“I’ve at all times liked the inaccessible. My spouse shouldn’t be submissive, fairly the opposite. It is that silly egotism that so many males have… Nobody belongs to anybody, and I defied this sentiment, in order that I might do what I wished, once I wished.”
So declared Dominique Pelicot, on 18 October, in the course of the listening to by which he was the protagonist, as Marlène Thomas stories in Libération.
“She’s his spouse, he can do what he needs along with his spouse”. That is what Simon M, one of many accused within the “Mazan rapes case”, declared, as Lorraine de Foucher reported in Le Monde in June 2023.
Is there any higher rationalization of patriarchy?
The “Mazan rape trial”
The trial for what has change into often known as the “Mazan rapes case” started final September and can proceed till the top of the 12 months. Between July 2011 and October 2020, in Mazan, a small city close to Avignon (south of France), Dominique Pelicot drugged his spouse with Temesta (the energetic ingredient of which is Lorazepam) after which invited males he met on-line to come back to their residence and be part of him in raping his spouse.
The police compiled a listing of 83 attackers, because of Dominique Pelicot’s rigorously maintained archive of movies and images.
Solely 50 of those males have been recognized, and shall be tried along with Pelicot. 32 have thus far escaped justice.
This trial has been referred to as “historic” due to the way it strikes the conscience of France, but additionally as a result of its scope goes far past nationwide borders: press from throughout the globe is current to report from the Avignon Prison Court docket. It’s also historic as a result of it takes place in a “post-#MeToo” world.
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In Krytyka Polityczna Aleksandra Herzyk writes that the trial shows the “banality of evil” that’s so usually hidden behind media consideration that focuses on immigrants with out authorized permits, and avoids trying as a substitute “into the houses of peculiar households, the revered members of the neighborhood”.
Mazan’s defendants are, for essentially the most half, “household males”, “regular”, “banal” folks: “The 51 rapists are a kaleidoscope of French society. The youngest is 26, the oldest 73. They’re all from the area and reside near the couple. Lots of them work within the public sector: firemen, navy personnel, jail guards, nurses or journalists. Others are truck drivers, maintain accountable positions in firms, and one is a municipal councillor. Some have precarious jobs, are beneath supervision, or are already in jail for violence dedicated towards ladies. 5 face a further cost: throughout a search of their computer systems, the police discovered giant portions of kid exploitation photographs” de Foucher explains.
One other characteristic that makes this trial historic is the place taken by Gisèle Pelicot.
Divorced from her husband on the time of writing, she nonetheless makes use of her married surname in order that she will use her maiden title extra freely.
Pelicot wished the trial to happen in open courtroom: “If Gisèle stands upright within the dock and speaks out, it’s as a result of she is aware of that her ordeal is that of all ladies, because the daybreak of time, at all times and in every single place. Apart from the judges, she speaks to society as an entire, as a typical sufferer of patriarchy. Regardless of the sensationalists say, there’s nothing distinctive or unprecedented about this case. {That a} husband abuses his spouse, that he provides her to others, {that a} man medicine a girl in an effort to use her at will, {that a} multitude of males take activates a girl’s physique, all this constitutes the peculiar sample of patriarchal violence,” writes thinker Camille Froidevaux-Metterie in Le Soir.
“In waiving her anonymity, permitting the method to be held in public and agreeing to the movies her husband made to be proven in open courtroom, Gisèle Pelicot has diverted the highlight on to her alleged rapists”, writes Kim Willsher on The Guardian.
Consent within the definition of rape
This trial additionally happens within the wake of an extended debate amongst European feminists in regards to the idea of consent within the definition of rape, which culminated within the European Directive on Combating Violence towards Ladies and Home Violence. This directive ultimately excluded the article that sought to outline rape as “absence of consent”.
Researchers Sara Uhnoo, Sofie Erixon and Moa Bladini in a June 2024 article for the Worldwide Journal of Legislation, Crime and Justice recognized as many as 20 European rape legal guidelines primarily based on consent, with fast change starting in 2017.
“May the introduction of consent be a potential reply to the Mazan trial?” requested French Justice of the Peace Denis Salas in Le Monde. The Guardian correspondent in Paris, Angelique Chrisafis, appears to answer this query immediately when she writes that “the courtroom testimony has highlighted how society usually has not but bought a transparent understanding of consent. The trial has opened a debate on whether or not to extra explicitly spell out the energetic want for consent throughout the regulation on rape in France.“
In Poland, a brand new regulation, attributable to come into drive in 2025, has redefined the notion of consent, as Notes of Poland discusses. Rape, in keeping with this laws, is sexual activity with out consent. This has led to some doubts and criticism, writes Hanna Kobus in Krytyka Polityczna. Many, particularly these on the far proper, worry it would undermine the presumption of innocence or result in a rise in false convictions.
In Europe, in keeping with knowledge from a survey carried out by Patricia Devlin and Maria Delaney for Noteworthy and the European Knowledge Journalism Community, between 2021 and 2023 greater than 68,000 victims of rape and greater than 116,000 victims of sexual violence have been recorded.
On the October 2024 Biennial of Thought in Barcelona the Spanish thinker Clara Serra, well-known for her guide El sentido de consentir (Anagrama, 2024), additionally spoke in regards to the Mazan case. The dialogue has been written up by Xavier de La Porte in Le Nouvel Observateur, and shared on the thinker’s X profile. Based on Serra, the notion of consent “accords an excessive amount of significance to the ‘sure’, when what’s central ‘is the potential of saying ‘no’”. Within the Mazan case, most of the defendants justified themselves by saying that they thought they have been participating in a “couple’s sport” to which Gisèle Pelicot had supposedly consented: “What the system has to say to the defendants is that even when she had given a ‘sure’ – both verbally or in writing – this doesn’t exonerate them from something, as a result of not one of the defendants might have been unaware that the lady couldn’t have stated no at any time,” she concludes.
Apart from Gisèle Pelicot, one different lady is understood to have been raped, utilizing the identical methodology, by her husband and Dominique Pelicot. This lady didn’t press fees, as Kareen Janselme stories in L’Humanité. Janselme provides that the “couple” has 5 youngsters, two of whom nonetheless reside at residence, that the lady doesn’t work, and that she is financially depending on her husband. On the Avignon trial, she was subsequently solely heard as a witness.
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