Gisele Pelicot (French decade-long gang rape survivor) is a hero (trigger warning)
(where the FUCKING HELL were the goddamned, cowardly men???)
Gisele Pelicot (French decade-long gang rape survivor) is a hero (trigger warning)
Everyone, but especially men, should learn from her courage and bravery.
Julie Bindel
Journalist, author and feminist campaigner
Published On 9 Oct 20249 Oct 2024
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Gisele Pelicot, followed by her lawyer Stephane Babonneau, attends the trial of her former partner Dominique Pelicot, accused of drugging her for nearly 10 years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France [Christophe Simon/AFP]
Gisele Pelicot is a hero.
Her husband, Dominique Pelicot, has recently admitted in a French court that he drugged her to sleep, raped her, and recruited dozens of men to come into their marital bed and rape her too, night after night, for a decade. We know Dominique Pelicot’s name and the shocking details of the horrific crimes committed by him and his cohort of fellow rapists – most of them local to the quaint French town they lived in – because Gisele Pelicot bravely waived her right to anonymity in the trial, enabling the details of the case to be heard in public. She chose to go public with her story at an incredible cost and burden to herself because she wanted to make an example of her abusers and deter other men from committing similar crimes, thinking they can get away with them.
This admirable 72-year-old woman, who has been through unimaginable pain and suffering, went a step further last week and convinced the judge overseeing the case to make the video recordings of the rapes available to the public and the media. Gisele Pelicot’s lawyers called the decision to make the footage public a “victory” and said, “If these same hearings, through their publicity, help prevent other women from having to go through this, then [Gisele Pelicot] will find meaning in her suffering.”So yes, Gisele Pelicot is a modern day hero. By making sure the world knows who her husband is and what he did, she became a true feminist icon – a symbol not of victimhood but women’s resistance to male violence. She took a stand not only for herself but for all women, and she will long be remembered and respected for it.
The courage and bravery of Gisele Pelicot filled me with pride and renewed my trust in the strength of women and the power of sisterhood. But the image of her taking on her dozens of rapists alone also raised in my mind a haunting question: Where are the men? Where are the good men, the ones who love to say “not all men”? Why are they not doing something to make sure such horrific crimes do not happen again? How come they are not part of the conversation? We often hear of women like Gisele Pelicot who bravely take action – often at incredible cost to her own wellbeing – to address male violence and hold violent men to account. Countless women – often victims of male violence themselves – sacrifice, speak up, advocate, resist, expose, protest to make sure the world is a less violent and more just place for other women. I’ve had the honour of knowing many such women over the years. Jill Saward, who survived the infamous “Ealing vicarage rape attack” in 1986, for example, dedicated her life to campaigning against male violence and helped change not only legislation but societal attitudes towards rape, rapists and victims of sexual violence in Britain.
How come we do not see men standing up against male violence like these brave women do?
Just look at the Pelicot case. We learned from the trial that Dominique Pelicot approached countless men to take part in the sadistic abuse of his wife. Dozens agreed. And the ones who said no chose to remain silent. Not a single one of those men had the moral clarity and courage to go public, expose what had been going on and take whatever heat that may come their way to make sure the abuse of Gisele Pelicot came to an end and no other woman is harmed by her rapists in the future. None of them even thought of reporting the abuse anonymously. Dominique Pelicot’s crimes were only discovered because he was spotted filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket and was arrested. How come none of the men who had been offered to rape an unconscious woman felt it necessary to report what was happening to the police? How come none of them managed to do the bare minimum to end the horrific abuse of a woman?
. . . .
Gisele Pelicot’s brave decision to name and shame the men who raped her created a perfect storm because it exposed the monstrosity of everyday men. Now we need this storm to continue on. We need men to learn from Gisele how to be a hero.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/10/9/gisele-pelicot-is-a-hero
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