ANTI-PATRIARCHY FILE: AT THE SOURCES OF SEXIST VIOLENCE ---- From
September 2 to December 19, 2024, the so-called "Mazan rapes" trial washeld, named after the town in Vaucluse where most of the rapes took
place. This trial, which ended with the conviction of the 51 accused
(found guilty of aggravated rape, attempted rape and sexual assault by
chemical submission) was unanimously described as historic in various
ways. The purpose of this article is to question the historical nature
of this trial, to place it in a broader context and to identify feminist
perspectives, particularly with regard to men.
Reminder of the facts
From 2011 to 2020, Dominique Pélicot used a chemical submission process
(anxiolytics and sleeping pills) to render his wife Gisèle Pélicot
unconscious in order to rape her and have her raped by dozens of men,
recruited on the website "Coco", accused of numerous criminal acts (1).
These rapes, more than 200, were for a large number filmed by Dominique
Pélicot, and stored on a hard drive, totaling 20,000 photos and videos,
under the name "Abus". Dominique Pélicot also raped his wife outside the
home in Mazan: in Île-de-France, at their daughter's house, but also on
Île de Ré and on a motorway service area. In addition, he provided the
drugs to several co-defendants to allow them to perpetrate the same
modus operandi on their partner, one of whom was raped five times.
And if all that wasn't enough, Dominique Pélicot also took pictures of
his eldest daughter unconscious and in her underwear, filmed his
stepdaughters in the bathroom and broadcast the images, in addition to
having filmed under women's skirts in supermarkets. An investigation for
sexual abuse of his grandchildren has been opened. Finally, since 2022,
he has been indicted for several other cases: an attempted rape in 1999
in Seine-et-Marne, and a rape followed by the murder of the victim in
1991 in Paris.
Gisèle Pélicot saw her health deteriorate during the 10 years of ordeal
that her husband made her suffer: significant weight loss, absences and
memory loss (to the point of suspecting she had Alzheimer's), serious
gynecological problems.
A political trial
The number of rapists, estimated from the videos, is 83, but only 54 of
them have been identified and 51 (aged 21 to 68 at the time of the
events) have appeared in the dock (one deceased, two released for lack
of evidence). From the start, Gisèle Pelicot wanted to give a political
tone to the trial, so that it would serve as an example: she refused to
hold the trial in camera, against the advice of the prosecution and
several defense lawyers, so that the "shame would change sides". She
renounced, like her children and grandchildren, anonymity, and asked
that the photos and videos of her rapes be viewed publicly during the
trial. She explicitly transforms her ordeal into a fight, which feminist
groups (and part of the political sphere - mainly on the left, but not
only) will seize, by ensuring a daily presence in front of the Avignon
court, with banners of support and cheering Gisèle Pélicot at the
entrance and exit each day of the hearing. Some of the commentators will
make this trial that of, by choice, rape culture, toxic masculinity or
patriarchy. We will note the relative silence of the extreme right, for
whom the profile of the accused probably moves a little too far from the
one they are used to denouncing, namely that of the marginal migrant (2)....
The trial was described by the press and by the victim as particularly
trying. One must indeed imagine Gisèle Pélicot, in a courtroom, in the
presence of 51 of the men who raped her, enduring the unbearable videos
of her own rapes, punctuated by the sickening comments of the accused.
All defendants were found guilty, and sentences ranged from 3 to 20
years in prison, with the maximum and expected sentence being for
Dominique Pélicot. 17 defendants have appealed.
Between widespread fantasies and acting out: factors of vulnerability
Our society is riddled with concrete situations of male domination over
women and their ideological corollary is disseminated at will in
fictional videos or pornography. And in fact, it is domination that is
the motivation for the majority of rapes, well before what is often put
forward as a defense, namely the satisfaction of an irrepressible sexual
drive (understood as natural and typically masculine) (3). The
trivialization of these ideas as acts complicates the possibility of
discerning in an individual the personal explanation for the passage to
the act - individual triggers linked to life paths, "vulnerability
factors" -, of the conditioning imposed on each human being living in a
society in which these ideas are so disseminated. We could sum up this
idea more simply by noting that if all individuals are exposed to these
ideas, that society lets men understand that they have something
positive to gain from the domination of women, not all men take action,
and even when they do, they mostly do not do it in the way that
Dominique Pélicot did.
Several arguments were used during the trial that clearly amount to
self-justification and the inversion of guilt: Dominique Pélicot
explained to a co-accused that he had raped her out of revenge "because
of" an extramarital relationship with Gisèle Pélicot. Also, an attempt
was made to play on the jealousy he allegedly felt at being of a lower
social background than his wife (she, the daughter of a senior officer,
a lover of literature and classical music, he, an early school leaver,
the son of a foreman, having borrowed money from members of his wife's
family). On a video broadcast during the trial, he can be heard
declaring during a rape: "She doesn't like black guys, she's got one up
her ass, you bourgeois slut."
However, far from being a personal matter, this eroticization of revenge
is sadly commonplace: rape to punish following an extramarital
relationship, degrading a "bourgeois" woman through rape... As for
trying to make Gisèle Pélicot bear part of the responsibility by asking
her if one or other of these arguments could have played a role in
creating this situation, this is nothing less than a disgusting judicial
strategy, but one that is widespread in cases of rape, in which the
woman goes from victim to culprit (see the article in this issue The
History of Rape, a Revelator of the Patriarchal Order).
During the trial, experts (psychologists) were called to provide
psychological insight into Dominique Pélicot's personality. They
mentioned a "split" (a Freudian notion) between two facets of his
personality. That of a caring, generous man, a good father and an ideal
husband, with a "correct relationship with reality", "no mental
illness", "no psychiatric history", and that, conversely, of an "XXL
pervert" invaded by paraphilias (sexual 'deviations'): "somnophilia
bordering on necrophilia". According to Élisabeth Roudinesco,
psychoanalyst, "he is devoid of empathy[...], the other is a pure object
-[he]enjoys his omnipotence, but also the harm he inflicts on his
victim. (4)» Even if one can question the use that is made of such
psychological profiles by the justice system (morality investigations
are detrimental to all those who do not fit into the norm), as well as
the premises on which they are based, they allow one to identify in
Dominique Pélicot "vulnerability factors" associated with the passage to
action. He thus recounts a particularly traumatic childhood (physical
and verbal violence from his father, towards him and towards his
mother), in a complicated family context (his mother had children with
his father's older brother), with assumptions of rape, exposure to
parental sexuality, and obligation to participate in a collective sexual
assault.
Among the accused, many had a childhood similar to that of Dominique
Pélicot. "They experienced severe disturbances during their childhood:
they were victims of sexual abuse, they witnessed the sexual intercourse
of exhibitionist parents, they experienced abandonment, they were often
treated like objects. Such traumas do not always produce criminals, but
they always produce disturbed adults. (4)". We can share Roudinesco's
thesis, because we are not born perverts (in the Freudian sense), we
become perverts. But here, highlighting these elements, or even
opportunely adding some of them, can also be a strategy of the defense
lawyers to try to absolve the accused of responsibility for their actions...
Also, affirming like the psychoanalyst that this trial is not that of
"masculinity or patriarchy: this way of thinking ignores the perverse
nature of crimes. Certain pathologies are linked to childhood trauma,
not to the political or social context. Not every man, contrary to what
I sometimes hear, is a potential rapist", poses the problem of making
people believe that violence against children is only an accident. On
the contrary, childhood trauma is linked to a profoundly social context:
patriarchy is not only the domination of men over women's bodies, but
also over those of children. Fighting against patriarchy to eliminate
violence against women also means wanting to eliminate violence against
children, which sometimes constitutes the breeding ground for the
reproduction of violence in adulthood.
This is not about exonerating Dominique Pélicot and the others accused
of their actions, but rather identifying these "vulnerability factors"
(deficiencies and mistreatment, history of sexual violence suffered in
adolescence and associated cognitive distortions, confrontation with
early sexuality, incestuous climate) associated with the passage to
action, in order to draw an axis of understanding and struggle to bring
about a society free of this kind of horror: to fight against
patriarchy, we must also fight against the appropriation of children's
bodies.
1978-2024: from one trial to another
The Mazan rape trial has highlighted what the #MeToo movement (initiated
in the fall of 2017) had not highlighted, but which feminist
associations and groups are trying to publicize: that sexual violence is
overwhelmingly committed in the private sphere.
On the other hand, debates on the responsibility of rapists and the
reversal of guilt during the trial are not new. The parallel with the
trial of the rapists of Anne Tonglet and Araceli Castellano, supported
by the lawyer Gisèle Halimi in Aix in 1978, has often been made (for
more information on this trial, see the insert inserted in the previous
article in this issue: The history of rape, a revealer of the
patriarchal order). Indeed, in both cases, there was an explicit desire
on the part of the victims and their lawyers that the trial serve to
change society, in particular by refusing to hold the trial in camera,
so that rape victims would no longer be ashamed and no longer feel
guilty. The 1978 Aix trial contributed to the amendment of the law on
rape in 1980, which reaffirmed that rape is a crime and must therefore
be tried in court, allowed the victim to refuse to be heard in camera if
she wished, and broadened the definition of rape to any unwanted sexual
penetration. In the 2024 trial, part of the feminist movement seized on
it to demand a new law on consent (see the next section "What feminist
strategy?").
We can also draw a parallel in the way these women's bodies were treated
as if they did not really belong to them: in 1978, one of the accused
claimed not to be a rapist because he had hit on the two women, implying
that the seduction process gave access to the body. Moreover, the
wording of the complaint report suggests that they may have consented
(even though they went on to file a bloody complaint...). In 2024, many
of the accused deny having committed abuse on a woman since her husband
"offered" her to them and deny having been aware of the victim's
unconsciousness (even though the videos viewed during the trial and the
content of the prior exchanges on the internet leave no room for doubt),
thus dispensing with the consent or desire of a woman in order to
penetrate her. Both claim to be the object of a plot.
Another striking similarity between the two trials is the strategy put
in place to discredit the victims and their lawyers, sometimes
violently. At the Aix trial, Gisèle Halimi was beaten and insulted while
trying to enter the court, in front of which groups of men who had come
in solidarity with the rapists were confronted by feminist gatherings.
In Avignon, aggression took place more on social networks, and it was
less strong in front of the court than in 1978, even if there were still
insults and blows exchanged. This difference may be due to a change in
the perception of rape in society (5). In addition, the number,
confidence and proximity of the accused during the hearings and in the
concourse also facilitated their male-dominated fraternization, during
the trial, or even outside, for those who appeared free.
On the other hand, unlike the two plaintiffs of 1978, Gisèle Pélicot is
presented as a heroine in numerous press articles.
What feminist strategy?
However, a major difference between the two periods concerns the debates
on the feminist strategy to adopt in relation to bourgeois justice, and
therefore the recourse to the State to resolve the problem of sexual
violence. We saw in particular the banner "20 years for each" affixed in
front of the court of Avignon, which unfortunately seems representative
of the few anti-prison perspectives in the current French feminist
movement and of the widespread illusion that prison can resolve anything
to the problem that patriarchy, the State, capitalism, school, etc., and
... prison (which reproduces sexual violence) have created. The debate,
heated, violently dividing the feminists of Gisèle Halimi's time,
nevertheless existed, as underlined by an article in Révolution
Permanente (6), citing the League for Women's Rights (May 1978): "It is
not the imprisonment of the aggressor that will change his mentality and
teach him that a woman is a human being. Therefore, this punishment is
useless, since it brings nothing to women and does not change
mentalities." This reflection within the feminist movement could
re-emerge, in the wake of certain recent works (7).
Similarly, beyond the issue of prison, feminist voices that are trying
to build an autonomous strategy without demands linked to state power
are today very little heard, unlike what is happening in several Latin
American countries for example: "While in the West the feminist demand
is relayed by many media, intellectuals, elected officials and even
governments, elsewhere it often has as openly declared adversaries the
state apparatus as a whole, one or more churches, or even mafia
networks." (8) This leads to a strong distrust of these different powers
and pushes towards an organization that frees itself from them: "In
Mexico, the widespread corruption and misogyny of the police, the
justice system and governments encourage activists such as those of the
Bloque Negro ("Black Bloc") to rely on feminist self-defense rather than
filing complaints."
The major associations and collectives (Fondation des femmes,
NousToutes, etc.) have called for, beyond judicial repression in the
case of the Mazan rapes, a "comprehensive law against sexual violence",
"educating children and young people about gender stereotypes, sexist
and sexual violence, and consent" and "clearly defining what consent is
and what it is not". These groups are thus registering their demands in
the wake of the Spanish mobilization, which, since 2016 (the year of the
"rape of La Manada" - "The Pack", in Spanish (9)) has mobilized millions
of people (5.9 million participants in the strike of March 8, 2018,
according to the unions) and whose political outcome was the adoption of
a "framework law" on sexual violence, providing greater protection for
victims and legally redefining consent as "only a yes is a yes".
The comparison between the massiveness of the Spanish mobilization (10)
and the lack of echo in the streets for the rapes of Mazan raises
questions (10,000 demonstrators on September 14, 2024 throughout France
in support of Gisèle Pélicot, then a day of struggle against violence
against women, November 25, 2024, no more massive than usual, and
nothing after that). We can put forward two hypotheses, between which it
is difficult to decide. First, the rapists of "La Manada" had been
sentenced to fairly light sentences initially, before the
reclassification of the case as rape, partly following the massive
mobilization that had taken place after the first judgment. This is not
what happened in the case of the Pélicot trial, for which the verdict
corresponds to reality (there is recognition of the fact that there was
rape) and the sentences handed down were roughly the severity expected.
Secondly, unlike in France, where feminism sometimes seems to be
confined to restricted segments of the population (educated women),
major efforts on the ground have been made by Spanish feminists to
constantly direct their actions towards the population, in order to
include as many people as possible on concrete issues.
"Mr. Everyman"?
In the press, both mainstream and activist, it was hammered home that
the accused were an "Everyman," emphasizing different forms of
diversity. "Whites, a majority of whites, North Africans, three
blacks.[...]Shaved heads, white hair, graying, waxed, dyed black, with
colored quiffs. Piercings, tattoos. (11)" But what came up most often
were the professions of the convicts (12), supposedly representative of
the French population. To give a sample: several military or former
military personnel, truck drivers, unemployed people, workers,
craftsmen, employees... In short, proletarians. Only 4 profiles stand
out: a communications graduate, president of the Young Economic Chamber
of Greater Avignon and independent journalist, a manager of a small
electrical company, a site manager of a company whose father is CEO (the
mother is a caregiver), and a fitter-miller, then bartender and
salesman, who became a senior executive late in life. Only 4 out of 51
are not proletarians (13). It should also be noted that 23 of them had
already been convicted previously for various offenses, including 6 for
violence against their spouse. Not really like "everyone else"...
So why this overwhelming majority of proletarians among the accused? Are
executives, small and large bourgeois simply absent among Gisèle
Pélicot's rapists, including those spotted on the videos but not
formally identified? Did they manage to rape without being filmed by
Dominique Pélicot? Were the justice system and the police less attentive
to their cases? Or, more likely, do they frequent other sites, channels
and networks than "Coco", to satisfy their violent fantasies of
domination of women? Because we know that there are just as many rapists
among the powerful as the dominated, and the former can parade in the
media and social salons without risking much (PPDA, Darmanin, Depardieu,
DSK...), while class justice will know how to find a penal solution to
sink the latter.
#NotAllMen? and the contradictions of "allyship"
Contrary to the idea of "Mr. Everyman," which emphasizes the
omnipresence of violence against women in society, we have heard a lot
of speech of scandalized dissociation from many men (the famous "not all
men are like that" in vogue in masculinist circles, popularized on
social networks as #NotAllMen, then ridiculed by feminists in the form
of an internet meme). This speech refuses to see the continuum of
domination that patriarchy represents, and therefore to make the link
between sexist behavior and rape, the extreme pole of male domination.
For Francis Dupuis-Déri, a specialist in antifeminism at the
University of Quebec, "Saying "Not All Men" is to eclipse a solid fact:
if not all men are rapists, almost all women are afraid of and have
experienced sexual violence. (14)"
Along these lines, a column written by Morgan N. Lucas, an "essayist and
specialist in gender issues", signed by more than 200 "male
personalities" and published in Libération (15), has been much talked
about. It seeks to use the Mazan rape trial to involve men in the fight
against violence against women, without "playing the hero". A reaction
by men, to take hold of the feminist issue, refuse the gender assignment
that makes them dominant and spread feminist ideas to other men seems a
relevant idea. However, this column, one of the rare initiatives of this
kind in the period, seems to us to be mired in contradictions.
She states that "since we are all the problem, we can all be part of the
solution" but that men must stop "believing themselves indispensable".
That "there is no dominant nature but rather a desire to dominate", and
yet that "all men, without exception, benefit from a system that
dominates women". She asks men not to wait "for a woman to tell us what
to do to get to work", and therefore to act autonomously, while
confining themselves to the position of "ally", and finally to do "all
this in silence, without shouting it from the rooftops, without waiting
for applause or congratulations", while publishing an op-ed themselves
in... Libération!
The platform sums up very well the unspoken aspects of the "ally"
position, in vogue in circles where it is considered that only those
"first concerned" can fight against domination, and that people wanting
to join the fight must abandon any autonomous spirit of initiative, stay
in the background, come only when, how and where they are asked, because
not only would they not be concerned (and yet, isn't racism revolting,
whatever our skin color?), but they would necessarily be the vector of a
reproduction of domination within the fight (because Whites, men,
able-bodied...), even though they can be part of a fight to eliminate
it. That oppressions can exist within struggles is obvious. That we must
fight against them, just as much. But that this is a presupposition, by
the identity of the "allied" person and not by what they say or do,
constitutes a logical reversal which reinforces the logic of separation,
where the struggle should precisely aim to push them back.
Finally, the position of "ally", in the case of this column, masks a
reality that is nevertheless essential to consider if we seriously want
to get rid of patriarchy: it also affects men. It will seem revolting to
many to point this out, because men are not affected by lower wages,
rape, etc., but if we seek to fight together, women and men, as the
authors of the column propose, we must look for what unites rather than
what divides. So, let us complete this column by saying it: men do not
only have "privileges", and some, like gays, are clearly not on an equal
footing. Men have nothing to gain from the injunction to virility that
prevents them from expressing their emotions, from cock-sucking
contests, from violently learning masculinity, from (over)dying from
masculine behavior (driving or drinking), from the deteriorated mental
health that patriarchy causes in them (16). Without denying the
responsibility of men, "the suffering experienced by men can serve as a
catalyst to draw attention to the need for change (17)."
As a conclusion
Patriarchy does not float in the air like a diffuse interpersonal
domination. It is based on the appropriation of women's bodies, and
this, most likely since our species has existed (18). If men have felt
legitimate to rape an unconscious woman, it is because they are the
product of a system that authorizes them to do so (and sometimes of
social factors that favor the passage to the act), this one considering
women's bodies as at the disposal of men. Between the husband who rapes
his wife, and the hand on the ass in the street, passing by the
playground almost exclusively dedicated to boys' soccer matches, a
patriarchal continuum that relegates women's bodies to the background is
exercised. But in this system, there are not only victims. It would be
to deny all free will to stop at a system that disempowers.
Building an anti-patriarchal and anti-capitalist struggle is based on a
conscious desire of men and women to change the foundations of society.
As Gisèle Pélicot says: "I express my determination to change this
society. It's not courage, it's willpower." In this fight, men have
their place. Men must not self-flagellate with their "privileges", but,
according to Francis Dupuis-Déri, take responsibility for "reflecting
on the problematic part that exists in each of us, which is linked to
the masculine socialization in which we have bathed and which creates
problematic relationships with women. We are not pure manipulated
puppets, we have a capacity for action." To conclude, with Virginie
Despentes, "it is not a question of opposing the small advantages of
women to the small achievements of men, but of screwing everything up. (19)"
zyg,
with a helping hand from Jolan, January 2025
Notes
(1) Mazan affair, homophobic ambushes... the founder of the Coco website
indicted, Mediapart, January 11, 2025. The article also reports on cases
of pedocriminality and pimping
(2) We think in comparison of the noisy and nauseating echo that was
made around the murder of Philippine le Noir de Carlan, a student raped
and killed in the Bois de Boulogne in September 2024, and whose
suspected rapist is a Moroccan targeted by an OQTF
(3) Rape statistics show that rapes are rarely "spontaneous", are most
often committed by people in the victim's entourage who have influence
over the victim and by men with an egocentric or even narcissistic
psychological profile...
(4) Elisabeth Roudinesco: "Dominique Pelicot and his co-accused are not
ordinary men", Le Monde, November 6, 2024. For a social and
psychological approach to the vulnerability factors associated with the
act of sexual violence, see the website of the Resource Center for
Interveners with Perpetrators of Sexual Violence (CRIAVS) of the
Center-Val de Loire (CVL), in particular the Clinical Approach to Sexual
Violence by Robert Courtois, University Professor (psychopathology and
clinical psychology)
(5) Even if a contemporary study on the perception of relations between
the sexes shows an increase in sexist ideas among young men: Report -
6th inventory of sexism in France: tackling the roots of sexism, High
Council for Equality between Men and Women, January 22, 2024
(6) Rapes of Mazan: a historic trial, and now?, on the website of
Révolution Permanente, December 19, 2024
(7) See the article From violence against women to violence by women?,
Courant Alternatif 310, May 2021, about the book Feminist Terror - a
short eulogy to extremist feminism by Irene (Divergences, 2021), or
Doing justice, progressive moralism and punitive practices in the fight
against sexist violence by Elsa Deck Marsault (La Fabrique, 2023)
(8) See the article A flourishing feminism but a healthy patriarchy,
Courant Alternatif 314, November 2021
(9) In July 2016, five men who called themselves "La Manada" on WhatsApp
in Spanish gang-raped an 18-year-old woman and filmed the scene in the
streets of Pamplona, where the San Fermín festivities were taking
place. The men were arrested and tried, but in 2018, the court decided
not to retain the qualification of "sexual assault" (which then covered
rape in Spain) and only to retain that of "sexual abuse". This decision
then provoked very strong indignation in the country, particularly among
feminist movements, and led to strong mobilizations. The Spanish Supreme
Court requalified the case as rape in 2019.
(10) See the series of programs Feminism, the Spanish avant-garde on
France Culture
(11) Eight weeks in the "swamp" of the Mazan rape trial: the legal
columnists of "Le Monde" tell their story, Le Monde, November 20, 2024
(12) Who are the 51 convicted in the Mazan rape trial?, Le Monde,
November 25, 2024 and Mazan rape case on Wikipedia
(13) Among the accused, we also note other very common situations:
addictive consumption of alcohol and narcotics and romantic breakups,
which are other "vulnerability factors"
(14) "Am I part of the problem?": How the Mazan rape trial is sparking
introspection and division among men, Le Monde, November 19, 2024
(15) Mazan rape trial: more than 200 men sign a roadmap against male
domination, Libération, September 21, 2024
(16) For a more detailed inventory of what patriarchy does to men, its
learning, and prospects for getting out of it, see Les couilles sur la
table, Victoire Tuaillon, Binge Audio Éditions, 2019
(17) bell hooks, From the margin to the center: feminist theory,
Cambourakis, 2017
(18) Past, prehistoric societies are not a reflection of a lost Eden,
free from male domination, division of labor, violence. See on this
subject Primitive communism is no longer what it was, Christophe
Darmangeat (2012), Smolny. We will also find useful the review of the
distribution of the myth of primitive matriarchy (justification for a
given society of a system of male domination by the reversal of a
hypothetical inverse situation of previous female domination), the
presence of which attests that human societies have borne cultural
traces of male domination for at least 70,000 years, the age around
which Homo sapiens left Africa, in Cosmogonies, Julien d'Huy (2020), La
Découverte
(19) King Kong Theory
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4362
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten