Mayor of Mazan (Gisèle Pelicot)

[niadainud]

Wtf? It's not that serious because no-one was killed? And he said this more than once in the interview.

Incroyable. Putain !

He's apologised, according to Le Monde, but still.

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.

Yes, they all wear a smooth chocolatey coating.

Exactement !

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.

@Garlicwest - great post. When you say "insistent sex" are you talking about coercion/badgering/nagging? I still haven't quite got over the man who (while having a drink together locally) asked me about a dozen successive times if we should go back to my flat, or the other man who (already, unfortunately, in my flat) asked a similar number of times whether we should go to the bedroom. Or the one who came round uninvited, making sure he was too late to catch the last train home, and climbed, again uninvited, into my bed in the morning (I told him to sleep on the sofa). Or the one who drove my house but made sure he was too drunk to drive home. Or the one who didn't want me to go home from his flat, then didn't want me to sleep in the spare room. Or the one who suddenly disappeared and returned dressed only in his underwear. Or the one who propositioned me when I was staying with him and his partner. Or the one who propositioned me when his wife was pregnant. None of them drugged or raped me, but none of them displayed very edifying behaviour.

Why do these men think we say no repeatedly but don't mean it? Or, rather, that they can wear us down or get us to agree out of politeness, and that it's totally acceptable to do so.

"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.

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.