The Pelicot Trial, and why we have to speak up

When we talk about a 'crisis of masculinity', this is what it looks like; a world in which values are so absent that women's bodies are just vassals.

TW for sexual violence and rape.

I sat and read through all of the profiles of the perpetrators in the Guardian because I felt as though I should. There's nothing quite so powerful in the world as hearing the news of a heinous crime having been committed by people who may or may not be just like you, and I felt as though I needed to in some way gain some sort of understanding of it all. Who are these men? What on earth could it possibly be that results in them acting in such a grotesque way?

What was striking very quickly and very obviously was how repetitive these profiles became. It felt as though I was reading a series of boilerplate descriptions crafted by lawyers in order to try and present the best possible face on an impossibly disgusting, sordid and grotesque series of events. There were allusions, both direct and implied, to childhood trauma and sexual abuse, as though this is acts some sort of preventative cloak that exonerates or mitigates whatever behaviour the victim ends up perpretrating himself. They became extremely boring to read extremely quickly. Draw your own conclusions over whether this was intentional or not. There was, above all else, a glaring lack of culpability.

The banality of evil hangs heavy in the air, when you actually pause to think about the mechanics of it all. The group chats and the messageboards. The furtive conversations between rapists about what they were going to do to this woman. The preparations. The acts themselves. The blithe assumption that any of this could be was okay because her husband alone said so. It only takes a second or two's consideration of the machinations behind all it all before the stomach truly starts to turn.

So, why did they do it? Perhaps the most realistic answer to that question is ‘because they could’, and that is deeply unsatisfactory. The lack of culpability on display in the Guardian's profiles suggests a different answer, that these men live in a world in which they cream off whatever benefits they want from people while claiming no responsibility for what they do, a world in which women are mere vassals for their wants, without any say whatsoever, without so much as any active involvement, and in which consent isn't even an afterthought. To these men, this woman—this human being—was a hole, and nothing more.

Pause to think a little longer and the horror grows even greater. How many other times every day, week, month or year does something like this take place and fly completely under the radar? Does it also happen in Britain, or in Germany, or in Italy, or in Spain? In the US, Canada, Brazil or Japan? How many other women have been raped, possibly up to dozens of times (or more; who the hell can even say?), and perhaps don't even know that this has happened to them? Because we know it's happened once on this scale, in one country at one point, the probability is substantially greater than zero.

I don't want to speak up. I've got better things that I could be doing with my time on a Saturday lunchtime. And honestly, none of us are going to be able to do so with the eloquence and undisguised anger and revulsion that the excellent Musa Okwonga did on Instagram yesterday.

okwonga

A post shared by @okwonga

But I'm obliged to. You are too. We can't ‘fix’ anything here, but we can at least create a hum of noise that could start to shift this balance of power. I can't express anything like as beautifully as Musa can, but I can at least add a voice to the pile of growing disgust that this could have happened and that we will not tolerate a society in which this can and does happen.

No excuses. No justification or mitigation. Change is necessary and that change needs to take place in a lot of men's heads, as much as anywhere else. When I read Musa's words I'd been thinking of writing something like this for a while and briefly thought, “Well, he's said that better than I ever could so why bother?” But that thought was quickly replaced by the fact that this needs a crescendo of voices registering their disgust and that a lot of these voices—far more than there have been so far—need to be men's voices.

There's been a lot of talk of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ in the press recently, but I'm unable to take such talk seriously unless this is included within that conversation. Boys are getting left behind at school and at university. The suicide rates for men are horrendous. Many of the industries that employed us are dead and nothing has arrived in their place. But men don't deserve to be ‘fixed’ unless a fundamental pillar of whatever new social contract may be required absolutely ends this sort of behaviour. There are no excuses.

It remains the case that only 1.5% of reported sexual assaults even go as far as someone being charged. As such, it's difficult to argue that this sort of crime isn't essentially decriminalised. Sure enough, the occasional perp will be made an example of, for a short while at least, but the plain, harsh truth of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of rapists get away with it. They never get that knock on the door. They never face the shame of their families finding out what they've done. They never lose their jobs, get thrown in prison, and have their entire neighbourhood knowing exactly who they are, exactly what they are, and exactly what they've done. As they should.

And this is institutional. The bar could be lowered for allegations to make it through to greater investigation or charges being brought. Women must be believed more. It feels almost as though there should be an entirely separate area of policing reserved for this type of crime, one with the expertise to cut through the crap and actually start to address this in a serious manner. Perhaps it should be run by women. If change is to be substantive, it needs to be both structural and radical.

In the meantime, men will continue to rape and sexually assault women. That much we can say for certain. And perhaps all we can do is to add to that noise and to make it so loud that it can no longer be swept under the carpet, and have these difficult conversations with each other, to try and build some sort of defence against a torrent that never really seems to dissipate.

And to conclude just as Musa did, Gisele is a hero. Her bravery is astonishing, a sign in itself of the inverse of these men, of a woman almost broken by men who stood up and said ‘non plus’. Let her lasting legacy be a fundamental change to these attitudes on a widespread basis. All it needs is for us to collectively agree that it has to happen, and for that to happen requires substantive action from men. Be angry. You should be. But be angry at these men and those who enable them, and not the victims of their debauchery and entitlement. They all deserve better, just as Gisele did. Let her assailants rot in prison forever.