The world was stunned recently by a news story that’s been talked about, discussed and denounced by men everywh…
No… just kidding. The news WAS horrific and devastating, and it SHOULD have been in every single person’s condemnation of the patriarchy and men’s privilege, but guess what? It wasn’t. Because of the patriarchy, and men’s privilege. I, myself, had to hear about the story from Substack. From Female writers. To date, I’ve seen maybe, MAYBE, 3 or 4 men talk about it. What news am I talking about here? Chances are, if you’re a man, you still don’t know about it or have put it aside as some kind of anomaly or one-off thing.
What I’m talking about is the revelation that a French man, Dominique Pelicot, over the course of a DECADE (or longer), drugged and raped his wife, Gisele Pelicot, and through various means on the internet, had over a hundred other men ALSO come and rape Gisele. This is an utterly atrocious event, yet amongst the masses one barely even hears a sniff about it. Why? Well, because it’s a revelation that has huge repercussions not just for how entitled and safe men feel in being predators and abusers, but in JUST HOW MANY men it means there are out there doing this, considering doing this, or are actively or passively ok with other men doing this.
Quite frankly, the fact that there is an absolute black hole when it comes to men discussing, condemning and bringing this subject to light should be horrifying to all of us. Dominique was able to get over A HUNDRED MEN (50 of whom are also on trial with him), in a relatively small area of France to come and rape Gisele, for OVER A DECADE, with nobody being any the wiser. He was only caught because he got caught taking up-skirt photos and some authority finally decided to take his actions seriously. Yet even after being caught, many of these men STILL insist on their innocence and privilege. They insist that because he was married to Gisele, Dominique had full authority to let them rape her. That that was all the consent they needed… and, my friends, this problem is far more widespread than we have been admitting.
Our society, our patriarchy, is centered on allowing men access to, control of and subjugation of, women. Mostly in small, subtle ways, often in larger more hurtful ways, and more often than we want, in giant, awful DEVASTATING ways. Dominique isn’t the only one. A copycat rapist in Canada has admitted to doing similar. Social Media is swamped with horrifying sexual abuse and objectification. A woman can’t post a selfie without being inundated with messages and comments and come-0ns and threats. The worst part is, it just keeps getting more and more prominent. The owners/CEOs of websites are consistent misogynists, rapists and abusers themselves. Musk and Zuckerberg being two extremely unapologetic abusers that see themselves as untouchable because of their money, privilege and power…. and perhaps they even are.
So it really does end up being on us. Men that actually care. Men that actually have the guts to stand up and speak up and speak out. Men that won’t stand for the status quo of abuse and misogyny and shitty sexual jokes and innuendo and placing women in a second class role in society. We need to be so much louder, bolder and stronger and standing up against the men that have been indoctrinated into this belief that they are owed the women of the world as their personal playthings. We have to say, “No MORE.”.
Yet just how many of us are out there? Because from my point of view, the ones that, if they aren’t directly responsible, are passively accepting, are a vast majority of the men out there, and even many of the ones that are coming around have a hard time standing up when faced with that kind of power. It doesn’t matter though. I’ve made up my mind. I won’t be quiet. I won’t shut up. We don’t just have a man problem in our society, our society IS a man problem… and when are we finally going to do something about it?