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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.
Have we really known this? What large fraction?
It would be uncharitable to say you are typical-minding here, and I am not trying to establish myself as some kind of saint by saying "What the fuck?" but really... what the fuck? To me, having sex with an unconscious woman would have pretty much zero appeal no matter how hot she is, and I have a hard time believing I'm some weird undersexed outlier. It's not even just about it being rape (which it obviously is), but it would also be like fucking a RealDoll, which I know some men do also but I have always thought has to be the absolute last refuge of the desperate and pathetic.
Obviously there are men who get off on it (I know there are men who will stick their dicks in anything warm), but I'm unconvinced, even if this guy found 72 of them, that they aren't akin to rapists and pedophiles... sure, we all know these urges exist in the male population, and they aren't super-rare, but neither are they... normal.
It only vindicates them if you agree with them that this is in fact the natural state of men and we'd all do it if given the chance and that every husband secretly hates his wife. That's certainly a view unironically held in parallel, horseshoe-like, by a certain strain of radical feminists and ultra-misogynists, but the problem is that they are largely wrong about men being amoral rapacious monsters barely(unfairly) held in check by society.
Well, yeah. I doubt even our he-man woman-haters will be able to muster much of a "This wasn't actually bad" argument. How do you defend it? She was unconscious so she didn't really suffer? She's female and therefore should be available for any use to which her husband sees fit? You have to go pretty far out there to defend the indefensible. Some things don't engender disagreement even between liberals and conservatives.
I think you're wrong here actually. I think you're the one doing typical minding, and most men are actually like this. Some are like you and me, who find that behavior repugnant, but then... Africa. And India. And and and.
I think this is another case of fish in the post-Christian sea having no idea about water.
I'm skeptical that Christianity (or Western civilization) is the sole difference, though I know this is a popular theory (with Christians). Yes, large parts of the third world are rapacious hellholes, but there are ancient and contemporary non-Christian societies that do not seem to have been such.
I'd like to draw the distinction between states with enough capacity (and will) to deter rape by threat of violent reprisal, and peoples who believe that rape is implicitly morally wrong regardless of circumstance.
As far as I can tell this is a uniquely Christian innovation. Even the notion that a woman should have the final veto in whether she gets married seems to be Christian; c.f. the custom of the priest asking her if 'she does'.
Jewish legal codes speak for themselves and Islam is cool with sex slaves taken in wartime. Pagans understood rape as a normal reward for conquering armies and that higher class men could naturally enough have their way with lower class women, not to mention slaves.
Really, the notion that rape is wrong is fairly peculiar historically.
Same with murdering one's own infant children but that's another topic.
I would argue that women have always thought it's wrong, so it seems more like the notion that women's feelings should be considered is peculiar historically. And I don't think it's that peculiar, or that Christians have been particularly better about not raping and treating lower class women as public goods. It is definitely not a uniquely Christian innovation that women have some say in who they marry; Christians are not the first people ever who recognized female agency and gave women rights.
Your reference to Jewish legal codes and Islam makes me think we're going to go down the same road we've gone before, where the worst and most uncharitable readings of what other religious books say should be taken literally, without context, and as exactly what all those people really believe and those with a more humanitarian reading aren't really following their religion, whereas Christianity (and the Old Testament in particular) should be not subjected to similar treatment.
I weary of the women-haters (I don't mean you, though you seem to be giving them too much credit) who argue that the natural (and implied: correct) state of man is to treat women as property and before our modern age, no man in any civilization ever gave a shit how females felt about their treatment.
There are precious few (though admittedly not zero) women-haters here who "argue that the natural (and implied: correct) state of man is to treat women as property". Most restrain themselves to recognizing that humans tend to view each other instrumentally by default, and that includes men viewing women instrumentally, women viewing men instrumentally, and society viewing both instrumentally. That the non-women-haters seem to only be concerned about the former and sometimes the latter--when women are being viewed instrumentally by society--demonstrates they don't view men as humans deserving rights and view women as inherently superior to men.
If I had a nickel...
It wouldn't be a lot of nickels, but it would be more than one.
The concise response to this is "balderdash."
The less concise response is basically the same with more words: people (like me) who push back against those who view women as instrumental goods/property are not the "Women Are Wonderful" simps the latter like to characterize the former as, but merely arguing that we are all human beings and part of rising above our monkey natures (which should be our goal as a species with starfaring ambitions) requires not viewing every relationship as transactional and every other human being as an instrumental good. This includes treating women as Sex, and whatever bad thing you think women treat men as.
How are "people who push back against those who view women as instrumental goods/property" and never push back against those who view men as instrumental goods/property while smearing any who do as "women-hater" not deserving of the title "Women Are Wonderful" simps?
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