“What are we going to do collectively with this woman's fierce desire to say that beyond her individual situation, it is the entire society that she is summoning to the dock?” asks the lawyer, specialist in women's rights.
Published on 25/11/2024 10:43
Reading time: 3min
“We are almost on a political trial”said Monday, November 25 on France Inter, Anne Bouillon, criminal lawyer from the Nantes bar and specialist in women's rights, as the Mazan rape trial prepares to enter its home stretch with the prosecution's indictments.
“What delighted me, if I may say so, and throughout the hearing, was the ability of Gisèle Pelicot and her lawyers to make this trial a bit like what Gisèle Halimi had done in 1978, that is to say, to make this trial a real forum and to urge us to no longer look away”, explained the lawyer. “It’s a trial for the future, it’s a trial for hope: now things have to change”she insisted, about the case with international resonance judged since September in Avignon, where 51 men are accused of having raped Gisèle Pelicot while she was unconscious, drugged without her knowledge by her husband .
“The hope that has been nourished and that challenges us for the future is what are we going to do collectively with this fierce desire of this woman to say that beyond (her) individual situation, ultimately, it is the entire society that (she) summons to the dock, alongside these 51 men”she added.
“I was struck by the search for the common denominator between these 51 menshe continued, what binds all these men revolves around a belief which is steeped in the idea of what they are legitimate. What connects them all is this belief (…) that at a given moment, in certain circumstances, thanks to a woman's vulnerability, her sleep, her alcoholism, to have access to women's bodies as a disembodied subject”explained the lawyer committed to the cause of women victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. “There is this idea of free access to women’s bodies which takes us deeply back to who we are collectively,” she pointed out.
“Let’s make our feminist cultural revolution, let’s review our matrix and review how we function collectively”argued Anne Bouillon. “And then, (this trial) will be useful for something”supported the one who published Women's affairs. A life of pleading for them (The Iconoclast). “We all operate in an area where an encounter with rape is possible”she recalled. “We configure our social interactions based on the risk of rape”she lamented.
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