PARIS — A public letter signed by more than 100 French women that denounced the #MeToo movement has sparked an intense debate in France over everything from the appropriate limits of flirtation to the extent to which the French should absorb American sexual norms.

The response to the letter, published Tuesday in the newspaper Le Monde and signed by the actress Catherine Deneuve among others, has exposed sharp cultural divides between women who worry about the creation of a culture of victimhood and those who insist that the focus in sexual harassment should be concern for the victims.

Among those who disagreed with the public letter was Leïla Slimani, a novelist who won France’s top literary award in 2016. “I am not asking to be protected but to exercise my rights to security and respect,” she wrote in the newspaper Libération on Friday.

“I am not a victim,” Ms. Slimani continued. “But millions of women are. That is fact and not a moral judgment.’’