'We are all Gisèle': French women rise up against 'rape culture' during Gisèle Pelicot trial
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.
Pointless sexist bullshit and wrong on its face. I never understood the drive some people have to paint abusive behavior as exclusive to men.
Exactly. If anything, signs like these drag the attention away from the actual issue.
I mean this thread is a good example of that and why such signs are bad
And pray tell, what exactly is the "real" issue?
Men and women being victims of sexual abuse, perpetrated by both men and women. It is not a genderlocked issue.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual-victimization-by-women-is-more-common-than-previously-known/
From your article, "In fact, 96 percent of women who report rape or sexual assault in the NCVS were abused by men."
Those are the kinds of numbers that come from laws defining rape as penetration and then only counting convictions.
Kind of like how the US had zero married women that were victims of rape by their husbands when it wasn't a crime for husbands to rape their wives.
that quote you gave was taken entirely out of context. here’s the very next sentence:
No but the number of assaults by men far outweigh the number by women. And that Scientific American article is just your way of brushing off the fact that men are the primary offenders when it comes to sexual assault. You are exactly like the gun enthusiasts who throw the statistics on mental illness as the true cause of gun deaths and not the guns they use.
Edit: Just cause you seem to be including that link everywhere you post here I'm going to include this link to the 2024 study of sexual assault in France.
https://www.statista.com/topics/8875/violence-against-women-in-france/#topicOverview
"Primary" does not mean "always" however
Oh yeah, you got me there. Statistically small number of women who commit sexual assault completely absolves all men of being complicit in the sexual assault committed by mostly men. We definitely have to correct our perceptions on that one. Sure okay.
hey as a guy who was assaulted, please stop saying all men are complicit. do you understand what you're saying when you say that?
You are basically validating the people who are trying to dismiss the assaults by men by using the "women do it too!" defense.
I'm sorry for what happened to you and you deserve justice and support. But so do the literally millions upon millions of women who have been assaulted by men who are basically ignored or intimidated by our society into staying silent about their experience.
incredibly ironic. how can you dismiss assault and say I'm the one dismissing it? jesus please get a grip and get off the fucking internet. why did I even try?
If you actually read my comment you'll notice I did not dismiss anything.
Just stop and go away, please. No one wants to read your bigotry around here, you're not impressing anyone.
Sorry you're getting this reaction. I am a man who was abused by women and all the support groups lead to me taking to a room full of women about it. Do men come forward less often? Yes. It would have to be like 1 in 100 men coming forward for it to be equal. I've had one other male friend who has been assaulted, but over half of the women I've been friends with have.
If it helps anyone with that being anecdotal, you have to look at the statistics of who is doing it: people in power. Just that alone means more men simply have the opportunity. Add to that that men are told sex is power, and that men who have sex often are virile, whereas women who do are slut shamed. It's getting better, but still far off.
Anyway I'll take the downvotes, but every statistic we have shown is that men are the primary antagonist in the vast majority of sexual assault against both men and women.
I'm sorry you were abused and I really wish this were a world where this sort of thing didn't happen.
Well the idea with protests like this is to shine so bright a light on it that we force governments to act. If we do that enough, we can make this happen less and less to everyone.
As many of the comments in this post have demonstrated, far too many people are more interested in whataboutism and not very interested in creating true accountability. Until we overcome this bias I don't know if we're going to be able to really hold governments accountable for this sort of thing. When women talk about the patriarchy, this is what they're referring to.
Personally, I would imagine that the real issue with THIS ARTICLE is the picture they chose to forefront it. Why would they choose that one? Rage engagement, to drive engagement and ad revenue, because it has been proven time and time again, that divisiveness brings money. There is a lot of coverage about her and her bravery, as it should be, because she is a massive hero.
If we choose any other posts about the case, that don't drive themselves on such divisiveness, and and consider the top comments, we can see that the focus is where it should be, on her story and his conviction, yet they rarely get as much engagement as this one.
It is manufactured ragebait to feed the algorithm, using divisiveness as its drive. And it is both succeeding, and taking away from the real point, her story and the support and help that she, and all rape victims deserve.
Yeah the problem is the picture on the article and not the men on here who took immediate offense to it instead of paying attention to the actual message and problem. Which is rampant sexual assault that is basically being ignored by the authorities and society at large.
This woman was unknowingly raped by more than 50 men (possibly hundreds) over god knows how long. All orchestrated by her husband. Some of those people were supposedly highly respected individuals and yet not one of them saw anything wrong with what they were doing.
But your anger is with the woman holding up a sign saying "not all men but always men". You are exactly like the people who took umbrage at the black lives matter protests because they were saying "black lives matter" and not "all lives matter". To be blunt, you're missing the message. Not because you don't actually get it. But because you don't want to.
A woman was raped over decades by 51 men and your issue is the article has a picture you don't like as the opening image?
You got downvoted in a comment thread like this for being a sexist ass and yes I define sexism as discrimination against someone on the basis of their sex
Women can rape people and so can Men
By the logic of stereotyping all men as rapists because some of them commit rape you could say the entirety of humanity is evil because of those capitalist assholes and bigots
Stop ignoring that both Female and Male sexes can commit rape
Stereotyping every Man as a rapist and ignoring the female rapists is sexist
I don't beleive you replied to that person in good faith based on your other interactions on this thread
We solve problems by not ignoring certain parts of them or the entire problem
Ignoring problems only allows them to grow bigger
I'd really like to see updated statistics when things like gendered laws that define it as something like unconsentual penetration with a penis is taken into account
Rape isn't a gendered thing, both male amd female sexes should do it and it shouldn't have a gendered legal definition
And so, what's the course of action? To give all men some sterilization treatment?
How does this help with anything?
And, I promise you, the real numbers are probably scarily equal, just like with domestic abuse. Because men are definitely taught to never come forward with those.
But even if the true ratio was 1:50, what's the solution? Let's write the law that when it's a man, he gets a double prison sentence. Or maybe the police shouldn't believe men who say they were assaulted, but vise-versa barely check, cuz for sure it's true?
Criminal statistics should in no way enforce the course of justice or legislation. They could only maybe influence where money is allocated in prevention campaigns. At best.
Who the hell said that?
The plan is to make it so the system actually helps the victims. That's the idea. These protests bring light to the issue.
Cool guess, stats say you're wrong.
See above.
Seriously this is fucking embarrassing, you're creating constant strawman arguments without any basis of anything reported.
So how exactly am I complicit for some dude raping someone? Just because I have a penis? And are all women completely exempt or are all women also complicit?
Sexual assault is bad. Apparently you disagree.
Reading the article, it says that both men and women attended the protest against rape culture in France, so the real issue is that France has a rape culture. People vs culture.
This comment section however is about a few of the signs that a few of the protesters carried, and/or the comments from the self proclaimed feminist representative who says they'll use these protests to promote their own agenda. That's different, because that's a gender issue. Men vs. Women.
I understand why some people are annoyed by that, because it splits the people instead of uniting them against the primary enemy: The culture.
Anyway this is just a lemmy thread, and it doesn't matter who is right, but it shows that even talking about it is a distraction from the "real issue", because while we are discussing signs and rape statistics, nobody is talking about the rape culture.
I don't know exactly what the feminist representative wants to do, or if she has a point, but I do believe that we need to be able to unite both men and women to speak freely against the culture, because rape culture is enabled by people who don't speak about it. Alienating half of them is bad timing in that regard. To stop rape culture we need both men and women to speak against it.
I hope this makes sense. This thread has gone completely off the rails..
I guess it’s sometimes done in the spirit of forcing men to really consider their actions, because most of the men I know tend to think abusive men are always other men. And we usually have plenty excuses for our own abusive behavior. So it is like saying: “no, stop with the excuses, the problem is you”, in the hopes that this message will also reach its intended audience, ie the many men who are abusive to women in one way or another and, largely, in denial.
But I agree, these kinds of slogans annoy the hell out of me too and are totally not helpful in more ways than one, e.g., when men seek protection from abuse. I guess there are better ways of making a more forceful point about holding men accountable.
I'm sure most if not all abusers are in denial and don't consider themselves abusers, but this slogan gives a pass to ones who happen to be women by insisting that they don't exist at all.
I don't think that slogan communicates what you're saying here well, if at all
There's a comedian who told a story, that I feel almost every guy can tell as if it was theirs..
They had that friend in their friends group. You know, the kne always making misogynic jokes etc. Well, yeah, that guy eventually raped someone.
You know where he says it was his, the comedian's, fault? The whole group always laughed at those jokes, or maybe didn't laugh, but definitely didn't dismiss them, didn't lecture the guy, didn't tell him it was not ok.
There's this men's club where misogyny is an accepted business as usual. And it enables deranged individuals.
So, as a man who's aware of the statistics, you can start doing some prevention: shame other men for misogyny.
Oh, and btw, fuck the lady with sign. She's a petty sexist using someone's tragedy to support her hate for men.
As a man, “that” guy initially received physical consequences, and is now locked in a box. All the people that made that happen also identified as men. It’s almost like rape is bad and everyone agrees, including men.
Maybe it was the 50 men that raped this woman?
Women rapists are more rare. And comments like this only serve to promote rape culture. Maybe stop and think of how many women are hurting before you start screaming sexism and then maybe women will listen to your point of view.
They exist, right? In direct contradiction to what the sign is plainly saying, right? But pointing that out is somehow promoting rape culture? That is ridiculous and offensive. They mean to exclude an entire category of survivors. To believe that slogan and uncritically repeat it, you'd need to be willfully ignorant and have the emotional intelligence of a turnip.
Sex abuse of all kinds is evil and a social menace. By people of any gender, against people of any gender. No equivocation, full stop.
Maybe stop to think about the male victims of female abusers in this fucking thread before you hand wave us away as "more rare" and "promoting rape culture" by "not being excited about being lumped in with abusers simply for having a penis while our abusers are lauded for having vaginas." You excusing it as rare and that sign pretending women can't rape are promoting rape culture, full stop.
Oh yeah, that 4% of sexual assaults being committed by women that are being totally ignored by the media is the REAL problem.
I can't speak for how their "sexual violence" criterion is defined, but as for the "rape" statistic, most western countries (France probably included) define rape for reporting purposes as "forced penetration", specifically excluding "forced envelopment" from the statistic, and thereby excluding practically all male rape victims with female perpetrators from crime statistics.
For example, here are the statistics for sexual violence in the year 2011, according to the CDC (note that these are for the US, and may be significantly different for France, though the reporting method is likely the same - there's also a 2013 CDC report with effectively the same numbers for the US):
And
Added together, we see that 7.1% of women and 5.1% of men reported being victims of sexual violence in 2011. That is, 58% of victims of all sexual violence in 2011 were women, and 42% were men. For every 3 female victims, there were 2 male victims.
Now on to the frequently cited claim that more than 95% of perpetrators are men. From the "Characteristics of Sexual Violence Perpetrators" section about a third of the way down, keeping in mind the percentages above:
And
To help us with the breakdowns of these numbers, earlier in the report we find that:
So, of the 1.7% of made to penetrate male victims, 82.6% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.3% sexual coercion, 80% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, 54.7% were female, and of the 2.5% noncontact, 43.6% were female.
So, 1.4% of the 1.7% made to penetrate, 1% of the 1.3% sexual coercion, .9% of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, and 1.1% of the 2.5% noncontact.
So, 4.4% of the 7.1% of men reporting sexual violence had female perpetrators. That is, 62% of sexual violence against men is committed by women (in 2011).
So, going back to our numbers above, we see that 62% of the 42% of sexual violence with men as victims was committed by women.
Our final numbers are: 74% of sexual violence in total in the US is committed by men, and 26% is committed by women. Which ain't great, but that feels a lot more realistic than "95%", and it's a far cry from the intentionally misleading numbers you're citing.
BUT IT GETS WORSE...
What happens when we look at just rape? Note that first we have to figure out what the CDC means by "rape", because at first "99% of rape is committed by men" looks pretty damning.
Well, "rape" is defined by the CDC for the purposes of this study as "completed or attempted forced penetration or alcohol- or drug-facilitated penetration". That is, only being penetrated counts as rape.
Men, on the other hand, get the completely separate category "made to penetrate", that is, "being forced to have sex with someone, just doing the penetrating instead of being penetrated."
So, 99% of rapists are men because rape is intentionally defined as "being penetrated" to exclude male victims of rape from the statistics. I wonder why...
Well, what happens when we actually look at those numbers, counting "made to penetrate" as, y'know, rape, because it is rape?
And
Which is, again, because male rape victims are effectively excluded from this definition. Also, we have this:
And
Note that these numbers clearly show that made to penetrate happens just as much each year as "rape". This means that fully half of rape victims are men (in 2011 - the number fluctuates in the other years of the study, but not more than 5%).
Finally, if 99% of rapists are men and 83% of an equal number of "made to penetrators" are women ... then an estimated 42% of the perpetrators of nonconsensual sex (that is, rape) in 2011 were women.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it's important to debunk this sort of misandrist misinformation.
Edit: Here's a Time article that confirms these numbers. They also mention that boys under 15 are more likely to be sexually assaulted than women over 40, and are more than twice as likely to be assaulted as girls under 15. Again, this may be different for France, but it's pretty damning for the US.
I'm not out to debate the statistics of "REAL problem" with you. I'm pointing out that it's counterproductive (and I believe morally wrong) to tell survivors they're unworthy because their abuser was a woman. I get the feeling some people care more about gendering this issue than they do about about victims of abuse.
Yeah literally no one is saying that a victim of sexual assault is unworthy of anything because their assaulter is a woman and not a man. We're talking about the issue of men thinking it's okay to sexually assault because it's almost never fucking prosecuted.
Bringing up the statistic of female perpetrators is simply a way of deflecting the responsibility of men to acknowledge and hold accountability to their fellow men who commit sexual assault.
I've said it elsewhere in this thread but this is exactly the same as the gun enthusiasts bringing up mental illness statistics as a way of absolving guns of their role in gun violence.
Thread has a photo of a sign saying "not all men but always a man".
No. Bringing up the statistic is a way of correcting an intentionally skewed view that is vilifying men for no fucking reason. If you're gonna be a dick about things, don't go crying when you get shafted.
Since men are the primary perpetrators it's not skewed not even a little bit. Yes, there are women who commit sexual assault but the number of women who do it is such a small percentage as to be almost statistically insignificant compared to the number of men who do.
Men commit sexual assault every single day and barely 5% of them get prosecuted for it. And every person who claps back with this idiotic argumentative excuse that "women do it too" is just feeding into a system that has made this world completely unsafe for women.
Citation needed
Listen, it's very obvious we're not on the same page. You're responding to a comment thread that contains a comment literally contradicting most of your points, and you're not being rational about it. You're spouting wild claims with little regard for backing them up - it's as if în your head, they're axioms and not only do they not require proof, but invalidating them would mean the rest of the world crumbles. And I'm sure for you, that's true.
All things considered, continuing this "discussion" brings no value to either of us. Have a good one.
Yeah, this just told me everything I need to know. I didn't even read the rest of your comment. I'm just going to downvote you and move on.
My guy, he provided numbers and sources while you've been arguing from an emotional standpoint only.
Take a deep breath.
I have provided numbers and sources all throughout this post on several other comments. I don't feel like reposting it everywhere constantly. In fact the one he was asking for a "citation" on is literally in the article which they clearly did not bother reading. And nothing I say is actually going to change his view or the other people who are downvoting me. And I am absolutely certain they are downvoting me because of their "feelings" and not because of any data. So you can try to high road me but you just sound like an ass.
The police who recite such stats in my area don’t consider me a victim of my repeated assaults, specifically because of my gender. I guess I should probably pipe down and stop being so uppity and hysterical though. After all my private parts are outside of my body so they’re basically asking to be used by anyone.
I don't know where in the stats I quoted it said anything about dismissing male victims? In fact that statistic includes male victims because most sexual assault on males is committed by other males. Now if you were assaulted by a woman I'm sorry and that's terrible, but the fact is that it's a rarity in comparison to the acts committed by men. But all should be treated with equal seriousness. And none of it is, because men are in power and they don't tend to consider rape or sexual assault a "real" crime.
Yeah, the victims of women are just babies who should quit crying about being a victim. As if it's a REAL problem, right? Who gives a shit, they're just men they don't have any feelings they're just here for our entertainment.
You being downvoted shows that men are never going to listen to women about this.
96% of perpetrators are men. It’s a statistic that goes against their “women are abusers too!” defense they have to protect their own egos from the reality that one of their friends is likely an abuser.
literally rape apology from you here.
The provocative and stupid sign in the article has completely derailed a potential discussion about fixing this problem and the exact nature of the problem - because it says something that denies anybody experiencing something outside it's narrow statement their lived experience. It's also not a men vs women issue - there are women that are assaulted by other women, who are equally silenced by this stupid sign. If you believe that a single rape is one too many (as any person on the fucking planet should), then explain to me how 4% of all rapes simply don't matter - and how it isn't offensive at a movement which is borne of abuse victims fighting against the system that facilitates it, and silences victims - to not only completely disregard men that have been victims of women (or women which have), but to then say that anybody who highlights the fact that rape can be perpetrated by a woman, even if it isn't the majority of the time - must therefore be a rapist or friend of one. Fuck that noise.
stop making dumbass generalisations that paint those of us who make active choices to support women and act decently, being an ally as "probably having rapist friends" because of our gender - like seriously what the actual fuck is wrong with you?
Nobody is denying that the majority of rapes are men against women, but the disgusting attitude you have here that all men are automatically rapists, when there are people that want to fix this culture and stop the problem - but stupid nonsense like this pushes so many people down the alt-right pipeline and sets the entire movement back decades. Literally all you have to do to defuse this entire fucking issue is acknowledge male victims instead of pretending they don't exist, and then link arms with them when they support the same reflections and changes to society and behaviour - instead it's been turned into a stupid 'men vs women' fight by people that assume all people of one gender are perpetrators and all of another are victims, instead of the much more simple universal truth that rape is evil and you should just be able to accept that without adding qualifiers.