by Alain Catzeflis
| @alaincatzeflis| @alain_catzefli
THE ARTICLE
THE ARTICLE
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Well argued: 87%
Interesting points: 82%
Agree with arguments: 87%27 ratings - view all
Person of 2024: Gisèle Pelicot. (Image created in Shutterstock)
There’s courage and then there’s courage. Courage in the face of danger or courage under fire is one sort. Call it bravery in the face of predictable danger: firefighters, soldiers, coppers. It’s what they face because of what they choose to do.
Then there’s courage in the face of the unforeseen: sudden war, personal tragedy, torment, abuse. All too often this is the kind women have to summon up in a world dominated by men, by the patriarchy. Women under the heel of the Taliban in Afghanistan are an obvious example. But not the only one.
Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece, was written in the white heat of anger by the German poet shortly after the invasion of Poland in 1939. It’s a story, among other things, about resilience in the face of war and injustice by a woman and a mother.
Eighty-five years later, we are spoiled for choice when considering the courage of women: the mothers of Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, often subjected to horrific abuse, fighting with all they have to protect themselves and their children.
Women like Nadia Murad, the Iraqi-born Yazidi Nobel Peace laureate and advocate for survivors of sexual violence. She was captured, held in slavery, raped and abused by the group calling itself Islamic State.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of these examples of man’s inhumanity to women is the astonishing endurance of the survivors and their willingness to call out their tormentors in open court.
One woman who joins this list long beyond numbers is Gisèle Pelicot, a petite 72-year-old grandmother, whose story, told in the solemn setting of a French courtroom in Avignon, has turbo-boosted the debate around sexual violence.
Her husband, father of her three children, their seven grandchildren and a dog called Lancôme, turned their cream stone cottage in the sleepy Provençal town of Mazan into a house of horror. For nearly ten years he repeatedly drugged his wife, raped her himself and invited dozens of other men to rape her while filming them.
Dominique Pelicot was caught filming up the skirts of women in a local supermarket. When police seized his computer they found a file called “Abus”. It had 20,000 photos and videos of his unconscious wife being violated by him — and by at least 83 men. Serial rapists, like serial killers, like to keep trophies.
Much of the coverage of this woman’s torment – and courage – speaks of uncomfortable questions for France. She was an “ordinary” grandmother, he was a retired electrician. They enjoyed shopping together. It was a shocking, surprising, seemingly extraordinary crime. But how extraordinary was it?
UNICEF recently published the findings of its first attempt to gauge how commonplace rape is around the world. It estimates – and this can only be an estimate because many, perhaps most, rapes go unreported – that more than 370 million girls and women alive today have experienced rape or sexual assault. That’s one in eight women.
This stain cuts across geographical, cultural and economic boundaries. You don’t have to be destitute to be a rapist. Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia top the list. But Europe and north America come a dishonourable third, with 68 million victims.
Rape has a long and painful history. It is perhaps the most egregious of all the manifestations of toxic masculinity. In her eye-opening book Our Bodies, Their Battlefield Christina Lamb , the Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent, lays out, in meticulous detail, how rape has been and remains a weapon of war.
Rape is not a private crime. Nor is it an incidental atrocity. In war, mass rape – whether on October 7 2023 in Israel by Hamas or by Russian troops in Bucha, Ukraine in 2022 – is a calculated, deliberate act of terror. It seeks to break the spirit of civilian communities in the same way that indiscriminate bombing does.
Conservative estimates of the number of women raped as part of the Serb strategy to subdue mainly Muslim women in the 1990s Bosnian war range from 20 to 50,000. They were held in so-called rape camps, systematically abused and often killed.
How does this differ, in essence, from the behaviour, the “strategy”, pursued by Dominique Pelicot? Or the British-Pakistani men who groomed and abused more than a thousand underage girls in Rotherham from the late 1980s to 2013, when the scandal broke.
Rape is a form of control, more precisely coercive control, whether in war or in the home. But these dry words do not begin to describe the acts of assault, intimidation, threats, abuse and humiliation that millions of women suffer.
Beyond that, and most unfair of all, is the shame women are made to feel at being violated. This is what makes Gisèle Pelicot’s stand so remarkable. Shame and victim-blaming is the default defence of the rapist and the culture that shields them.
Women often stay silent, some for their whole lives, about the abuse they suffer. The criminal justice system is still failing women. The investigation and prosecution of rapes remains slow, often harrowing for the victims and weakened by a prejudice that lies just beneath a thin veneer of good intentions.
The Pelicot trial has shone a light on a dark side of France. But we have no grounds to feel smug in the UK, where only 3.3% of rape reports result in conviction.
What happened to Gisèle Pelicot was exceptional but not unusual. Women, at least in Europe and America, are better placed to stand their ground. But we still live in a culture where sexual intimidation is excused by many (including the President-elect of the United States) as ”locker room talk”, or “banter”.
And yet do women feel safe enough to walk alone at night? Are they confident that they’ll be listened to should they walk into a police station to report a sexual assault? In many countries the police are still ruled by the patriarchy.
The legacy of rape is indescribably awful. After her first experience, Gisèle Pelicot contemplated suicide. She describes herself as a “totally destroyed woman…a field of ruins”. Things are slowly changing and her case may act as an accelerator of further change.
Rape is a destination on a continuum that begins with the objectification of women almost from birth. They may head Fortune 500 companies. They may run entire countries. But the prejudice that sees them as sex objects or playthings will not easily be erased.
Male influencers like Andrew Tate preach a radical, male culture that leads to extreme misogyny. Tate awaits trial in Romania on charges of rape, human trafficking and exploiting women.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is that Gisèle Pelicot’s stand will help abused women overcome their sense of isolation, the shame they feel and come forward. We must also teach our sons the true meaning of consent.
“It is not for us to feel shame,” she said memorably at the end of the trial, in which her husband and all his accomplices were found guilty and sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. “It is for them.”
Gisèle Pelicot is my candidate for Person of 2024.
Interesting points: 82%
Agree with arguments: 87%27 ratings - view all
Person of 2024: Gisèle Pelicot. (Image created in Shutterstock)
There’s courage and then there’s courage. Courage in the face of danger or courage under fire is one sort. Call it bravery in the face of predictable danger: firefighters, soldiers, coppers. It’s what they face because of what they choose to do.
Then there’s courage in the face of the unforeseen: sudden war, personal tragedy, torment, abuse. All too often this is the kind women have to summon up in a world dominated by men, by the patriarchy. Women under the heel of the Taliban in Afghanistan are an obvious example. But not the only one.
Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece, was written in the white heat of anger by the German poet shortly after the invasion of Poland in 1939. It’s a story, among other things, about resilience in the face of war and injustice by a woman and a mother.
Eighty-five years later, we are spoiled for choice when considering the courage of women: the mothers of Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, often subjected to horrific abuse, fighting with all they have to protect themselves and their children.
Women like Nadia Murad, the Iraqi-born Yazidi Nobel Peace laureate and advocate for survivors of sexual violence. She was captured, held in slavery, raped and abused by the group calling itself Islamic State.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of these examples of man’s inhumanity to women is the astonishing endurance of the survivors and their willingness to call out their tormentors in open court.
One woman who joins this list long beyond numbers is Gisèle Pelicot, a petite 72-year-old grandmother, whose story, told in the solemn setting of a French courtroom in Avignon, has turbo-boosted the debate around sexual violence.
Her husband, father of her three children, their seven grandchildren and a dog called Lancôme, turned their cream stone cottage in the sleepy Provençal town of Mazan into a house of horror. For nearly ten years he repeatedly drugged his wife, raped her himself and invited dozens of other men to rape her while filming them.
Dominique Pelicot was caught filming up the skirts of women in a local supermarket. When police seized his computer they found a file called “Abus”. It had 20,000 photos and videos of his unconscious wife being violated by him — and by at least 83 men. Serial rapists, like serial killers, like to keep trophies.
Much of the coverage of this woman’s torment – and courage – speaks of uncomfortable questions for France. She was an “ordinary” grandmother, he was a retired electrician. They enjoyed shopping together. It was a shocking, surprising, seemingly extraordinary crime. But how extraordinary was it?
UNICEF recently published the findings of its first attempt to gauge how commonplace rape is around the world. It estimates – and this can only be an estimate because many, perhaps most, rapes go unreported – that more than 370 million girls and women alive today have experienced rape or sexual assault. That’s one in eight women.
This stain cuts across geographical, cultural and economic boundaries. You don’t have to be destitute to be a rapist. Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia top the list. But Europe and north America come a dishonourable third, with 68 million victims.
Rape has a long and painful history. It is perhaps the most egregious of all the manifestations of toxic masculinity. In her eye-opening book Our Bodies, Their Battlefield Christina Lamb , the Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent, lays out, in meticulous detail, how rape has been and remains a weapon of war.
Rape is not a private crime. Nor is it an incidental atrocity. In war, mass rape – whether on October 7 2023 in Israel by Hamas or by Russian troops in Bucha, Ukraine in 2022 – is a calculated, deliberate act of terror. It seeks to break the spirit of civilian communities in the same way that indiscriminate bombing does.
Conservative estimates of the number of women raped as part of the Serb strategy to subdue mainly Muslim women in the 1990s Bosnian war range from 20 to 50,000. They were held in so-called rape camps, systematically abused and often killed.
How does this differ, in essence, from the behaviour, the “strategy”, pursued by Dominique Pelicot? Or the British-Pakistani men who groomed and abused more than a thousand underage girls in Rotherham from the late 1980s to 2013, when the scandal broke.
Rape is a form of control, more precisely coercive control, whether in war or in the home. But these dry words do not begin to describe the acts of assault, intimidation, threats, abuse and humiliation that millions of women suffer.
Beyond that, and most unfair of all, is the shame women are made to feel at being violated. This is what makes Gisèle Pelicot’s stand so remarkable. Shame and victim-blaming is the default defence of the rapist and the culture that shields them.
Women often stay silent, some for their whole lives, about the abuse they suffer. The criminal justice system is still failing women. The investigation and prosecution of rapes remains slow, often harrowing for the victims and weakened by a prejudice that lies just beneath a thin veneer of good intentions.
The Pelicot trial has shone a light on a dark side of France. But we have no grounds to feel smug in the UK, where only 3.3% of rape reports result in conviction.
What happened to Gisèle Pelicot was exceptional but not unusual. Women, at least in Europe and America, are better placed to stand their ground. But we still live in a culture where sexual intimidation is excused by many (including the President-elect of the United States) as ”locker room talk”, or “banter”.
And yet do women feel safe enough to walk alone at night? Are they confident that they’ll be listened to should they walk into a police station to report a sexual assault? In many countries the police are still ruled by the patriarchy.
The legacy of rape is indescribably awful. After her first experience, Gisèle Pelicot contemplated suicide. She describes herself as a “totally destroyed woman…a field of ruins”. Things are slowly changing and her case may act as an accelerator of further change.
Rape is a destination on a continuum that begins with the objectification of women almost from birth. They may head Fortune 500 companies. They may run entire countries. But the prejudice that sees them as sex objects or playthings will not easily be erased.
Male influencers like Andrew Tate preach a radical, male culture that leads to extreme misogyny. Tate awaits trial in Romania on charges of rape, human trafficking and exploiting women.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is that Gisèle Pelicot’s stand will help abused women overcome their sense of isolation, the shame they feel and come forward. We must also teach our sons the true meaning of consent.
“It is not for us to feel shame,” she said memorably at the end of the trial, in which her husband and all his accomplices were found guilty and sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. “It is for them.”
Gisèle Pelicot is my candidate for Person of 2024.
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