it is up to us to make them feel welcome,’ it insists.

The new front in the culture war reaffirms that le wokisme, the mutating ideology of race and sexual identity has found unexpectedly fertile ground here.

The skirmishing is intensifying with attacks on the gendered, paternalistic French language, the very citadel of national identity. Activists have produced such remarkable innovations as ‘cheres lecteur.rice.s, déterminées à écrire différemment?’ A sentence that is inclusive to men, women and even asexual thems. Inclusive pronouns include ille, ellui and ol.

French elites are unsettled. Those who assumed the French possessed herd immunity against such American ideas are having their complacency tested.

Macron has zigged and zagged in the culture wars. He’s spent much of his presidency jetting around Africa apologising to former French colonies for the horrors of colonialism, which seems woke enough, but has thus far declined to pronounce personally on whether men can be pregnant. It’s difficult to imagine that he will wish to become personally involved in this latest argument.