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.
Yeah, a uni I went to had a sexual assault course everyone had to take, and the thing that stuck out was that the statistics on women were horrible, but the statistics on men being raped was not statistically far behind. It was something awful like three men in a classroom of 30 would have been victims of rape. On average.
The worst part is that a friend of a friend was actually held down and raped in a hotel by three people in the hallway. But he was so scared of being perceived as gay, he refused to talk to the police, his family, or get PEP for possible STD exposure. Men don’t feel like they can come forward for male rape because they will be perceived as gay, and they won’t report being raped by women because it’s seen as being weak. Fucking horrible, and then the rapists get away and continually abuse people until someone finally breaks the chain. :(
Since you are in a thread that’s about a women who has been victimized for 10 years by her own husband who she trusted and believed loved her, and raped by 50 plus men at his hand, I want to say, that many, many females also don’t come forward because they know they won’t be believed. They will also be perceived as weak, or whatever excuse rape apologists give. They asked for it. They dressed like a slut. They were walking too late at night alone. They drank too much and passed out which made them fair game.
It happened to my sister, my brother, my mother, my friends, it’s happened to me, it’s happened to about 13 other females off the top of my head that I know throughout my life.
It isn’t only because a male will be perceived as gay that they don’t come forward. That’s a byproduct of homophobia. They don’t come forward for many of the same reasons females don’t come forward. They believe it’s their fault., and they don’t think other people will believe them. And also possibly they want to try to forget it ever happened, because it’s so traumatic.
It’s because other people don’t want to see the truth, and that truth is that human beings are for the most part garbage. We want to pretend this awful crap doesn’t happen on a regular basis but it does. It’s not an outlier or abnormal, it’s a fact of life for nearly most women and some men. It would be nice if no one could experience this.