On Dec. 19, the courtroom in Avignon, France, as always, was packed. But this day there were even more spectators because people had traveled to hear the verdicts, even if they could only stand outside. They waited for justice for Gisèle Pelicot.
Pelicot, 72, is not a celebrity or a wealthy woman. She is the mother of three children, and was the wife of almost 50 years to her husband, Dominique, whom she married when she was 20. She noted, “Our friends used to say we were the perfect couple. And I thought we would see our days through together.” Pelicot believed she was enjoying a quiet retirement, playing with her grandchildren.
Until her world fell apart. Until the police told her in 2020 what they had found on her husband’s computer. Until she realized that for almost a decade, Dominique had drugged her senseless and invited strange men he had found in internet chatrooms to sexually assault her in the night.
These men were from all walks of life — a firefighter, a truck driver, a DJ, a nurse, a journalist, a man studying to become a pastor and so many more ordinary men. Fifty-one in all were identified from the films; another 21 could not be identified.
Gisèle Pelicot could have had a closed trial. She could have refused to have any of the videos aired in public for the shame of it all. She chose differently: The trial would be open to the public and the press. She did this on purpose because her purpose was not revenge; her purpose was for society to see itself in the mirror and recoil from the image.
As she put it, “It’s true that I hear lots of women, and men, who say ‘you’re very brave.’ I say it’s not bravery, it’s will and determination to change society. … I wanted all woman victims of rape — not just when they have been drugged, rape exists at all levels — I want those women to say: Mrs Pelicot did it, we can do it, too. When you’re raped, there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.”
Indeed, that is the twist in this case. For once, the shame was precisely where it needed to be: on the perpetrators. For once, the world could see the faces of these men in the courtroom, they could see each man in the videos, they could hear their pathetic excuses and know for themselves these men were guilty even before the judge pronounced their jail sentences ranging from three to 20 years in prison.
But what was extraordinary was how many of these men denied they had raped Pelicot, despite the clear video evidence that they had. They obfuscated: It couldn’t be rape if her husband gave his permission. They accused: She must have been awake and this was all a game. They outright denied: No matter what was on the tape, they knew in their hearts they were not rapists. As one defendant stated, “My body raped her, but my brain didn’t.” To these men, they were not to blame, no, not at all.
And it’s unfortunate but true that if there had not been video evidence, it’s unlikely these men would have ever been found guilty. In France, which is not dissimilar from other Western developed nations, 94% of rapes between 2012 and 2021 were either not prosecuted or never went to trial, according to France’s Institute of Public Policies.
In France, as in many countries, rape isn’t a victimless crime; it’s a perpetrator-less crime.
The perpetrators are the elephants in the room who magically become invisible as we focus, as did one defense lawyer in the Avignon trial, on what the victim did to bring this upon herself. The victim is to blame. Don’t look at those elephants. They’re invisible elephants, invisible perpetrators, and must remain so. Men offer cover and impunity to other men who do such things to women. They heap public shame on the women that men abuse, so women know not to even report the abuse at all.
I thought of Gisèle Pelicot again when the Lily Phillips stunt went viral a few weeks ago. Phillips is the British 23-year-old who videotaped an open-call 24-hour sex marathon for clicks and attention. Now, Lily Phillips is no Gisèle Pelicot. Phillips has chosen to prostitute herself for attention and money. She has chosen a miserable path, full of damage and degradation that she will not be able to escape. Some tell me that in an interview afterward, Phillips looked clearly traumatized and dissociative, sobbing as she described how many of these men purposefully did degrading things to her that she expressly told them not to do.
And yet, she will not desist from her path of misery. Phillips insists she will continue her stunts even though she has been justifiably excoriated right and left for these self-destructive choices.
But all I could think of when reading about her stunt were those invisible elephants who faced no excoriation or even shame. All those hundred men, also captured on video, who gleefully participated in the degradation of this young woman with no thought at all of how they were harming her. They didn’t think of themselves as abusers or perpetrators, either, just like those on trial in Avignon. But they were. And they fully deserve the very same excoriation and shame for damaging and degrading Phillips, even though she gave consent, absolving them in a strictly legal sense.
To me, it’s the same herd of elephants in the room. The same elephants who made online porn sites like OnlyFans one of the biggest businesses in the world, where one “content creator” explained, “Probably the biggest thing of all is the mental toll it takes on you. … You are seen as an object, you are seen as a piece of meat.”
The Pelicot case is revolutionary in that it teaches us to train our eyes to finally see those elephants, in order to understand how much these “ordinary men” harm human society. Perhaps Leo Tolstoy expressed that harm best, almost 150 years ago, in his novella “The Kreutzer Sonata”:
“(T)he enslavement of woman lies simply in the fact that people desire, and think it good, to avail themselves of her as a tool of enjoyment. Well, and they liberate woman, give her all sorts of rights equal to man, but continue to regard her as an instrument of enjoyment, and so educate her in childhood and afterwards by public opinion. And there she is, still the same and depraved slave, and the man still a depraved slave-owner. They emancipate women in universities and in law courts, but continue to regard her as an object of enjoyment. Teach her, as she is taught among us, to regard herself as such, and she will always remain an inferior being.”
Every man and woman who hopes to one day end “the war of the sexes” and thereby heal human society must band together to not only reject Phillips’ path of misery, but also to shame and banish the entire herd of elephants in the room that stand in our way.
Time magazine made a mistake when it did not choose Gisèle Pelicot as Person of the Year for 2024. Madame Pelicot has almost single-handedly forced the world to acknowledge the real shame belonging to the elephants in the room. We see you now. We see you clearly for what you are.
