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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 don’t really understand your point, or what you’re trying to say. I care about and love the women in my life a great deal. I empathize seriously with the experiences of victims of sexual abuse, and in fact I find their stories hard to encounter because I feel such anger and outrage at the loss of self-possession and immense sense of shame and guilt that survivors struggle to overcome. It’s evil, plain and simple.
The reason it’s not a subject of debate is just what you said last: there’s no toxoplasmosa. It was a horrible crime and the guilty were sentenced.
You seem, at least to me, to be trying to argue from this case that heterosexual love is impossible, or that heterosexuality is inherently corrupting. Well, actually, you said “male sexuality.” That’s interesting.
Your profile hasn’t seen any posts in two years, and in one of the final posts before this valentine’s post you wrote this:
Do you believe that love between gay men is possible? Is lesbian love possible?
Both, as I’m sure you know, have cultures of asymmetry and opposites, of masc tops and femme bottoms and dalliances with much older, wealthier men and daddy kinks, of butch lesbians and lipstick lesbians. Is gay love fairer than straight love to you?
Asymmetry coexists with mutual desire all the time, and with every orientation. And so, of course, does abuse and sexual assault. Love exists in spite of the evil of this world, and indeed sexual tenderness exists in concert with the impulses of male sexuality.
Most men are driven by a desire not only to please themselves through sex but to please their partners as well. I don’t doubt that, as a gay man, you are highly familiar with gay men who would rather give head than receive it; you should understand that the desire to please your sex partner exists among straight men as well. Most men highly enjoy sex noises and dirty talk from their partners, as a sign of that dirty phrase, “enthusiastic consent”, and of mutual pleasure. There could be no jokes about women faking orgasms if men did not find the idea of women faking orgasms to be Ego-destroying. Men overwhelmingly find the idea of sex with an unconscious person unarousing, in addition to morally unconscionable.
I guess I wonder what drives you to believe that male sexuality is inherently corrupting, instead of merely a force that can be used for good as well as bad — obviously, in this case, for bad. Have you ever fallen in love with someone, and wanted more than anything their happiness? Have you ever desired sex with someone out of a desire for unity with them, to make them feel good, to be as close with them as physically and emotionally possible? These are all compatible with the intensity of raw, undifferentiated male desire, and if you might allow me to say, far more erotic than mere lust.
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