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.
Reading the article, it says that both men and women attended the protest against rape culture in France, so the real issue is that France has a rape culture. People vs culture.
This comment section however is about a few of the signs that a few of the protesters carried, and/or the comments from the self proclaimed feminist representative who says they’ll use these protests to promote their own agenda. That’s different, because that’s a gender issue. Men vs. Women.
I understand why some people are annoyed by that, because it splits the people instead of uniting them against the primary enemy: The culture.
Anyway this is just a lemmy thread, and it doesn’t matter who is right, but it shows that even talking about it is a distraction from the “real issue”, because while we are discussing signs and rape statistics, nobody is talking about the rape culture.
I don’t know exactly what the feminist representative wants to do, or if she has a point, but I do believe that we need to be able to unite both men and women to speak freely against the culture, because rape culture is enabled by people who don’t speak about it. Alienating half of them is bad timing in that regard. To stop rape culture we need both men and women to speak against it.
I hope this makes sense. This thread has gone completely off the rails…