Today I salute the courage of Gisele Pelicot.
As she so rightly says, it is time for 'shame to change sides'.
Gisele didn't have to have a public trial, she could have chosen to maintain her privacy. Instead, she decided the trial should be public in her determination to create change and expose rape culture.
In her words: "I wanted all woman victims of rape – not just when they have been drugged – I want those women to say: Mrs Pelicot did it, we can do it too. When you’re raped there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them. The profile of a rapist is not someone met in a car park late at night. A rapist can also be in the family, among our friends.”
Shame and self-blame should not belong with the victim of sexual crimes, yet so often, that is exactly how the victims feel, whether they are boys, girls, men or women.
Around 80% of the time when a female child - a CHILD - tells her parents she has been raped, she is blamed by them. What did you do to provoke this, why were you alone with them, what were you wearing...and so on. Her behaviour, character and the context are scrutinised way before anyone asks what the hell the perpetrator was doing.
The way that reports of rape and sexual assault are responded to, whether by the police, parents or friends, and the consequences of disclosing, are key reasons for feeling shame. Victims know they will be blamed, that their behaviour and character will be pulled apart. Victim blaming is rife in the justice system, in the media and in society at large. It is often successful at excusing perpetrator's behaviour and avoiding a conviction.
Even when someone is as close to being the perfect victim as Gisele was, there are attempts to victim blame. Her husband initially blamed her for not wanting to take part in swinging, as if this gave him the right to drug her and have her raped on camera. Some men on trial alongside him have blamed their wives for not giving them enough sex, or on a history of being sexually abused themselves. None of this is ever an excuse for rape.
An unexpected aspect of victim blaming is that women are just as likely to victim blame female victims as men are. Women have been indoctrinated into the same belief systems, and it also gives the false sense of security of being able to successfully avoid being a victim because they would never wear such a short skirt, get drunk or go back to someone's flat after a first date. This completely overlooks the actual cause of rape, which is always only ever, perpetrators deciding to rape.
Another illuminating angle of this case is the reality that many men still see wives as the property of the husband; many assumed it was fine and appropriate for him to give consent for her while she was unconscious
There is much that needs to change.
Let's start with honouring Gisele.
Put shame where it belongs. Never with the victims, always with the perpetrators
#rapeculture #courage
