But Brüderle evidently couldn't take no for an answer. Himmelreich said the evening ended when he said goodbye to his fellow politicians and then moved much too close to her face. She said she stepped back and put her hands in front of her body. Too late, a female colleague of Brüderle then quickly stepped in, telling the politician that it was "time for bed". Reluctantly, he complied. However, this wasn't the end of the story, but the trigger for last month's public debate.

 What to do with Brüderle and his type? Some — mainly older — men just don't seem to know any better, perhaps because they are not used to being around strong females, let alone women of equal status. There was a strong reaction to the Brüderle affair from female journalists, some of whom shared similar experiences on Twitter. Other (male) commentators argued that Germans simply weren't used to being easy-going and flirtatious in their encounters with the opposite sex. An argument often heard was: we don't want a workplace like the Americans, who are so litigious that one always has to keep the doors open. I wonder, though, how the debate would have shaped up if it had been about racism instead of sexism. The tone would surely have been less chummy.

Now, I myself have got used to this treatment — which, I should add, is the exception, not the norm. I find it grotesque in a mildly amusing way. I don't see women as victims. Indeed, I don't believe in a strong distinction between male and female behaviour. In my environment women often seem much more ballsy than men.

There's a fine line between being casual and being uninhibited. It may be entertaining (for both sides) to cross it occasionally, but young professional women should not be seen as fair game by older, more powerful men. After all, the same scenario with the roles reversed is unimaginable. While such blatant transgressions are, fortunately, unusual in German public life, in private sexism remains the norm. At least now we're having an open discussion about what is and isn't permissible. It doesn't need to result in measures to enforce a claustrophobic prudishness. At the risk of sounding a bit prudish myself, I would say that it's all down to decent behaviour, in this case proper self-control on the part of the elderly male politician at the bar. It's interesting that a supposedly enlightened, liberal party, in coalition with Chancellor Merkel, has someone at the top who seems to stand for the opposite of enlightenment.