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This Valentine's Day, I am thinking about why the Pelicot rape case has received so little attention, sparked so little discussion. This is the case of a French man, Dominique Pelicot, who invited 72 men to rape his drugged wife, Gisèle Pelicot, over the course of nine years. The trial took place in 2024 (all accused found guilty), but it surfaced in the NYT again this week. I could not find a single mention of it in on this site.
Yes, it's been reported in every media outlet. No, I'm not claiming it's been hidden or suppressed. But the case has no political relevance. It hasn't generated heated discussion. No one seems to care or talk about it that much. Why? Here are my speculations.
You could claim that this was an isolated incident that has no implications for society in general, that one specific forum enabled the perpetrators to find each other. But these men were mostly from nearby towns, within 50km, from all walks of life.
I think it's simpler to just say that some large fraction of men would jump at the opportunity to have sex with an unconscious woman if there were no consequences. This is the nature of men. We have known this since the beginning of time. Most adults understand this already. The vast majority of men know this, because some part of them has the same urge, or if not, they are familiar with the corrupting force of male sexuality in general, and this particular manifestation is hardly a surprise. Women largely know this force, too, because they have been told of it, or because they have been targeted by it, though they sometimes pretend not to know.
Men aren't eager to discuss this particular case because it is unflattering to the male sex. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to inspire moral outrage among men. It doesn't trigger tribal instincts - race was not a factor, for instance. And a couple of the elements that make rape viscerally repugnant are absent in this case. For one, she was unconscious during the rapes. In some sense, apart from the drugging, the violation was merely psychological - the knowledge post facto of the strangers' assault, and the knowledge of her husband's betrayal - and I have the sense that many men simply struggle to empathize with psychological harms to women. Men can empathize with other men, but in this case the would-be secondary victim, her husband, wanted to cuck himself. "So be it," seems to be the unsaid reaction.
It's harder for me to say why women aren't eager to bring this up as ammunition in the gender wars. Doesn't this vindicate the radical feminists? I see it discussed in forums dominated by women, but not much beyond that, and even there not particularly passionately. Maybe one factor is that Gisèle Pelicot herself apparently didn't believe her daughter's claims of abuses at the hands of her husband, and so isn't the perfect victim. But perhaps the whole thing is just unpleasant and depressing. It seems to shatter the possibility of love, and of the dignity of women among men. She thought he was a good husband.
And perhaps it's simply that there is nothing to fight about. There is no toxoplasma, no scissor statement. No surprises at the trial. No one even cares to come out and repeat the defense of the accused, that they thought she had consented. No one wants to argue. There is nothing to be done. Castrate all men? Don't have the bad luck of marrying a depraved cuck? Conservatives have nothing to say. Do liberals have something to say? If so, I haven't heard it either.
I can't really imagine all of those men thought they were knowingly raping this guy's wife against her will. I have to believe he told them it's her kink to be drugged up and raped and then she wants to watch the videos later. Or something. This is a lame excuse but I can see at least a few pathetic horn dogs falling for it.
Now let me see if any of the men offered any defense.
Update: I'm back. A few of the men said they thought it was a role play situation and that they were led to believe this by her husband. But most of them sound utterly indefensible. So, I underappreciated the horror by quite a bit.
There's a full table here with notes about each man and their defenses, if available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelicot_rape_case#Convicted
They kind of sound like the dregs of society to me.
But yes, what is there to say? You can find dirt bags to do sex crime if you look long enough. The were all publicly shamed and convicted. The right thing happened, at least. My update is France takes these crimes more seriously than I would have expected. Also the right thing.
I'm slightly reassured it was only 72 men over 9 years and not, like, a thousand. Suggests the candidate pool is not a vast ocean.
She was in late middle age.
The dates given in the Wikipedia article for the incident suggest that the victim was about 59 years old at the start of the incident, and it continued until she was about 68.
Where I'm from, I think that'd be called "old age". And to @ActuallyATleilaxuGhola's point above, it seems like a stage of life where it'd be pretty normal to have a lot of unexplained aches and pains.
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