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'We are all Gisèle': French women rise up against 'rape culture' during Gisèle Pelicot trial (www.usatoday.com)

submitted 1 day ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] Krauerking@lemy.lol 3 points 28 minutes ago

Its a shame an obviously inflammatory sign and clickbait seeking article image has made it so that the discussion is mostly off topic.

Its insane and the whole evil piece of shit that perpetrated his kink of having multiple people raped by omission and literal drugging and rape gets away from conversations by the obvious bullshit of absolutes is insane to me. how about no victim blaming on either side and recognition that rape is awful abuse of power dynamics that occur whenever its viewed as possible.

But also this post should probably be removed because that sign is meant to cause this kinda of angry response and it leads into a lot of hurt victims and happily ignorant people hand waving it away.

[-] yeah@feddit.uk 3 points 1 hour ago

Anyone dug up statistics of how many rapes of women are by women? No?

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 1 points 34 minutes ago

Why? Cos I'm pretty sure it's going to be lower than the number committed by men.

[-] SulaymanF@lemmy.world 3 points 30 minutes ago

Less than men is not the same as “always by men.” I think that’s what people take issue with.

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 4 points 7 minutes ago

Right, this story about a woman being drugged and raped repeatedly by strangers for years - and people are taking issue with the fuckin semantics on one sign in a crowd photo? Yeah, that's the problem, right there.

[-] yeah@feddit.uk 1 points 5 minutes ago

Exactly

[-] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 hours ago

imagine taking this story, about where a woman was systematically drugged and raped for OVER 10 YEARS, and going "ah yes but what about the men?!?". I truly feel for the men in the comments sharing their stories, and I hope they continue to share and raise awareness, but Jesus y'all not the time

[-] Stegget@lemmy.world 4 points 37 minutes ago

it's never the time for male abuse victims to share our stories. we're used to it. we're supposed to shut up and deal with it.

[-] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 3 points 27 minutes ago

no that's not true at all. you're supposed to talk about it, to share your stories, to go to therapy, support groups. to make online spaces to discuss and heal and grow. same as women. unfortunately, the only time I ever see men share their stories is when it takes away from a women's experience, which is disgusting as has been happening more and more on this app.

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Yeah exactly. I'm a man who was assaulted as a kid by a woman. Shit happens. But looking at what shit happens most often - it's sexual violence perpetrated by men against women.

I don't know how we change that. Maybe by continuing to level up the power dynamic between men and women, I feel like we've been making some progress with that over the past century. Finally. But it's more than that, there are too many idiot arseholes who think they can have anything their fists can beat down. Almost all of them are men.

Pretty much every girlfriend and female friend I've ever had has had bad experiences with men. Women I have cared about over the years have had experiences across the spectrum from cat calling and comments back when they were kids in school uniforms all the way through to stranger rape. Domestic violence isn't uncommon either.

I dunno, I wish I had a solution. It fuckin breaks my heart - when a close friend or a partner opens up about what happened to her and there's nothing you can do, it's years too late, you have these thoughts like if I'd been there I could have stopped it- but it happened years ago and you are fuckin helpless to do anything except maybe hug her if she's comfortable with that, or if not try to tell her it's over, she's safe and stronger now, whatever you think might help.

You don't realise how harmful sexual assault is until you've been unable to help someone you love. The key word isn't 'sexual', it's 'assault'.

Shit like that makes me fuckin ashamed to be a bloke. I don't know how we fix this, but I've got two suggestions for a good start - firstly, we don't do that shit. Never, there's never an excuse. Secondly, we fuckin shut down other guys, even if they're our mates, if they start with that sort of talk.

Yeah, there's wrong uns in whatever gender. But in terms of atrocity it's us men well in the lead. We gotta change that. I think we can at least fuckin try.

[-] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 4 points 58 minutes ago* (last edited 57 minutes ago)

thanks for being one of the reasonable ones in this comment section lol. and it seems you're doing a pretty good job of trying to enact change. keep it up, it's a team effort :)

sorry to hear about your story as well, hope everything is going well for you now.

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 3 points 35 minutes ago

Cheers, yeah I've kinda grown into my own shit. It's caused me a lot of problems over the years, but I'm getting old now and I'm okay with stuff.

I'm just saying that anyone can get hurt like that, but it's mostly women getting hurt and it's mostly men doing the hurting. We've got to fuckin stop doing that because it is profoundly wrong.

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[-] mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 10 points 2 hours ago

50 codefendants in a case against one woman? How horrific.

Thank you to the French women doing this. However, since this is France, my biggest worry is this will be shot down with a big red flag/note saying:

How can we fix this when the government keeps protecting the real rapists: minorities

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 1 points 29 minutes ago

Yeah Western Europe culturally not looking too clever these days re right wing shit. Not that America is doing any better mind.

[-] AnxiousOtter@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 23 minutes ago)

I'm so tired of walking into a post about women getting sexually assaulted and seeing a wall of "BuT WhAt AbOuT MeN!?!" comments. You people are so fucking stupid.

Edit: To the downvoters, please explain why you think it's appropriate to make a discussion about a woman being raped by 100+ men all about you. You're so fucking fragile.

Edit 2: Just an amazing lack of self awareness in these replies. Turns out some people really don't see a problem with hijacking a post about women being sexually assaulted to make it all about them instead. That's enough internet for today.

[-] Soulg@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 hour ago

I'm not one of them, but the problem is the sign in the thumbnail. Without that I doubt it would've upset as many people.

[-] AnxiousOtter@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Nah, that's just a pretext. They're just as bad as the "all lives matter" folks.

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 1 points 10 minutes ago

I didn't even look at the thumbnail. I'm a man btw. If I had to rewrite that sign it might say 'NOT ALL MEN - JUST TOO MANY'. Or, I dunno, something like that.

I kinda feel like, for blokes there are two important things we can do. Aside from stop having arguments about who's the bigger victim (it's women). First is just don't do that shit. Just don't. It's actually easy and rewarding to not be a bad person. Second is don't let any other guys get away with even talking like that. Even if they're mates, step the fuck up and let them know that talk is not okay. Let's be honest, many of us have heard our mates talk about women in a way we weren't quite comfy with and afterwards thought we should have said something. Say something.

[-] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 hour ago

Nah lol I literally would be in here in full support without the sign, but with the sign I am reminded that even though I have been raped by two different women, not only am I seen as a horrid abuser for the crime of having been born with a penis, the women who raped me are seen as victims for the virtue of having a vagina. Erasing male victims and woman perpetrators in one fell swoop really isn't a good look, it makes the issue gendered rather than about abusers V victims, and then to turn it around and claim that men are making it "all about us" as if the sign didn't lead us there in the first place is some A+ victim blaming.

If women don't like that the conversation becomes about male victims in response to their erasure of male victims (and in this case woman perpetrators), then women should start speaking up for ALL victims instead of erasing us, regardless of how insignificant they think we are ignoring us is hurting OUR cause, yes "ours:" victims' regardless of gender.

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[-] AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 0 points 43 minutes ago

terminally online men try not to take a picture of a random sign in an otherwise unrelated article personally challenge (impossible)

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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024

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