Rosa Favre
On December 19, 2024, after three long months, the historic trial of the so-called „Pelicot“ or „Mazan rapes“ case came to an end. To say that the case has the name of a small town in the Vaucluse, it has nevertheless had an international scope. Nearly 80 media outlets around the world chronicled the trial of the infamous crime of which Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men were accused: the rape of Gisèle Pelicot, Dominique’s now ex-wife. The case resonated throughout France, Europe and North America through the New York Times, and jumped over the Andes to land in Chile.
At the end of this trial, all were found guilty of rape or attempted rape, except for two who were only convicted of sexual assault. Six of the perpetrators of the attack on Mrs. Pelicot’s physical integrity are however released from the court. Except for the seventeen appeals—none of which originated from either Gisèle or Dominique Pelicot—, there will only be a hearing on March 3 that will determine the damages.
What is the crime?
For ten years (from July 2011 to October 2020), Dominique Pelicot drugged his wife so that men contacted on the dating site coco.gg (now closed) could rape her in his company. During these sexual crimes, Gisèle was unconscious and had no memory of them. He filmed the rapes, and this is how the investigators had recognized, out of the 20,000 photographs and videos taken by Dominique Pelicot, 51 of the 84 different criminals thus recorded.
This detestable practice had disastrous effects on his wife’s health (memory loss, daytime sleep, weight and hair loss). Despite the continuous rapes, Dominique accompanied him, like a good husband, to the medical interviews that sought the origin of his wife’s ailments. At the time, Gisèle feared a fatal disease, and while she had caught four STDs, including the papillomavirus, Dominique, the malicious conductor, pretended not to know anything.
The folly in this story, worse than these heinous crimes, is that there were 84 rapists, and none of the many doctors Mrs. Pelicot had consulted guessed the source of the evil. None of the men involved revealed the martyrdom she suffered. None of the many men who had seen the advertisement for the rape of Gisèle on coco.gg thought it wise to inform the police about the human trafficking that was obviously taking place.
It was in fact a sordid chance that made it possible to catch Dominique Pelicot. In 2020, he had filmed under the skirt of a young woman in a mini-market. A security guard, seeing the facts in security cameras, stopped him and called the police. While #MeToo was still fresh in people’s minds, he rushed the victim to file a complaint for voyeurism—which she dared to do recklessly. Thus, the police confiscated Dominique Pelicot’s computer equipment. And only then will these famous 20,000 photos and videos have been updated.
Trial of patriarchy?
If the trial makes an impression, it is in part for the heroism of Ms. Pelicot. Not only did she survive these despicable acts. Not only did she amass the courage to go to court so that every guilty person is convicted. Not only had it demanded a public hearing, as well as the broadcasting in court of this unbearable video evidence, contrary to the court’s initial wishes. But it was she who, in the tribunal, had the most dignified and noble attitude. Because she had undertaken, of her own free will, to take on the role of a figure of opposition to sexual violence. During this trial, she testified to a resilience that was simply heroic, and that rightly caused a lot of ink to flow.
But the case is also remarkable because many progressive newspapers called it a „trial of patriarchy“. Many feminists hoped that this would also be what it would become. Eyes were riveted on the Vaucluse, not only because of the terror inspired by Madame Pelicot’s situation, not only because of her unparalleled courage; But also because this case nourished a hope before and after December 19. In addition, there was a desire for drastic reforms in the law on rape, as well as a revolution in the structures of support for victims.
And it is certain that this affair was, in a certain sense, precisely the trial of patriarchy. The 51 culprits were ordinary men. Exercising usual trades. Completely normal fathers, husbands, sons and friends. Few were already known to the justice system as sexual predators.
This trial laid bare the systemic nature of violence against women. Directed within the family by the husband, by the father, who can decide to do what he wants with his wife, his daughter. This objectification has been spat out many times in court, sometimes without embellishment. „He does what he wants with his wife,“ thundered one of the defendants! This showed the high esteem in which some men hold the other half of humanity.
However, although 45 ordinary rapists will sleep in prison, the patriarchy will not follow them. Women were raped by their husbands, fathers, uncles, colleagues, neighbors on the night of December 19. And it will take a miracle for one of them to see justice. In a similar way, the scandals about Abbé Pierre did not end with the clergy. And it is in the same way that capitalism does not become illegal when the Labor Court is seized.
This is why the verdict was a chilling series of cold showers for feminists who had been cultivating hope for justice in the trial. First, a total of 652 years in prison had been requested by the prosecutor’s office. This is far too little in view of the undeniable evidence and in view of the 20 years of criminal imprisonment that French law reserves (in principle) for rapists! But then, the criminal court did worse: it pronounced only 441.
The only sentence not to have been reduced was Dominique’s: 20 years in prison. What shocked the bourgeois good conscience was not so much 50 rapists, but that a husband became a pimp for his own wife. All in all, the majority of them were the „good“ rapists. Those who rape (a stranger) because the family environment allows them to do so. A far cry from the monsters that rape a stranger snatched next to a manhole! This is what their lesser sentence demonstrated: there were few „bad“ rapists, those of the same caliber as Dominique Pelicot.
And that’s all the defense aimed to demonstrate. The rapists said they had been „deceived“ by Dominique, certainly on the advice of their lawyer. If they had been more eloquent, they would have described a Machiavelli of modern times. Some lawyers dared to speculate on the fact that Gisèle was really a libertine who set a malicious trap to destroy the lives of these valiant husbands, sons, and friends. The most despicable of them, an undertaker, claimed to believe Gisèle was dead, while the cameras recorded her snoring. As if that would lessen his crime! And as if this did not freeze the blood of the bereaved families who asked for his services to prepare the body of a deceased!
The defence also acted as a defence front for violence against women. One lawyer made headlines by describing the women who attended the hearing as „knitters of the revolution who waited, in front of the guillotine, for heads to fall.“ Leaving the court on the 19th, he provoked the audience, under boos, by shouting „Knitters! Knitters!“ Another lawyer had shared a video on TikTok of herself dancing to „Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go“ by the pop group Wham!.
It is therefore the gamble of humiliating the victim that has paid off. Although Ms. Pelicot’s wish was for „shame to change sides.“ Nothing new.
For all the hatred these veritable devil’s advocates harbor in feminist circles, they are in many ways a rearguard of patriarchal violence. This is because, in fact, they intervene only at the latest, in the most serious of circumstances. Their dishonesty can only be obvious to the public.
Patriarchal violence is much more insidious, however, when it takes place in the family. A patriarch can use the institution of the family to make himself a tyrant; but a respectable man beside herself. Through a double game on the possession of the family by the man, the women and girls who make it up can be caught in a pincer movement and under the complete domination of the patriarch. This involves the dispossession of economic resources to be managed by the latter, and the hermeticity of the family cocoon from the rest of the world.
And on this subject, there is a deafening silence in the family drama that was the Pelicot trial. This concerns the photographs found of Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, in panties, while she was sleeping. However, unlike Gisèle, there is no proof of the crime of incest, although it is unfortunately more than conceivable in view of the similarity of the modus operandi. There is therefore not enough basis for the latter to take legal action against its father.
This silence therefore reveals the blind spot of this trial. Gisèle Pelicot is the perfect victim. White, married for 50 years to the same man, heterosexual, cisgender, possessing much more evidence than is needed to affirm the guilt of the accused. Her daughter, by virtue of the incest taboo and the lack of evidence, could not benefit from the luxury of being able to calmly prosecute her alleged torturer.
This trial has only completed marginal progress for a better law against sexual abuse by chemical submission. Otherwise, it has failed to improve jurisprudence with respect to the standards of evidence required to determine guilt for rape. Among other things, the French penal code still does not define rape as a breach of consent. Nor has it succeeded in bringing about initiatives to better protect victims of rape, whether domestic or not. Although he succeeded in centering the issue of the family unit as a facilitator of sexual violence, he did not generate a discussion on the necessary changes to this structure. In the end, it did not lead a mass movement behind it either.
The Social Movement
Despite the extent of the discussions that this trial provoked, and despite the massive awareness of the problem of rape in the marital cell—the main place where it takes place—the social movement was very meagre. The weakness of the social movement contributed to reinforcing the nature of the trial not as a moment of social struggle, but as a spectacle where Gisèle Pelicot was fed to the scavengers who raped her as well as to the defense lawyers.
Far from having only local effects, the lack of direct involvement of the masses has had international repercussions in the media coverage of the trial. Abroad, it has allowed the dominant form, particularly liberal, of feminism to impose its vision of the Pelicot affair. This feminism was jubilant that thanks to the superb laws of its country, one was immune to such a tragedy! The man who despises social explanations such as patriarchy could then have a field day doing Dominique Pelicot’s psychoanalysis—an exercise that is not only superfluous, but which cleverly allows him to exchange popular education for esotericism and pity for the main accused. The virtual absence of solidarity with Mrs. Pelicot in the French streets is co-responsible for this co-optation of the trial for chauvinist purposes.
Rallies in support of Ms. Pelicot, organized by the radical section of French feminism, were very rare and very small (the Parisian rallies had only a handful of participants). They obscured any perspective that 1) did not come from a „privileged victim“ or 2) that was not anchored in an institutionalist perspective.
The weakness of the demonstrations does not come from the marginality of „radical“ feminism in France; It is even rather liberal feminism that is struggling to assert its vision. Moreover, for once, their usual moralistic appeal was simply not convincing. Being anti-#MeToo, decrying mob justice, counterproductively defending the presumption of innocence, burying one’s head in the sand as to the root causes, it was not catchy in this case, when „radical“ feminism was already occupying more ground and providing much more sensitive explanations.
Let’s understand the anatomy of the rallies in support of Ms. Pelicot. Petty-bourgeois feminist activists brought their male partners there. It is the first step a man must take in order to confront his sexist prejudices, the first pitfall in solidarity with the struggle for women’s liberation. However, they tended to look at any visibly marginalized woman (racialized, lesbian, trans, etc.) with the insistence of someone who does not consider them his equals. What is more, they played the game of self-flagellation through a performative denunciation of „the ugly men“ of which they were a part. If they were really hungry for justice, as many men in feminist organizations or revolutionary communist parties are, they would have instead shown themselves ready to mobilize those around them to fight ardently for the liberation of women on their side.
One of the causes of this lack of movement was the wait-and-see attitude of feminist activists who declared that the case was „so big that“ the defense was necessarily ridiculous, „so big that“ change became inevitable. But if bourgeois institutions changed in the face of the „common sense“ of the oppressed, they would have torpedoed their own foundations a long time ago. For the bourgeois, patriarchs, etc., „common sense“ is not learned by a politely written missive, but by the hammer of the social struggle. This is why there was a bad taste behind the treatment of the case by the feminist leadership in France: there was a kind of unacknowledged jubilation that the case was so catastrophic.
To understand, however, the consequences that this affair will have on future feminist struggles, we must address the question of #MeToo. Because the reason for the weakness of the demonstrations in support of Gisèle Pelicot lies in the fact that the #MeToo movement is running out of steam.
Why make such a parallel? First, because he was the one who allowed the business to exist in the first place. Secondly, it is because it is the syntax of #MeToo that the activists in solidarity with Gisèle Pelicot use. Third, it was its framework of practice that made it what the Pelicot case was: the court and the formal conviction of rapists by the state. And finally, all these elements together, combined with the seriousness of the case, make it a kind of culmination of this global movement. This is what is universal about it, and why the case has gone around the world.
This is why we need to better understand where the movement is coming from, in order to decipher its direction.
#MeToo has allowed many women to learn about the oppression they suffer. A generation of feminist activists became aware of her condition as women through this movement. But the movement is credited with few material successes. There are certainly more complaints, a positive sign of a word that is being freed. But one might expect that the proportion of rapists or victims would decrease, or that the proportion of rapists incriminated would increase. However, the trend is at worst according to these metrics, which can only leave us with a bitter taste.
This is good because #MeToo is ultimately just an association of like-minded people on social media. A profoundly disorganized movement, without leadership or demands; than a vague call for „education“ (who should be the target? the answer has never been agreed upon within the movement), and in which class reading does not prevail. A movement without a well-defined class base is, a fortiori, only petty-bourgeois.
Suffice to say that the institutional framework of the affair has not been confronted at any point, which echoes the reformist vision of the progressive petty-bourgeoisie. But it is also a reminder of the fragmentary way in which feminist consciousness is constructed. First of all comes the direct experience of patriarchal violence. And the first response that can come to this is the desire for justice, for punishment of the person responsible.
But from common sense that every victim deserves justice, the relativist idea emerges that the correct form that justice must assume is the one that the victim desires—especially in the court—despite its unattainable, individualistic character, and the indignities that the complainant confronts on the way. This is how a generation of feminists has been formed who seek justice in the bourgeois and patriarchal court. The institution founded on these same oppressions that it is supposed to denounce and punish adequately. Except that any institution based on power cannot question itself to such a degree. Otherwise, this same power becomes illegitimate.
These criticisms of the courts obviously also come from feminist organizations, the first to be confronted with the extreme violence they can use to crush and demoralize any victim of sexual abuse. However, feminists remain stuck in sterile criticism. Because in the end, many of them only see justice through these institutions. More than the end, justice also becomes the means. They thus become, in the same way as the trade union bureaucrats in the economic struggle, the experts of the bourgeois system and of bargaining with it.
Faced with the disappointing verdict, many feminists will not be able to move forward. After all, there was supposed to be an „after-Mazan“. The worst course of events would be to see in certain individual lawyers, certain champions of rape without reprisals, the enemies to be defeated in order to finally achieve progress in terms of women’s rights. Because unlike starting in a court or on a television set, patriarchal violence begins where it is exercised with the least possible resistance: the family. To do this, instead of starting with violence, with politics, we must follow Marx’s method on the subject of capitalism: start with economic unity and the exploitation of labor.
In this case, we must understand unpaid reproductive work within the family. It is also important to understand that sex is one of the chores that women have to perform in order not to risk social punishment. Rather than being done on terms agreed to by both parties, the woman must do it according to patriarchal instructions. We can then understand that in the context of a heterosexual couple, sex is necessarily torn from women, whether it looks consensual or rape. Because as long as it is up to every woman to sexually satisfy her man, to do less or unpaid work for a husband or a boss, patriarchy will have a bright future ahead of it.
This is why we must fight for the liberation of women workers from the combined capitalist and patriarchal yoke. This can only be done through key reforms as well as transitional demands, which can be embraced by workers in struggle, if they resonate with them at all.
To ensure that gender-based and sexual violence (SGBV) is not perpetuated in the family, it must be addressed in public as a priority. The workplace is a privileged focus for this violence. Let’s strengthen the labour code to protect workers from the affronts of colleagues, customers and superiors. For factory and neighborhood committees to organize mandatory training on SGBV.
Militant circles, especially those where the hierarchy is the most marked and where women are most systematically relegated to organizational tasks, also replicate this violence that has nothing to do with our class. The same requests must be made there. Where women trade unionists complain about bureaucratic manoeuvring by union leaderships to cover up SGBV cases, we must intervene. Let’s help them to denounce the inertia of the system and the absence of or lack of structures to defend the well-being of members and activists.
Following a rape, the sexist intimidation of the victim begins at the police station. There is no chance of reforming this. Let’s demand that workers‘ militias replace it. From then on, we will be able to create commissions made up of workers who will treat reports/complaints with more respect, since they are equals.
The courts, because of lawyers‘ fees, are out of reach for too many women. A few local charities can provide the economic resources to do so, but must handpick the victims, depending on whether conviction is more or less likely. The services of a wide range of lawyers specializing in the issue must be nationalized, and to this end the doors of universities must be opened as widely as possible.
These last points relate to the last line of defence. To prevent the problem, let us set up housing so that women and their children can escape from any patriarch. Let’s make resources such as emergency phone lines available. Let us also provide means to re-educate the offenders, although we must always be careful not to over-prioritize them: they are never the first to be harmed!
As for the subject of oppression within the family, there is unfortunately no miracle reform that capitalism can propose; because much progress comes at the cost of losses in other aspects. On the contrary, let us fight for the socialization of the work done in the nuclear family, so that the latter will one day come to an end because it will then have exhausted its historical necessity. This could be done in particular by dividing the work of caring for children and our ancestors between colleagues or by socializing work such as cooking or laundry.
The Pelicot case: how to go further?
On December 19, 2024, after three long months, the historic trial of the so-called “Pelicot” or “Mazan rapes” case came to a close. Although the case may have been named after a small commune in the Vaucluse region, it was nonetheless international in scope. Nearly 80 media outlets around the world reported on the trial of the infamous crime of which Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men were accused: the rape of Gisèle Pelicot, Dominique’s now ex-wife. The case echoed across France, Europe and North America via the New York Times, and leapt over the Andes to land in Chile.
At the end of the trial, all were found guilty of rape or attempted rape, except for two who were convicted only of sexual assault. Six of those responsible for the attack on Ms Pelicot’s physical integrity were released by the court. With the exception of the seventeen appeals—none of which originated from Gisèle or Dominique Pelicot—there will only be a hearing on March 3 to determine damages.
What was the crime?
For ten years (from July 2011 to October 2020), Dominique Pelicot drugged his wife so that men contacted through the now-closed coco.gg dating site could rape her in his company. During these sexual crimes, Gisèle was unconscious and had no memory of them. He filmed the rapes, and investigators recognized 51 of the 84 different criminals in the 20,000 photographs and videos taken by Dominique Pelicot.
This detestable practice had disastrous effects on his wife’s health (memory loss, daytime sleepiness, weight and hair loss). In spite of the continuous rapes, Dominique, like a good husband, accompanied her to the medical interviews that sought the origin of his wife’s ailments. Gisèle feared a fatal illness, and although she had contracted four STDs, including HPV, Dominique, the malevolent conductor, pretended not to know.
The madness in this story, worse than these heinous crimes, is that there were 84 rapists, and none of the many doctors Mrs. Pelicot had consulted guessed the source of the evil. None of the men involved revealed the martyrdom she was suffering. None of the many men who saw the advertisement for Gisèle’s rape on coco.gg thought it wise to inform the police about the human trafficking that was obviously taking place.
In fact, it was a sordid coincidence that led to the arrest of Dominique Pelicot. In 2020, he had filmed under a young woman’s skirt in a convenience store. A security guard, seeing the footage on security cameras, stopped him and called the police. While #MeToo was still fresh in people’s minds, the latter urged the victim to lodge a complaint for voyeurism—which she bravely dared to do. As a result, the police confiscated Dominique Pelicot’s computer equipment. Only then were the 20,000 photos and videos uncovered.
Trial of the patriarchy?
If the trial is remembered for anything, it’s for Ms. Pelicot’s heroism. Not only did she survive these despicable acts. Not only did she summon the courage to go to court to ensure that every guilty party was convicted. Not only did she demand a public hearing, and the broadcasting in court of this unbearable video evidence, contrary to the court’s initial wishes. But it was she who had the most dignified and noble attitude in the courtroom. For she had undertaken, of her own free will, to take on the role of an opposition figure to sexual violence. In the course of the trial, she bore witness to a resilience that was nothing short of heroic, and which rightly attracted a great deal of attention.
But the case is also remarkable because many progressive newspapers referred to it as the “trial of patriarchy”. Many feminists hoped it would also become one. Eyes were riveted on the Vaucluse, not only because of the terror inspired by Madame Pelicot’s situation, not only because of her unparalleled courage; but also because this case nourished a hope for before and after December 19. There were also hopes for drastic reforms in rape law, and for a revolution in victim support structures.
And it’s certain that this case was, in a certain sense, precisely the trial of patriarchy. The 51 culprits were ordinary men. Doing the usual jobs. Normal fathers, husbands, sons and friends. Few were already known to the law as sexual predators.
This trial laid bare the systemic nature of violence against women. Directed within the family by the husband or father, who can decide what to do with his wife or daughter. This objectification has repeatedly been spat out in court, sometimes without embellishment. “He does what he wants with his wife”, thundered one of the defendants! This showed the high esteem in which some men hold the other half of humanity.
However, while 45 common rapists will sleep in prison, the patriarchy won’t follow them there. Women were raped by husbands, fathers, uncles, colleagues and neighbors on the night of December 19. And it took a miracle for one of them to see justice. Similarly, the scandals surrounding Abbé Pierre never end with the clergy. And it’s just as capitalism doesn’t become illegal when it’s referred to the Prud’hommes.
That’s why the verdict was a chilling series of cold showers for feminists who had cultivated hope for justice in the trial. First of all, 652 cumulative years in prison had been requested by the prosecution. This was far too little in view of the undeniable evidence and the 20 years‘ rigorous imprisonment that French law reserves (in principle) for rapists! But then, the criminal court did worse: it handed down only 441.
The only sentence not to have been reduced was Dominique’s: 20 years‘ rigorous imprisonment. What shocked the bourgeois conscience, moreover, was not so much 50 rapists, but a husband pimping his own wife. All in all, most of them were “good” rapists. Those who rape (an unknown woman) because the family environment allows them to. A far cry from the monsters who rape a stranger by the side of a manhole cover! That’s what their lesser sentence showed: there were very few “bad” rapists of the same caliber as Dominique Pelicot.
And that’s all the defense sought to demonstrate. The rapists claimed, no doubt on the advice of their lawyer, to have been “deceived” by Dominique. Had they been more eloquent, they would have described a modern-day Machiavelli. Some lawyers dared to speculate whether Gisèle had really been a libertine who was setting a malicious trap to destroy the lives of these valiant husbands, sons and friends. The most despicable of them, the mortician, claimed to believe Gisèle was dead, while the cameras recorded her snoring. As if that would lessen his crime! And as if that didn’t freeze the blood of the bereaved families who had requested his services to prepare the body of a deceased person!
The defense also acted as a front for violence against women. One lawyer had made headlines by describing the women attending the hearing as “Tricoteuses [knitters] of the revolution, waiting in front of the guillotine for heads to roll”. Leaving the court on the 19th, he provoked the audience into booing, shouting “Tricoteuses! Tricoteuses!”. Another lawyer had shared a video on TikTok of herself dancing to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by the pop group Wham!
The gamble of humiliating the victim paid off. Although Ms Pelicot’s wish was that “shame should change sides”. Nothing new there.
For all the hatred these devil’s advocates harbor in feminist circles, they are in many ways a rearguard of patriarchal violence. This is because they only intervene at the very latest, in the gravest of circumstances. Their dishonesty is obvious to the public.
Yet patriarchal violence is far more insidious when it takes place within the family. A patriarch can use the family institution to make himself a tyrant, but a respectable man outside it. By playing a double game with the man’s possession of the family, the women and girls who make up the family can be taken in pincers and placed under the complete domination of the patriarch. This means dispossessing the family members of their economic resources, and sealing off the family cocoon from the rest of the world.
And on this subject, there’s a deafening silence in the family drama that was the Pelicot trial. This concerns the photographs found of Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, in her knickers, asleep. Unlike Gisèle, however, there is no evidence of incest, although this is unfortunately more than possible given the similarity of the modus operandi. There is therefore not enough evidence for her to take her father to court.
This silence reveals the blind spot of this trial. Gisèle Pelicot is the perfect victim. White, married to the same man for 50 years, heterosexual, cisgender, with far more evidence than she needs to assert the guilt of the accused. Her daughter, by virtue of the incest taboo and lack of evidence, did not have the luxury of serenely prosecuting her alleged torturer.
This trial achieved only marginal progress towards a better law against sexual abuse by chemical submission. It has otherwise failed to improve jurisprudence regarding the standards of evidence required to determine guilt for rape. Among other things, the French penal code still does not define rape as a lack of consent. Nor has it succeeded in sparking initiatives to better protect victims of rape, whether marital or non-marital. Although it succeeded in focusing on the family unit as a facilitator of sexual violence, it failed to generate discussion on the changes needed to this structure. Nor did it generate a mass movement.
The Social Movement
Despite the wide-ranging discussions that the trial provoked, and despite the massive awareness of the problem of rape in the conjugal cell-the main place where it takes place-the social movement was meagre. The weakness of the social movement reinforced the nature of the trial not as a moment of social struggle, but as a spectacle in which Gisèle Pelicot was fed to the scavengers who raped her, and to the defense lawyers.
Far from having only local effects, the lack of direct involvement of the masses had international repercussions in the media coverage of the trial. Abroad, it enabled the dominant form of feminism, notably liberal, to impose its vision of the Pelicot case. This feminism rejoiced that, thanks to its country’s superb laws, it was immune to such a tragedy! Those who loathe social explanations such as patriarchy could then have a field day psychoanalyzing Dominique Pelicot-an exercise that is not only superfluous, but also cleverly trades popular education for esotericism and pity for the main accused. The virtual absence of solidarity with Mme Pelicot on French streets is co-responsible for co-opting the trial for chauvinist ends.
Rallies in support of Ms. Pelicot, organized by the radical section of French feminism, were few and far between (Paris rallies numbered only a handful of participants). These obscured any perspective that 1) didn’t come from a “privileged victim” or 2) wasn’t rooted in an institutionalist perspective.
The weakness of the protests does not stem from the marginality of “radical” feminism in France; rather, it is liberal feminism that is struggling to assert its vision. Moreover, in this instance, their usual moralistic appeal was simply not convincing. Being anti-#MeToo, decrying mob justice, counterproductively defending the presumption of innocence, burying one’s head in the sand as to the root causes – these were not catchy in this case, when “radical” feminism already occupied more ground and offered far more sensitive explanations.
Let’s understand the anatomy of Ms. Pelicot’s support rallies. Petty-bourgeois feminist activists brought their male partners along. After all, it’s the first step a man has to take to confront his sexist prejudices, the first hurdle to solidarity with the struggle for women’s liberation. However, they tended to look at any visibly marginalized woman (racialized, lesbian, trans, etc.) with the authority of one who doesn’t consider them his equals. What’s more, they played up self-flagellation through a performative denunciation of “the bad men” of which they were supposedly to be a part. If they were really hungry for justice, as many men in feminist organizations or communist-revolutionary parties are, they would have shown themselves ready to mobilize their entourage to fight ardently for the liberation of women alongside them.
One of the causes of this lack of movement was the wait-and-see attitude of feminist activists, who declared that the case was “so big that” the defense was necessarily ridiculous, “so big that” change became inevitable. But if bourgeois institutions were to change in the face of the “good sense” of the oppressed, they would have long since torpedoed their own foundations. For the bourgeoisie, patriarchs, etc., “common sense” is not learned by a politely-worded missive, but by the hammer of social struggle. That’s why there was a bad taste underlying the way the affair was handled by the feminist leadership in France: there was a kind of unspoken glee in the fact that the affair was so catastrophic.
To understand, however, the consequences this affair will have on future feminist struggles, we need to address the #MeToo issue. The reason for the low number of demonstrations in support of Gisèle Pelicot is that the #MeToo movement has run out of steam.
Why draw such a parallel? Firstly, because it’s what allowed the affair to happen in the first place. Secondly, because it’s the syntax of #MeToo that activists in solidarity with Gisèle Pelicot are using. Thirdly, it’s her frame of practice that made the Pelicot case what it was: the court and the state’s formal condemnation of rapists. And finally, all these elements, combined with the seriousness of the case, made it a kind of culmination of this worldwide movement. That’s what makes it so universal, and why the case has gone around the world.
That’s why we need to better understand where the movement is starting from, in order to properly decipher its direction.
#MeToo has enabled many women to learn about the oppression they suffer. A generation of feminist activists has become aware of their condition as women through this movement. But the movement has had little material success. There are certainly more complaints, which is a positive sign that the word is getting out. But one might expect the proportion of rapists or victims to fall, or the proportion of rapists charged to rise. However, the trend is worse according to these metrics, which can only leave us with a bitter taste.
It’s because #MeToo is ultimately just an association of like-minded people on social media. A profoundly disorganized movement, with no direction or demands; only a vague call for “education” (who should be the target? the answer has never been agreed upon within the movement), and in which a class reading does not prevail. A movement without a well-defined class base is, a fortiori, only petty-bourgeois.
In other words, the institutional framework of the affair was not confronted at all, which echoes the reformist vision of the progressive petty-bourgeoisie. But this is also a reminder of the fragmentary way in which feminist consciousness is constructed. First and foremost comes the direct experience of patriarchal violence. And the first response to this is the desire for justice, for punishment of the perpetrator.
But from the common-sense notion that every victim deserves justice, springs the relativist idea that the correct form for justice to assume is that which the victim desires—particularly in the courtroom—despite its unattainable, individualistic character, and the indignities the plaintiff confronts along the way. This is how a generation of feminists came to seek justice in the bourgeois, patriarchal court. An institution founded on the very oppressions it is supposed to denounce and punish. Except that any institution based on power cannot question itself to such a degree. Otherwise, power itself becomes illegitimate.
These criticisms of the courts obviously also come from feminist organizations, the first to be confronted with the extreme violence they can use to crush and demoralize any victim of sexual abuse. However, feminists remain stuck in sterile criticism. After all, many of them see justice only in terms of these institutions. More than an end in itself, justice becomes a means to an end. Like union bureaucrats in the economic struggle, they become experts in the bourgeois system and in bargaining with it.
Faced with this disappointing verdict, many feminists will be unable to move forward. After all, there was supposed to be an “after-Mazan”. The worst course of events would be to see certain individual lawyers, certain champions rapes without reprisal, as the enemies to be vanquished in order to finally achieve progress in women’s rights. Because rather than starting in a courtroom or on a TV set, patriarchal violence begins where it is least resisted: in the family. So, instead of starting with violence and politics, we need to follow Marx’s method for capitalism: start with economic unity and the exploitation of labor.
In this case, it means unpaid reproductive work within the family. It also means that sex is one of the chores women must perform in order to avoid social punishment. Rather than being done on terms agreed by both parties, the woman must perform it according to patriarchal instructions. It’s easy to see why, in the heterosexual couple, sex is inevitably taken away from women, whether it looks consensual or rapey. For as long as it remains the responsibility of every woman to satisfy her man sexually, to do less or unpaid work for a husband or boss, patriarchy will have a bright future ahead of it.
That’s why we need to fight for the liberation of working women from the joint capitalist and patriarchal yoke. This can only be achieved through key reforms and transitional demands, which can be adopted by workers in struggle, if they resonate with them.
If sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is not to be perpetuated within the family, it must first and foremost be confronted in public. The workplace is a prime focus for such violence. Let’s strengthen the labor code to protect women workers from the affronts of colleagues, customers and superiors. For factory and neighborhood committees to organize mandatory training on SGBV.
Militant circles, especially those where hierarchy is most marked and where women are most systematically relegated to organizational tasks, must also respond to this violence, which has nothing to do with our class. The same demands must be made there. Wherever women trade unionists complain about the bureaucratic maneuvers employed by union leadership to hush up SGBV affairs, we must intervene. Let’s help them denounce the inertia of the system and the absence or lack of structures to defend the welfare of female members and activists.
Following a rape, the sexist intimidation of the victim begins at the police station. There’s no chance of reforming this. Let’s demand that workers‘ militias replace them. Then we can create commissions made up of working-class women who will treat reports/complaints with more respect, as equals.
The courts, because of lawyer fees, are out of reach for too many women. A few local charities can provide the economic resources to do this, but have to cherry-pick victims, depending on whether conviction is more or less likely. We need to nationalize the services of a wide range of lawyers specializing in this field, and to this end open university doors to the widest possible audience.
These last few points are the last line of defense. To prevent the problem, let’s set up housing so that women and their children can escape any patriarch. Let’s provide resources such as emergency phone lines. Let’s also provide the means to re-educate offenders, although we must always be careful not to over-prioritize them: they are never the first to be wronged!
On the subject of oppression within the family, there is unfortunately no miracle reform that capitalism can propose; for progress in this given area comes at the price of losses in that other one. On the contrary, let’s fight for the socialization of work carried out within the nuclear family, so that the latter may one day become extinct, by which time its historical necessity will have run out of steam. This could be achieved, for example, by sharing the work of looking after children and the elderly between colleagues, or by socializing work such as cooking and laundry.