Two darlings of the French left fought today as Trotskyite presidential candidate Ms Arlette Laguiller accused Mr Daniel "Red Danny" Cohn-Bendit of mounting a sexist attack against her.
Opinion polls show Ms Laguiller (62) scoring up to 11 per cent of the vote ahead of the presidential election starting later this month. Some on the left fear she could split their vote and help conservative President Mr Jacques Chirac to victory.
Mr Cohn-Bendit, leader of the 1968 student revolt and now a leader of the French Greens, jointly penned an article with brother Gabriel attacking the veteran activist as a mere puppet in the secretive, male-run Workers Struggle party.
"These are phallocratic comments by the Cohn-Bendit brothers, insulting and degrading to me as a woman," Ms Laguiller said of the article in the left-leaning daily Liberationyesterday.
"No one would have dared say the same of a male politician," she said in a statement.
Socialist Prime Minister Mr Lionel Jospin and his Communist junior coalition partners have recently rubbished as unrealistic Ms Laguiller's manifesto, which includes a call to nationalise companies that lay off workers en masse.
Of a crowded field of 16 candidates for the first round of the presidential election, Ms Laguiller is one of just four women.