Abusers Are Not Always Strong Men. Some are Ordinary Men.

By now the whole world has heard the story of Gisèle Pelicot, and it is difficult to say what the worst part of this story is. Pelicot is a 72-year-old French woman whose husband, Dominique, is on trial for drugging her food and inviting at least 80 men to rape her. unconscious. (She photographed everything and recorded the evidence in a computer file aptly titled “abuse.”) Over the course of a decade, Gisèle visited many doctors for strange symptoms (memory loss, unexplained headaches, gynecological problems), and none of them had the slightest idea. What was wrong? This incredibly brave woman chose to reveal her name and make the case public to draw attention to rape; In France, as elsewhere, women are often blamed and shamed for their own transgressions, and French rape law does not cover lack of consent. Pelicot’s insistence on a public hearing is why we know about the alleged perpetrators; These are all so-called ordinary men from around Mazan, the small town in Provence where the couple lives, that Dominique solicited online: a firefighter, a truck driver, a construction worker, a soldier, a city councilman, a journalist, a nurse. Fifty of them are now on trial together with the husband; About 30 of them could not be identified.

“I saw him in the bakery now and then; I would say hello,” Gisèle said of one man. Some had previous convictions for rape or domestic violence, but most were stable citizens, husbands and fathers between the ages of 26 and 74, who thought it was normal to rape an unconscious woman. Their defenses were implausible: I thought she was just pretending to sleep as part of a sex game. Her husband said it was okay and husbands can do whatever they want to their wives. “If her husband was there, it wasn’t rape,” one man said. Most of the men plead not guilty and blame the public hearing for ruining their lives. Poor babies! But Dominique confesses everything: ““I’m a rapist like everyone else in this room.” Were their accomplices deceived? “When they came, they already knew everything. Everyone knew how this happened before the meetings.”

I hope all these men stay in prison for many years; The maximum penalty is 20. If that makes me a feminist in prison, fine. Because this case reveals that sex crimes, which we think are rare, committed by extraordinary, powerful people (say, Harvey Weinstein or other celebrities exposed by #MeToo), are also committed by seemingly ordinary people with nothing special about them. power or status: your neighbor, co-worker, boss; Maybe even your boyfriend, husband, father or son. Gisèle had no idea that her husband had been preparing elaborate rape scenarios for almost a decade. They were teenage sweethearts and married for 50 years, and their children and grandchildren visit frequently. He thought he was happy. How many of the other men’s wives and girlfriends thought they were good guys?

Speaking of good guys, the UK is rocked by the conviction of beloved BBC star presenter Huw Edwards purchase and possession of child pornography. This is another crime that we think is committed only by the rare odd man who wears raincoats. Untrue: 1.8 million men in the UK admitted to watching child pornography online. Eight out of 10 people do not receive a prison sentenceincluding Edwards, who was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and is now in a luxury sanatorium in London; Alex Williams, from whom he bought the footage, was also given a suspended prison sentence. According to a recent report by Childlight, an organization that collects data on child sexual abuse, 7 per cent of British men over 18 have committed some form of online child sexual exploitation. The United States is even worse, at 11 percent. True, research shows that very few of these men would ever sexually abuse children themselves. But viewing the images is an abuse in itself: they participate in and encourage the vast industry of real-life child sexual abuse necessary to create the images, which will live forever online and cause great distress to the children within them. If prison isn’t possible – and judging by numbers like these, it certainly isn’t – then what is it? My father, a left-wing lawyer and a wonderful man, used to say: “You can’t imprison the world.” But you can’t put the world into therapy either.

Everywhere I look there are headlines about men doing terrible things to women and children. Recently: Mohamed Al-Fayed, former owner of London’s famous luxury department store Harrod’sHe was revealed to be the Harvey Weinstein of retail, who preyed on dozens of young female employees with the help of the store’s security force before his death last year at the age of 94. Ugandan Olympic runner in Kenya Rebecca Cheptegei She was set on fire by her boyfriend and died after four days of agony, becoming the third female runner to be killed by a male partner in Kenya in three years. Rap artist and impresario in New York Sean Combs, who was last seen beating his girlfriend on a hotel security camera, was arrested on charges of sex trafficking, blackmail and sexual abuse in connection with well-attended, drug-filled orgies that included threats and coercion against women.

Where am I going with this, you ask? Call it cri de coeur. Everywhere I look, in every country, in every social class, I see a staggering amount of male violence against women; Most of this goes unpunished, and most is ignored. Women’s rights are being pushed back in many countries; That includes just under half the electorate, including our own, who orchestrated the collapse of abortion rights and supported a convicted rapist whose misogynistic rants would fill a book. We’ve had 50 years of contemporary feminism. Shouldn’t we have more to show?