They line up in front of a courthouse in southeastern France, from morning to evening, and have gathered in the thousands in cities across the country. They hold signs reading, “one rape every six minutes,” “not all men but always a man,” and “giving in is not consenting.”
They chant: “Rapist we see you, victim we believe you.”
Women across France are rallying in support of Gisèle Pelicot, a 72-year-old reluctant icon whose husband is on trial in the city of Avignon for systematically drugging her and inviting dozens of men, 50 of whom are now his co-defendants, into their home to rape her over nearly a decade.
The shocking case has sparked what many women in France call a long-overdue reckoning over “rape culture” and systemic sexism in the way the judicial system handles sexual violence.
Dude you’re desperately trying to make this about you and aiming all your complaints about society at me when I have done exactly nothing you describe.
Here we are, in a thread about a woman being raped, with you lecturing me about how much male rape matters. That just says everything right there.
If you think no one online talks about or cares about male rape then you just aren’t listening. It’s one of Reddit’s favorite topics. They never miss a chance to highlight male rape, and threads about it get 100x the love of those discussing the problem of rape by males. Your issue is, in a word, overrepresented if anything.
You matter. Your trauma matters. You really seem to need to hear that. But yeah your assault is not in fact interchangeable with that of women. Theirs is the result of systematic devaluing and oppression of women across our culture that makes assault almost inevitable. Yours is a deplorable act of violence but not continuous with the entire fabric of our society.
In other words, we’re set up to rape females. And so we’d better talk about that. What do we do to prevent much more rare and isolated incidents of violence? I’m really not sure how much we have to say about that.
Anyway I won’t reply again or read replies. It’s been said.