Since the beginning of September, the face of a woman from a small village in the south of France has been splashed across global front pages. Gisèle Pelicot is the central figure in a trial in which the main defendant is her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot. He has admitted that for nearly a decade, he drugged her and invited other men to allegedly also abuse her, in her own bed, without her knowledge, so that he could film them doing so. Fifty other men are on trial alongside Pelicot, accused of rape, which many of them deny.
Against the scale of the atrocities that it is alleged she has endured, Gisèle Pelicot cuts an unusual figure as she attends the trial. Head held high, in neat and polished attire, she walks tall into the courthouse in Avignon, a living symbol of what she calls “shifting shame” from the victims of sexual assault to the perpetrators.
Anonymity is a longstanding right in France, as in many other countries, designed to protect victims from further degradation during the legal ordeal that typically follows a rape complaint. But Gisèle Pelicot, a woman who has no experience of being in the public eye, has decided she has nothing to be ashamed of and willingly faces the cameras. Not only has she waived her anonymity, she successfully appealed a decision allowing only lawyers and the jury to be shown the videos made by her husband. The presiding judge had argued the video evidence was so shocking it would be an affront to public decency to screen it in open court. But Gisèle Pelicot wants the world to know the details; she wants to ensure “no other woman suffers this”.
Her composure and her decision to go public are part of a context in which this trial is no longer simply about a shocking case in one small town. It has become a moment of national reflection, with rape culture and masculinity also in the dock.
Men aged between 26 and 74, from all segments of society (including a retiree, a firefighter, a nurse, a prison warden, a journalist, business owners and volunteers at charitable organisations – an impressively representative sample of French society) were contacted online by Dominique Pelicot and allegedly recruited to rape his wife while she was comatose.
Most of Pelicot’s 50 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to rape charges. Several have claimed in their defence to have also been Pelicot’s victims. According to their accounts, he encouraged them to think that his consent that they have sexual intercourse with his comatose wife was enough. The idea that a man could decide what happens to his wife’s body is repugnant, but this line of argument reveals a troubling belief that wives are somehow still the property of their husbands.
The realisation that a story as horrendous as this could feature “ordinary” men rather than monstrous creatures seems to have come as a shock to many people in France. Yet women have always been terrorised by men who are not strangers to them, but are their relatives, husbands and partners. While mainstream representations distinguish between good men and violent men, we know that any man can be an abuser. Indeed, the fear of assault by violent strangers typically instilled in girls and women has prevented our societies from questioning why male sexual abuse crimes are so endemic.
Several male public figures have spoken out, suggesting that the trial has been an “awakening” for them. The TV presenter Karim Rissouli asked other men to collectively question “their way of being men”, saying that the alleged rapists are “men like you and me”. More than two hundred men in public life co-authored an opinion piece in Libération saying that male violence is “not about monsters” but about “ordinary, everyday men”.
They are right. And I hope the debate they have initiated signals a collective shift in attitudes. Yet during a TV debate about the trial, when I described masculinity as a tool of the power structure, it was disappointing to realise that despite the sympathy shown to Gisèle Pelicot, lessons had not been learned. I was accused of causing offence to my two male co-panellists. One said it was shocking to “generalise that men had a tendency towards forms of violence”. The other centred the debate on himself: “I am a man and I have the feeling that we are all on trial.”
But most sexual violence and violence in general is perpetrated by men. We cannot address that problem without understanding that masculinity is a social construct that encourages aggression and violent behaviour. Men are socialised to behave in certain ways.
The offences allegedly perpetrated against Gisèle Pelicot were extraordinary in scale. But rape is a completely ordinary occurrence. Each year 94,000 rapes or attempted rapes occur in France: that is roughly one every five minutes. And 91% of the victims know their abuser (a male in 96% of cases). As a matter of fact, home is the place where we are most likely to be exposed to any form of violence.
By refusing a closed-door trial for her case, Gisèle Pelicot has turned this case into a moment in history, dedicating her fight “to all the women and men across the world who have been victims of sexual violence”. As a feminist, I consider her choice to seek publicity part of the struggle. She echoes the fight of another revered Gisèle. In 1978 the lawyer and human rights activist Gisèle Halimi requested media coverage of the trial of three men who were accused of raping her clients Anne Tonglet and Araceli Castellano. The women had nothing to be ashamed of, Halimi said at the time: “It’s one thing for a man to commit rape but it’s another for him to want people in his village, at his workplace, or in the newspapers to know about it.” To Halimi, the real issue of those trials was “fundamentally changing the relationships between men and women”.
Gisèle Pelicot is rightly praised for her courage in seeking to redefine victimhood. She is also applauded for her “dignified” response to her ordeal. As an elegant, white, middle class grandmother, she embodies what our society seems to expect of a “real” victim of sexual assault: unlike many rape survivors who are unfairly blamed when they seek justice, she had no knowledge of events. Her “innocence” is difficult to query: she was unconscious.
But can’t we admire Gisèle Pelicot’s strength without needing her to be perfect? Our respect, our willingness to listen and our compassion should not be limited to the “right” victims. Our interrogation of male violence should not depend on how its victims conduct themselves.
That so many women and men have turned out to protest in solidarity with Gisèle Pelicot is commendable. But turning one person into a hero risks feeding the narrative that insists that male violence is exceptional.
It can strike any woman and be perpetrated by all kinds of men. That is the lesson we ought to take away from this historic trial.
Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist
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