Mayor of Mazan (Gisèle Pelicot)

In the documentary they said 3, including DP were from Mazan. The rest were from within a 40km radius. Doesn't make it a lot better, but maybe a tiny bit.

"Men don't actively hate women, their actions are not driven by seeking to harm women. Any harm caused is a byproduct of them seeking pleasure or whatever else they are seeking. It's not that they hate women, it's that any pain or damage inflicted is seen as a necessary evil to get what they want. They just don't care about it."

Hmm. A man just walked up to a woman on the New York subway and set her on fire.

Certainly feels like hate.

I expected the usual digressions into 'namalt' here, but not a similar amount of energy going into 'putain'! FWIW, I use 'cunt' in equivalent circumstances. I understand why many women find this repulsive, but am 100% sure nobody's ever heard me describing someone as a cunt and thought I meant they are a vagina.

Since this has to be said on every thread sporting NAMALT accessories, "He's a man. What else would you expect?" doesn't mean "All men are rapists". You'd have to be exceptionally dense to think so. It means "On the whole, it's true to say men tend to downplay the seriousness of sex-related crimes against women."

There's an academic concept about society (patriarchy) viewing women as being in a constant state of sexual availability. This is what the debate over "reasonable belief in consent" had to tackle - that all women were consenting until they forcefully denied it. UK law has made great strides on this topic, but the social concept lingers. It explains why so many men fail to understand that everyday sexual harassment or molestation is wrong: they see women, on some level, as available and just waiting for action by a male. It also explains why a lot of men fail to equate very insistent sex with rape. And why so many think it doesn't really matter if a woman's unable to consent: the point is that she's unable to deny and, if women are consenting by default, then it's not wrong.

Last week I read a Pelicot-inspired news article exploring how common drug rape might be. It contained a chilling interview with a woman who'd met the love of her life, she thought. Their sexual chemistry was insane, she'd never been so up for so much sex; she felt euphoric whenever she was with him. She discovered by accident that he was drip-feeding her fentanyl and cocaine.

We have to get rid of this ingrained idea that men are entitled to whatever sex they want with whichever woman they can access. It's gonna be a long haul.

On the whole, it's true to say men tend to downplay the seriousness and prevalence of sex-related crimes against women. Because of these long-held societal beliefs.

Dominique Pelicot is obviously a monster and presumably a psychopath, but he is to some extent an anomaly. The scores of rapists who filed through the door are clearly not anomalous; we know that as there were so many of them.

This. He's an outlier, the monster in the fairytale. But they are the banal and bland evil that walks with us every day.

What an absolute wanker.

She's an incredible woman, I'm in awe of her strength.

You’re making an illogical jump here because ´putain’ is used as an expletive in French in a similar way to how ´fuck’ is used in English. But that doesn’t mean that the meaning of ´putain’ in French is linked to the meaning of ´fuck’ in English.
In French ´Chou’ is a term of endearment. In English ´pet’ is a term of endearment. That doesn’t mean French people are linking cabbages and pets every time they call their baby ´chouchou’.
You can absolutely argue that it’s misogynistic to have a word for prostitute used as an expletive. But you can’t link it to the English use of ´fuck’ for similar linguistic functions and say by extension ´putain’ means ´fuck the prostitute’ and not just ´prostitute’.

Thinking of it like this is terrifying, and I suspect many of us (myself included) don’t think of it like that precisely because it is so terrifying (some sort of protective denial if you see what I mean). But yes.

I’ll spell it one more time and then it’s up to you. Putain means whore. By extension it is used to mean fuck. So fuck the whore. It absolutely does not mean fuck your wife consensually. You don’t have to say it all to mean it. You can keep using it as fuck, the whole of France can keep using it as fuck, maybe in ten years it will be used to mean something else than fuck, but it will always come from whore and it will never mean flower, or pot, because the origin of the word is clear. Whether you like it or not. Please go ahead and keep using putain in the common sense of fuck. Your use of the language is misogynist and you can keep justifying it as much as you want.

I believe that the Mayor of Mazan has now had to go into hiding because has had so many credible death threats. Including threats of gangs planning to go to his house and kill him.

It seems that there are many many men that strongly disapprove of sexual violence and the excusing if it.

So much so that they believe that violence is the best solution.

I think my head might explode with trying to square this circle!

Big of you @Leafy74

Thanks.

Fair enough

@Leafy74 I'm not playing with you. I'll answer any question I deem fit to answer.

Now try and answer the question I asked.

I agree, we use 'putain' in French as we do 'fuck' in English, it's completely dissociated with its original meaning (also no-one would use it to talk about prostitutes anymore either, they'd use the abbreviation 'pute' which is a pretty vulgar swearword).

Ted Bundy had a partner.

Ian Huntley had a partner.

Wayne Cousins had a wife/partner.

I could go on for pages.

You credit yourself with too much ability.

A non-poisonous Malteasers would say, "fair enough. If at least 1/100 of us are deadly poison to children, and somewhere between 13 and 31 percent of us would cause lifelong harm to women who ate them, and it was impossible to tell the difference, yes, feel free to avoid us". Good Malteasers wouldn't be utter dicks about it.

A lot of apologists rely on faulty assumptions that this is rare. It isn't rare. Men who would harm women if they could get away with it are frighteningly common. The trick is to have a society where they can't get away with it, socially or legally. We don't live there

Sadly, Maltesers are often very good at hiding their true selves.

and no woman died

A young woman has died - extremely likely to be murdered by Pelicot. He's prime suspect.

I don't know how much the mayor knew about that at the time.