“We must alert consumers to the addictive nature of pornography and the dangers to which it exposes women”

SIn the dock, 51 defendants jostled and shook our entire society. However, the #metoo surge warned us: in our societies shaped by sexism, women are dispossessed of their bodies. Gisèle Pelicot was raped nearly a hundred times by ordinary people convinced that women are the sexual property of their husbands. Fifty-one men, most of whom lived within a radius of a few dozen kilometers, and to which we should add dozens of men who are missing because they could not be identified. Mazan’s trial is that of chemical submission. It is also that of male domination – and not of “all men”as feared by those who are more moved by the attribution of violence to men than by the torture and abuse inflicted over a decade on Gisèle Pelicot.

Symbolically, an absence stands out in the dock: that of the Coco.gg website, the matchmaker of the attackers, the only common denominator of the accused. It is of course a digital entity, but its role in organizing rapes and in carrying out the alleged perpetrators is major. His involvement in several criminal cases has also led to the judicial closure of the site and the seizure of the servers.

Still. The incapacitation of the Coco site should not deceive us: it is far from being the only one within the vast constellation of digital places which concentrate patriarchal culture infused with pornography. Today, X allows you to distribute pornographic content, Facebook allows you to link child criminals. No social network is spared from OnlyFans ads [plateforme connue pour ses contenus érotiques et pornographiques] and it only takes a few clicks to access sexually explicit photos or videos.

Neurological impact

The Pelicot case is also, implicitly, the trial of a parallel world, a virtual world in which the rule of law has difficulty in interfering and applying its laws. He can only question us about the trivialization of violence and the unlimited access to degrading, humiliating and brutal content. Particularly diverse, these contents however have one thing in common: their violence is constantly directed against women.

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