POLL: hey chaps why aren't any of you talking about the Gisele Pelicot rape trial

I don't really know what to say about it other than it's hideous and horrific and grotesque. I guess the one thing that does strike me about it, or more about the commentary around it, is that in the early days it was sold as a "look at the monstrousness of ordinary men" story, but then as more reporting came out it turned out that mostly these were dudes with a history of creepiness and violence and not just everymen.

Like they made it seem like some kind of Stanford prison experiment-type revelation, as though most men would rape an unconscious woman if given the opportunity, but then it turned out that these were all (or mostly?) exactly the people you would expect to rape an unconscious woman.

I haven’t been talking about it because I haven’t been talking about much of anything but I’ve been reading the conversation on the “no men in the room” thread. I have not responded to anything there because I’m a man and I haven’t started another thread to post my responses/reactions to that conversation because that would be weird.

The entire situation is absolutely horrific, absolutely disgusting. I am in awe of Gisele Peticot’s character and strength.

It's almost over except for the appeals and confirming the sentences ? I followed it quite avidly, criminal cases is where LeMonde's coverage is at its best, Mazan also feels very close as I've been to the area countless times.
The shock and outrage at the facts quickly made way for a triumphalist tone - Gisèle as an icon for women's dignity (yes), there will forever be a before-after Pélicot case (I'm less optimistic). It's scary to say the least that the guy probably gave himself away after ten years, that nobody ever (seriously) suspected him, and that the sentences would look quite different if he had erased his hard disk.
I think to some extent you can say "everyman", just because he found 50 people in such a close perimeter, and there was a great diversity of profiles even if mostly uneducated, messed-up men, some with potential traumas, Pélicot included. I think it's clear that there was some level of manipulation from Pélicot, although that's at best a mitigating factor, and it's clear that they were all counting on impunity.
At least justice has been served, that's always a gain.

DJP otm

Indeed.

I haven’t been talking about it because I haven’t been talking about much of anything but I’ve been reading the conversation on the “no men in the room” thread. I have not responded to anything there because I’m a man and I haven’t started another thread to post my responses/reactions to that conversation because that would be weird.

The entire situation is absolutely horrific, absolutely disgusting. I am in awe of Gisele Peticot’s character and strength.

― DJP, Monday, January 6, 2025 3:00 PM

exactly my response

just because he found 50 people in such a close perimeter

My understanding is that there were at least a hundred men but there was only video evidence of about half of them?

I haven’t been talking about it because I haven’t been talking about much of anything but I’ve been reading the conversation on the “no men in the room” thread. I have not responded to anything there because I’m a man and I haven’t started another thread to post my responses/reactions to that conversation because that would be weird.

The entire situation is absolutely horrific, absolutely disgusting. I am in awe of Gisele Peticot’s character and strength.

― DJP, Monday, January 6, 2025 3:00 PM

exactly my response

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 6, 2025 2:12 PM (twelve minutes ago)

mine as well

ditto. I did even search at one point to try and find the appropriate thread for an non-gender-limited open discussion. Unfortunately, you will probably not be shocked to hear that most of the old threads with relevant keywords have abhorrent "old ilx" content in them. :(

I have thoughts about man alive's everyman question, i.e. to what degree can we extrapolate from this case about the rot at the core of people and what the avg person is capable of, but I am struggling to articulate them beyond that this story has shaken some assumptions...

I think this case asserts what we all have forgotten from childhood and the process of being raised to be a functioning adult in common society; people are at their core venal and will try to get away with what they think they can and “ wing a good person” is learned behavior that takes constant work to maintain. That we think it’s unfathomable or incomprehensible is both an expression of privilege that we’ve never endured a gauntlet of similar abuse along with the low bar we need to clear for our behavior to be deemed acceptable and a testament to how we were raised and the subconscious work we put into reinforcing those lessons.

Like, I don’t think you can look at 50, 100, whatever the number actually was it was way too fucking high, men in the same town participating in this and go “oh but all of them had some weird sex pest accusations so it’s not like it’s everyone” because that completely ignores the elephant in the room, namely that this place had so many guys of differing level of sex offender in close proximity and they all found their way to raping the same woman.

Also, while I appreciate that this thread/poll has opened an avenue for us to talk about this, I’m not going to vote in it. If you want to know why this is the most time ive spent on ILX talking about this, refer to my first post.

whole thing is so abhorent and depressing, i've not really wanted to think about it very much tbh. i certainly don't have anything helpful or interesting to say on the subject. can only echo the general admiration for gisele pelicot's bravery

Like, I don’t think you can look at 50, 100, whatever the number actually was it was way too fucking high, men in the same town participating in this and go “oh but all of them had some weird sex pest accusations so it’s not like it’s everyone” because that completely ignores the elephant in the room, namely that this place had so many guys of differing level of sex offender in close proximity and they all found their way to raping the same woman.

Thank you. Honestly.

Not in response to DJP but back to thread: If men were labeled for the things they routinely do, as rapists, harassers, coercers, abusers...it would be a lot of "normal" men. Believe women or don't, I don't feel like arguing about it.

I've discussed it with my wife. Would not ever discuss it here for multiple overlapping reasons, many of which are covered as options above and others that are not.

these were dudes with a history of creepiness and violence and not just everymen

please can we not let this important distinction distract us from looking at the monstrousness of ordinary men. i guess by "ordinary" i mean "commonly occurring" because sure you can say it's not "normal" to want to do this but they were everyday guys.

if they were some special subset of creepy dangerous men who were always going to do this, then what do we do about that?

The shock and outrage at the facts quickly made way for a triumphalist tone - Gisèle as an icon for women's dignity (yes)

And yet in my rage towards these men I find strength in reading about her even though we must all know one does not move on from these events. Her whole world has been shattered. The bedrock of everything she believed has been destroyed. Every memory from her time with this man is now tainted. Years of meaningful life are now rotten and irrevocably sullied.

Only two have a previous conviction for sexual violence, six others for domestic violence. Friends and family members of several of the men acted as character witnesses, including the partner of Cyril B., who testified that he is not ‘macho’ and that he had never forced her into any unwanted sexual encounters.

i was unaware there was a thread where it was a topic.

I just don’t get looking at the circumstances of this case and saying “they were all coincidentally exceptions to the rule that just happened to coalesce together in the most awful way possible that doesn’t end in murder”

There are 70,000 ppl on a Discord about how to rape ppl. Sexual violence permeates every aspect of humanity afaict.

Or Telegram? Either way 70000 is a large number.

xxp Yes. The purpose of a system is what it does.

It's a terrible case obviously. Shocking in its particulars but honestly not in a broader sense. It makes me think about those surveys of male college students where like a third of them say they would force nonconsensual sex if they were sure they wouldn't get caught or punished.

There are 70,000 ppl on a Discord about how to rape ppl. Sexual violence permeates every aspect of humanity afaict.

otm. IMO we're still a long way from acknowledging at a social-political level how normal rape has been in the history of our species, and how normal it remains despite the last few centuries of women's rights gains in some parts of the world.

Still routinely used as a weapon of war, for example.

xp (sorry for redundancy)
Most everything I've ever learned about SA reveals it as deeply pervasive and mundane. The scale and level of organization makes this case shocking — it's certainly not mundane from Gisèle Pelicot's perspective — but the idea that there are discrete categories of people like creeps, sex pests, sex offenders, etc. is a fantasy / somewhat self-serving form of bigotry (not to derail, but this is true of "criminal" in general).

DJP otm regarding the poll question, as in, I also read the posts in the other thread, felt implicated in the discussion about the silence from male posters, but couldn't think of how to address that appropriately. I can also add that sexual assault is a topic I generally avoid bringing up, esp irl, because people I love have been assaulted while I have not. I'm not sure how to reconcile being sensitive to trauma while not contributing to a culture of silence around the issue. I appreciate cat starting this thread and broaching the issue.

I read the LRB piece that gyac quoted from in the other thread and was glad to have been directed to it: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n24/sophie-smith/sleeping-women. I found it particularly useful for thinking about the "everyman" issue, being reminded that I learned that you shouldn't initiate sex with a sleeping partner from an advice column in the 90s (this was before I was sexually active if that matters) and that norms of consent have changed in my lifetime; for example: my sister was very good at prompting us to ask her children if they wanted hugs, rather than simply assuming "we're family so it's always fine/welcome."

i'm personally glad to see that men _are_ reading that thread and not posting to it... i know other people may feel differently.

i'm also glad there's a place outside that thread for it now... while i _am_ a woman and a SA victim, and i think both those things are important, i have other experiences that i am not sure fit neatly in that thread.

for me, one of the things i believe most strongly is that what i guess i could refer to as "rape culture" isn't a state of nature but is something that's _taught_ to people who are perceived as men. there's this school of gender-essentialist second-wave essentialism that holds that there's something inherently, i don't know, _dangerous_ about men, and i genuinely don't belive that's true. i do like men, and i do have a hard time trusting men. the idea that there is such a construct as a "good man" who will never sexually assault anyone is just, like, not something i find plausible. to me, sexual assault isn't necessarily a question of individual virtue. i guess i'm gonna talk about my experience of being an SA victim a little bit more, in spoilers again:

Because the thing is, I genuinely believe that the person who sexually assaulted me is a Good Person, to the extent such a thing exists. Good people can do bad things. There are so many ways in which the whole thing is so hard for me to talk about, so many possible ways to be misunderstood haha. For instance, I'm not in any way caping for my rapist or justifying what they did. I left them. They're not in my life and it's overall, I think, a good thing that they're not in my life, difficult as it is. Which it is! It cost me a lot leaving them. I'm still, in some sense, emotionally paying off the consequences of that decision.

Does it make sense to anyone if I say what I believe, that my rapist didn't sexually assault me _intentionally_? That they didn't rape me _on purpose_? I haven't ever seen rape framed that way. I think about myself of seven years ago, someone who had only ever known life as a man, who didn't have the experience I do now, and god, no, they wouldn't have understood that statement. I've genuinely encountered situations where people of my acquaintance have sexually assaulted people without intending to at all. I mean how fucked up is that? It's so fucked up, and I don't even know how to talk about that. I didn't know how to talk about it to the person who raped me, either. I do remember that I actually tried once. I remember that this was definitely in 2017, because I remember it happening in an apartment we only lived in that year. I told them that, when they touched me sexually without my consent, it felt like being sexually assaulted. That was the best way I could think of to describe it. God, they felt terrible about that. They didn't blame me or accuse me of making things up or anything like that. They just felt really really bad, to the extent that I wound up apologizing to them. I didn't think they were a bad person, I just wanted them to ask permission before touching me like that. I was never able to get them to do that. Again, I do kinda feel like it was my fault that I couldn't make them not do that, that it was my responsibility to make them not do that.

I _didn't_ think of myself as a rape victim for a very long time. It just didn't occur to me that I might have been raped, again, because the narratives of rape I knew bore no real resemblance to what happened to me. Yeah, that seems weird. Given that I didn't know I was a woman for the first 43 years of my life, it maybe seems a little less weird than it otherwise might, but still: weird. Being an SA victim is weird.

When I started really listening to women's experiences of being sexually assaulted, the effects it had on them, I definitely noticed that I had a lot of the responses women typically have to being sexually assaulted. Being a trans woman made it a lot easier to accept. I looked at the (utterly horrifying) statistics regarding how many trans women are sexual assault victims, and combined that with my behavior, I said, huh, I'm probably a sexual assault victim. I wonder when that happened?

Being trans, weirdly enough, also makes it easier for me to talk about having been sexually assaulted. What Gisele Pelicot is doing is brave. Me? Nah, I got nothing to lose. People already call me a groomer, a predator, an affront to man and God. A lot of people won't _believe_ me if I talk about being a sexual assault victim, but it's not like there's much they can do to lower my social standing.

The thing about SA - I've talked with plenty of other SA victims - is that it's a traumatic event, and trauma does tend to fragment memories. Remembering the whole of it is difficult. There are these little flashes of it that hit sometimes. The other weird thing is that I'd remember these things, acknowledge that yes, I was a sexual assault victim, that my rapist sexually assaulted me - and then I'd just, like, forget. Not deliberately suppress it, I'd just stop thinking about it. It was really difficult to think about. It's not as difficult to think about now, but it's still difficult.

And at the same time it was ordinary. It's something that men do to women all the time. It's a bad thing, but they're not necessarily bad men. It's not _necessary_ for someone to be a bad man in order to do that. It's an ordinary act done by ordinary men.

As to the question of why men do that, well, it's not just because they _can_, it's because men are kind of _supposed_ to behave that way. At least, that's the best sense I can make from all of the crap I was taught growing up AMAB. Even the stuff I knew was stupid bullshit, I mean, I heard it over and over again. That stuff has an effect.

And it is hard, I mean, to have that level of self-confidence, to be able to _listen_ and then talk, and know you're not an expert, and not know if you're doing the right thing, or saying it right, or being appropriate. That's all stuff I had to learn, stuff I wasn't ever taught growing up. I was taught to argue, to debate, to _reason_. And the more I listen, well, the less sure I am of myself. The less I want to talk.

Obviously, it doesn't keep me from talking entirely, lol. I think it's OK to make mistakes! Even if I get mad at someone for saying something incredibly stupid, I generally don't think they should never talk again, just that they should spend a little more time learning before opening their mouth and talking ignorant shit. I don't _want_ to always be talking about this awful shit, I don't _want_ it to always have to fall to women to have to say hey, you know what, that's pretty offensive and awful, maybe don't say that, because, of course, then we're the ones who have to take the shit for saying that, even if it's totally right and we're totally justified.

Women were treated as legal property until relatively recently (still are some places). The degree to which male supremacy has shaped most of our societies is so vast that it's almost hard to grasp. And the degree to which that supremacy has been rooted in threats and acts of sexual and other violence is similarly vast. We just elected a known sexual assaulter as president. It's not even disqualifying for national office. So that's where we are.

Indeed, a history of sexual assaults and misogyny seems to be a prerequisite to serve in the Trump administration

i've been following this story on and off ilx. i also read the no boys thread because i think it's important and also most of my favorite posters are there. i'm not as active on here outside of the hoops board anymore, but i think gyac's and la lechera's posts (among others, but especially theirs) on this topic were really valuable gut checks for me.

Thanks this thread for making me aware that there is a no boys thread. I'll have to go poke my nose in there after I'm done here.

I haven't been talking about Gisele Pelicot because I haven't been following her case; to me it is "an awful thing I read one long article about," like the doctor who made millions giving healthy people fake cancer diagnoses.

...But I talked about the doctor article with family over the holidays, and I haven't talked about Gisele Pelicot with anyone. I haven't even mentioned it to my partner, who I normally talk about everything with, or my pastor and my church friends (but none of them has said anything either). That's probably the shame, I'm not really "afraid of saying the wrong thing" in either of those contexts (maybe the "family at the holidays" one).

Two take two posts as 'saying it better than I could', DJP and rob otm. I too read the No Boys thread, felt implicated and couldn't think of an appropriate response so stayed quiet. I'm not convinced a poll is the way to go, but glad the thread is here.

I could easily have said I felt implicated by the case, full stop. Surely any man should be continually reflecting, auditing, after coming into contact with something like this? It *shouldn't* take something like this but there it is.

I have some experience of a case tangential to this, with a good friend of my partner's. As much as the details were horrific, it was also how it revealed particular attitudes among people I respected (and thought I knew). It split family and friendship groups, all divided along lines of how *true* the details were. The fact that the guy was imprisoned (vanishingly rare in cases of this nature, of course) seemed to mean little.

All of which is to support the idea that it's endemic and trying to isolate 'certain kinds of men' is irrelevant to the discussion.

"To take two posts" obviously. Christ.

Post election I have disengaged from the news for my own mental health including removing nearly every bookmark from any political/news thread on ilx (and boy did I have a lot of them).

I could vote for half these responses, but DJP and mbison probably closest to my thoughts. I second the praise for the posts I have read in the "no boys allowed" thread) and sorry the few women on ilx have had to bear this alone.

it's so awful that i don't know what to say. it's unspeakably awful and triggering to think about. I feel horrible for Gisele Pelicot and angry at all the men involved.

I can’t think of anything I would post in response that wouldn’t come across as performative outrage or something. I’m a little taken aback at all the men here who can’t follow current events because it makes them upset or whatever. We all need to toughen up for this coming fight.

I don't have anything to add, DJP otm and I suppose kudos to man alive for immediately demonstrating why women might not discuss this outside of the "no boys" thread. The one thing I would have added is the brutal LRB article - and unsurprisingly gyac already has that covered - thank you.

i remember reading this and thinking the last line was so ominous. also, that study in the 2000s that found so many men who say they would force a women but wouldn't rape a woman. !!!

"Indeed, experts note one last trait shared by men who have raped: they do not believe they are the problem."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/health/men-rape-sexual-assault.html

also, that study in the 2000s that found so many men who say they would force a women but wouldn't rape a woman. !!!

this is horrifying.

I have been thinking about how many people seem to think it's ok to assault an unconscious person. This case, the Chanel Miller case, the uncountable unprosecuted cases of people (women usually) being assaulted while they were unconscious. I can't wrap my brain around anyone ever thinking this is ok and yet it happens literally all the time.

both times I was assaulted, I was unconscious, although in my case, the guy in question took active measures to ensure I became that way first.

it might come down to the reason people avoid doing bad things - because they understand ethically that it is wrong, or because they fear societal reprisals. put someone in a situation where, in their mind, 'nobody will know' what they did, a lot of people won't pass muster because they don't actually feel that sexual assault is a bad thing. beyond rationalizing it with victim blaming, I've even heard some assholes say 'it's a victimless crime, they don't remember it!'.

like the typical dad speech to the kids - do most dads tell their kids "always ask for consent, because respecting women and their bodies is important, and they can always revoke consent at any time", or do they tell them "get consent because otherwise you are going to get burned?". I feel like a lot of fathers focus on avoiding assault/etc as a strategy for avoiding punishment but not teaching them the healthy reason for not doing things like that.

The sex talk I had with my father was effectively “you may want to do all sorts of things with a woman but if she says no, she means it”

At the time, I rolled my eyes and was like “well duh, of course” but seeing how society is as I became a more aware adult made me really appreciate that even that terse, obvious statement was leaps and bounds ahead of where baseline society was operating.

Even now, I look back on that and think “how was that a better than average sex talk”

Which is to say, it seems like a lot of guys don’t even get that, or if they do then they’re reassured be society at large that they can ignore that if they think they can get away with it

yeah, dad's speech to me was more an abdication, he found out I learned about sex from my 'best friend', and then said "oh, he tell you what goes where?" and I said "yeah" and he said "cool", then waited for 5th grade sex ed to teach me the rest. he was very adamant about like protection against STDs, but never really addressed rape/assault, guessing he assumed we wouldn't do that or something. the message about respecting women came more from my mother, who, despite being a lot more conservativey back then, was always a feminist.

Based on what my male straight friends have told me, their fathers (or mothers) didn't mention consent and rape because it went without saying, "Oh, Carlos would never do such a thing."

Also: Neanderthal, I don't know if you revealed this information in other threads and I missed it, but I'm so sorry.

It’s definitely different from the talks cis-women get from their moms. I remember as a teenager wanting to go to college in NYC and my mom saying absolutely not, you would get raped or murdered or both! Granted this was around the time of the Central Park jogger case, but still… I was raised with that sense of fear, and it was very clear that had I been born male, I would have gotten a very different talk.

xp I don't think "getting away with it" is the whole story though that's definitely some of it. It reminds me of the whole phenomenon (popular when I was in college, I hope not still) where men would use the internet/early social media to share photographs of their man friends passed-out drunk, posed with various obscene props, things written or drawn on their faces, etc. There's a social aspect to it that goes beyond simply exercising power over an incapacitated person. Men advertise that power, they invite other men into the circle of power and swear them to secrecy.

I recoil when I imagine Gisele and her husband in public together bumping into one of his co-conspirators: the husband pretending to make introductions, the knowing looks and smiles, wink wink nudge nudge.

*I realize my comparison risks trivializing rape, and I apologize if I have erred in bringing it up here. I don't mean to equate the two. I started drinking and using drugs and having sex (with a pretty shitty attitude about consent) all around the time I started college, so these experiences are sometimes hard for me to disentangle.

definitely not the whole story, it's not always borne out of opportunism, but often direct intent as well.

But the point of keys is not really to inflict "damage", it's the element of surprise to the assaulter, the confidence it gives to the assaulted. In 99% of cases you are not going to pummel the assaulter to the ground. Even with self-defense class or another weapon (spray, etc), you just buy yourself enough time to run / seek help. As such, the biggest danger of using keys, imo, is to lose your keys.

Thank you, Brad C, Jaq, sleeve, and Nabozo for expanding on the topic. Sorry for just dropping a youtube link, but I don't honestly know much about the topic of self-defense. I had just remembered hearing someone tell me that the keys thing was not a great idea.

I don’t know if anyone knows this but this thread is about the Gisele Pelicot trial, not opinions on self defense.

Thank you, I know. But tipsy and ENBB had discussed the keys technique above and it jumped out at me as a potentially important sidebar.

i think what i was getting at is less that there aren't close friendships between men and women but more so that my perception (as a gay man! i can't speak to any lived experience here as a straight person) is even in those situations there is often an imbalance in how women talk to male friends about their sexual/romantic interactions vs how they talk to their female friends.
― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, January 8, 2025 1:05 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think this ties back nicely to the topic. It's maybe not really that it's different (because why would it be the same) as the fact that women express, share and process their feelings a lot more compared to men. They often initiate those discussions, among themselves, with men, one-to-one, in groups, discussions that are necessary to commonly establish boundaries. Men have a tendency to isolate, close up like oysters, they don't learn how to draw resources from others because they don't want to depend on others. This creates silence, secret, taboo, shame.

You could see the men sentenced in the Pélicot case as an extreme form of isolation, illustrated by years spent on a website selling satisfaction for sexual deviance, where you slowly drift and lose sight of the basic moral compass because there is no one to check you.

Ok this is one thing that I really don’t understand… trying to think like a man here … like even if these other men genuinely believed she was consenting, they weren’t deterred by other obvious red flags related to self-preservation… Like:
1. A dude wanting other men to fuck his wife is not normal. What if he has second thoughts, then things can get ugly and awkward
2. The woman is unconscious. Even if it were consensual, it looks bad … assumedly these men have people in their lives who would think they were pieces of shit for doing this if they were to find out
3. Blackmail potential… like, do these men not watch tv or movies? Revenge porn, don’t they know this exists?

I think, more importantly, you can view them as such and not sympathize or empathize with them.

A lot of our cultural mores tie tragedy and sympathy together, which is very important when directed towards the victim. You may call this vindictive, or another way of perpetrating the cycle, or whatever, but if we believe in free will, this same grace doesn’t extend to the perpetrators, particularly in this case. The level of abuse Gisele Pelicot endured is beyond forgiveness, particularly for her husband. This is the type of thing should merit shunning if we want our society to improve, again in my opinion.

Not saying that the most horrific thing is these men’s stupidity, obviously it’s the act of rape and being part of the conspiracy… but they are also stupid.

They were filmed the whole time, the camera was handheld by Pélicot or on a tripod. Mind-boggling isn't it ?

Not even stupidity would stop them — that’s how strong the pull was. Idk what’s to gain by trying to “understand” them. Beyond forgiveness otm.

The banality of evil …

They don't believe / don't care she's consenting, they believe they can plausibly claim that they thought that she's consenting (and conscious).

the Sophie Smith piece that's been mentioned a few times talks about this (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n24/sophie-smith/sleeping-women)

Perhaps there is some underlying tendency that links these men, some pattern only experts can see. (Though perhaps not – the psychoanalyst Élisabeth Roudinesco argued in Le Monde that this was not ‘the trial of masculinity or patriarchy’ while also insisting that we must scrutinise the ‘education of young children’, as if these things could be untwined.) Reading reports of the testimony, patterns are hard to find. Many, certainly, experienced abandonment, parental alcoholism, neglect and abuse in childhood (Dominique Pelicot was raped by a nurse in hospital when he was nine), but others did not. The men described sadnesses and setbacks – a child dying, a business lost – tragedies that mark the lives of many people who will never rape. A number come from modest backgrounds; some are well off. One attributes what he called a ‘hatred of women’ to a single historic act of infidelity, but many more talk of building their own contented families. They all watch pornography, like at least 55 per cent of French citizens.

Only fourteen of the accused men have pleaded guilty to rape. Most of the rest claim that they, too, were the victims of Dominique Pelicot. Christian L., once a volunteer firefighter, said he must also have been ‘chemically subdued’. ‘It’s my body,’ he said of the video evidence, ‘it’s not my brain.’ Others said that they were manipulated by, even terrified of, Pelicot, the ‘seriously ill person’ under whose spell they were caught. For these men, the idea that Pelicot is a singular monster is a welcome reprieve. One defendant explained that the question of Gisèle’s consent was irrelevant: ‘She’s his wife, he does what he wants with her.’ A frequent defence – the one I find most chilling – was, in the words of Simone M., that the men believed Gisèle Pelicot was merely ‘pretending to be asleep, waiting to take part’. Some elaborated that they thought they were there to re-enact a scenario popular on porn sites: ‘sleeping woman’. At least one said that Dominique Pelicot told them that he and his wife would enjoy watching the video afterwards.

Idk what’s to gain by trying to “understand” them. Beyond forgiveness otm.

otm, the whole thing is so evil it's incomprehensible

This conversation happening alongside the news about Meta rolling back whatever lame fact-checking they were doing and adding explicit permission in their content guidelines to harass LGBTQ people — plus of course the impending reinstallation of Trump — has me thinking about the force and fluidity of social mores. Where do we actually look for moral guidelines? We are animals with strong instincts to seek certain things: food and shelter come first, but sex isn't too far down that list. But we're also social animals, we have to live together, so we need guidelines to contain those instincts and drives so that we are not constantly living in fear of having our food, shelter or mate stolen or abused by other people.

So at the top, we have laws, enforced with various forms of punishment for transgressions. But laws are really just one form of behavior guidance, and not many people sit around consulting legal codes on a daily basis. We have some general sense of what's allowed and not allowed, but I think the biggest factor is our peers, our communities. People are more likely to do something if they see someone else doing it, and especially if it's someone in a position of any kind of authority. We've talked plenty on the politics threads about how Trump represents this total indulgence of the white male id, a permission slip of sorts to do whatever you want and don't worry about the impact on anyone else. He explicitly represents that in regard to sexual assault — he is a champion of sexual assault who got elected president twice with people knowing it. Musk and Zuck's lifting of the behavioral guard rails on social media is similarly empowering to people's most selfish, self-satisfying instincts.

How does any of that tie to Pelicot's ability to recruit rapists? I mean, he was starting with a self-selecting group, right? These weren't just random people he solicited on the street, they were people already inhabiting online fantasy worlds of rape and forced sex. We can speculate about the different personal and psychological paths that brought those men to those online spaces to begin with, but the point is that they were already self-identifying as people with violent sexual fantasies. Once someone has already walked to the edge of a moral cliff and is peering over excitedly, it probably doesn't take a tremendous amount of permission from a gatekeeper to persuade them to step off it. Dominique Pelicot gave them that permission.

To me this case doesn't signify exactly that any randomly selected group of 50 men will happily rape someone if given the chance. But it does signify the power of social and moral permission from any kind of perceived authority — if someone is granting you permission to do something you already desire. And the fact that Pelicot was perceived by the other rapists as an authority, as a gatekeeper, ties directly to our still strong social/cultural sense that a husband is the head of a household and the ultimate arbiter on what can be done to/with his wife. I would guess that none of those men would have broken into the house and raped Gisele Pelicot without her husband's consent and urging.

What we're seeing all around us right now is a range of permissions being granted explicitly and implicitly for a range of violent and destructive behaviors. There's a moral darkness settling in, a Purge-like indulgence of certain aspects of the id, and this case is among other things a horrifying example of what can come from that.

And again that brings me back to why I am personally still talking about this: Gisele Pelicot’s brave and otm refusal to accept shame for this. Eternal shame on them for what they did.

Oops guess that was xp

I’m genuinely curious about the response to this in France, especially from French men.

“Some elaborated that they thought they were there to re-enact a scenario popular on porn sites: ‘sleeping woman’.”

Okay so…this is inherently a rape fantasy. It’s not a third special thing that’s somehow different. It’s sex without consent and, I must say, the freedom of having complete disregard for the other person at all.

absolutely, and that is a key point of that essay

Tipsy, good post

A frequent defence – the one I find most chilling – was, in the words of Simone M., that the men believed Gisèle Pelicot was merely ‘pretending to be asleep, waiting to take part’. Some elaborated that they thought they were there to re-enact a scenario popular on porn sites: ‘sleeping woman’.

OK, I've thought about it and I do want to address this excuse from a kink perspective. I'm going to spoil it, because I'm gonna get into detail into some pretty extreme kink here.

I am a sexual assault victim. I also have fantasies about being sexually assaulted, and have had those fantasies since before I was sexually assaulted. My experience of being sexually assaulted is _categorically different_ from my fantasies. In fact, it is common and routine for people to have fantasies about acts which, if committed, would be heinous, criminal acts. Cannibalism, for instance, is a fairly common, routine fantasy that people have. Sometimes people with this fetish do try to actually do the things they fantasize about. This is _notable_ and _rare_. Further, the vast majority of people who have these fantasies are utterly _horrified_ by it when it happens. They do have some understanding of the difference between fantasy and reality. If people can sexually fantasize about cannibalism without eating other human beings, I don't see a reason why fantasizing about sexual assault should serve as a pretext for committing sexual assault.

Some people in kink communities do practice what is known as "consensual non-consent". I haven't, but if I found someone I trusted enough, I absolutely would. When people do this, it is _explicitly pre-negotiated_ in PRECISE terms by all the parties involved. The prevailing standard for kink is not just consent, but _enthuasiastic_ consent.

Most of the people I know who do kink are doing so in large part to address trauma, shame, and stigma regarding their own sexuality. This is ALWAYS negotiated. A normal part of kink is also aftercare. When I bottom or submit in a kink context, part of the negotiations invariably involves the top or dom finding out what care I need after the scene, and then providing that care.

Using the existence of "consensual non-consent" kink as a pretext for sexual assault is, to my mind, no different from a rapist excusing their act on the grounds that "she wanted it".

Gisele Pelicot’s brave and otm refusal to accept shame for this. Eternal shame on them for what they did.

Finally got around to reading that Sophie Smith piece (like the Lucy Letby New Yorker piece its how I tend to engage in stories like this) and seeing it all put in one place, and crossed with stuff around her father and how popular fiction tends to normalize thrash behaviour really packed even more of a punch.

For Darian, the case has robbed her of one of the most basic necessities of life: sleep. How do you doze off at night when you fear you might have been abused in your sleep, when you are terrified you might lose control and become someone’s prey? When she first found out about the allegations, she didn’t sleep for five nights straight. She ended up needing medical help and was admitted to an emergency psychiatric ward where – terrifyingly for her – staff tried to sedate her. Yet the whole issue of sedation “was, you know the reason we were in this nightmare”. This hospital approach was “absolutely not what I needed”, she says. Her body and brain resisted drugs, “so they had to use this massive dose … it was really experimental”. This is now part of her campaign for better support of victims. She has tried to be honest in public about her vulnerability as a survivor, and not look like what she calls a “pseudo wonder woman”. She announced halfway through the trial that she would go into a clinic for a few days to try to recover after “weeks of repeated insomnia”.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/11/caroline-darian-daughter-of-gisele-pelicot-interview

Sleep disturbances are one of the most common reactions to SA/CSA -- the most common?! Hard to let your guard down when you fear being attacked with your guard down.

Constant hypervigilance takes such a tremendous toll, too. Even when someone's awake, always scanning the environment for potential threats, always making sure one has an escape route... how do you trust anyone at all when someone you trusted did _that_ to you?

See also: ptsd thread (it’s the only thread that shows up when you search ptsd so I’m not linking it)

Reading about this case through the statements gisele and her daughter have made induces a kind of vertigo, I try to imagine having your world/decades of personal context “swapped out” all at once like that and my brain can’t do it. The strength of both of them stuns me.

The interview with his daughter is just awful, having to live probably the rest of her life never knowing what he did to her. Horrible.

My mum was raped by my grandma's thug boyfriend when she was 14-15 and this was how my sister was conceived. It's a taboo subject within the family and I don't even think my mum has ever really processed this. But what GP has gone through here is so fucking far into the extremosphere of difficult things to process, it's hard to even think about it from her perspective. You could spend a lifetime with someone and not know they are a monster, anyone could, and really not know them.

I’m asking nicely to please be mindful of dropping graphic trauma, esp other people’s trauma, into this space — it can lead to intrusive thoughts for readers who may also be survivors.

I’m very sorry about your mom and sister. I hope they find peace.

it's not like I'm trying to be gratuitous here, it's just my closest frame of reference to this case as a male poster.

I realize that and I should have said something sooner so you didn’t feel personally targeted.

I’m asking people to please be mindful of the language they use whether they intend to be gratuitous (hopefully not) or not.

What Calzino wrote was not more graphic than reported details of Pelicot case, as linked and discussed on here. He may not be "personally targeted" but seems like he's being included, or not clearly excluded (and because he's talking about other family members, unnamed, doesn't seem gratuitous here, any more than other posters talking about male sexist behavior, their own or other guys'). This whole thread could be triggering to someone, so hopefully they would have avoided it altogether after reading the title.

Such an array of responses, people thinking out loud, trying to find their way in a shitstorm, for lack of a better term---it can be upsetting yes.

anyway, agree w "please be mindful of the language they(/we) use" in dealing w all this for sure---

And with that in mind, I probably should have let my whole first post be:
"What Calzino wrote was not more graphic than reported details of Pelicot case, as linked and discussed on here."
With the rest of what I said left to be inferred or not.

I am so sorry about your mum, sister and family Calzino.

Agree w your last post dow. I get the defensiveness and acknowledgment that it was a simple and earnest (and imo reasonable) request to be mindful of the language we use itt and everywhere.

It was hard for me to speak up about this but I did it anyway and am actually sort of mildly proud of myself.

all love to you calz

ILX has hide tags that let you hide certain paragraphs in your post - they can be very helpful when you need to share things with a CW so that people can choose whether or not to read it

ll i'm proud of you for speaking up! it was a reasonable thing to request, and sometimes, you know, people get upset...

this is one of those situations i can only really talk about in therapy speak, basically nobody's _wrong_, it's more like... the hidden text tags are pretty new. i can't remember when they were added, only that i requested them. (and they only work on a per-paragraph level, btw, so if you're using the hidden text tags on multiple paragraphs, putting a line with a single blank space between paras should work). it is definitely one of those... ilx has been around for something like 25 fucking years here and it's kind of new ground! things get awkward, like you said dow, talking about these upsetting things. i think it's... for me i think upsetting stuff _is_ worth talking about and it's taken me a long time to figure out how to talk about upsetting things. i wouldn't expect it to be any easier for anyone else!

I shared the Caroline Darian interview and on both Facebook and Instagram the first comment was from (different) women saying thanks for continuing to talk about it and for being the only man they've seen actually post about it. I'm not sharing this detail because I think I deserve a pat on the back for doing the bare minimum, but because it plays into exactly why this thread and this discussion are necessary - it's not just here that the conversation hasn't been happening. I think out of everyone I know, only one straight man interacted with the post.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I felt a bit grossed out that Law and Order SVU's latest episode that aired this week was very clearly based on the Pelicot trial/happenings. It felt a bit "too soon" to be using it for "ripped from the headlines" crap, really exploitative.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Local news reported that a similar case had happened in my region originating from 2008: same type of profile ("successful entrepreneur"), used sleeping pills/ether, also filmed the acts, admitted everything, number of victims is not revealed but include close family members including his daughter. He was sentenced in 2019 to (a paltry) 12 years, after four years of investigation.

Sounds almost like a model / recipe. In France last year there was a also a pretty big case about a young guy (named Salim Berrada) on Tinder attracting women to his studio and spiking their drinks. 17 women brought accusations, 13 for rape. He got 18 years.

and those were just the ones you've heard about. just the ones who were caught, publicized, and prosecuted.

l&o svu:

https://i.redd.it/y7rrl8c6q7ga1.jpg

content warning for more uspol doom

if i had a nickel for every time my country elected a proven sex offender over a vastly more qualified woman, i'd still feel empty