Did you ever wonder about your husband after the Gisele Pelicot case?

[Seymorbutts]

I’m a lesbian (thank god!) so I’ve got no skin in this game but I read something on here earlier about the sheer number of seemingly ordinary men who participated in the rape of Gisele Pelicot. I’m assuming their own wives had no idea either. It’s not only horrific but got me wondering are most men actually like this, walking around pretending to be normal but actually have these sick fantasies they’re just waiting for the opportunity to act out? And that got me wondering if you’re married to a man, did the Gisele Pelicot case ever lead you to suspect your own husband could have ever done anything like this, if not to you, to another woman? If so, how did you cope with it?

Whether women suspect their current husbands of rape crimes.

But obviously some women’s husbands are rapists? No?

I think that there are some separate issues here that are being conflated. The first is that clearly not all men are doing it, but obviously it’s more of a problem than first realised. The second is that obviously nobody thinks their choice of husband falls within the problem group. As humans we do a lot of ‘soft’ self-delusion in order to function. Trusting another human falls under that. At some point we have to believe our judgment otherwise we couldn’t function.

However, it’s also silly to think because we have to make that judgment, that it means ultimately it’s air-tight.

I’m also reminded of the many porn threads on here where a rather large amount of women insist that all men watch porn, and yet it’s very likely those same women would say ‘not my man’ in relation to this thread. However, we know ‘mainstream’ porn is full of violence, assault, uncertainty around ‘consent’, very young women made to look even younger, and a whole host of deviancy. We are allowing society to normalise all of these things because ‘it’s just pretend’ and yet seem shocked when that thin line is breached into real-world assault and rape.

You need to read the upper thread to see the context of that specific conversation. A poster asked OP what was the relevance of her being in a relationship with a woman (as though it absolved her of having a partner who could be capable of betraying her/not being the person she thought she was). OP said the statistics didn’t support women committing sexual offences so she didn’t ever suspect her that. I said do you ever suspect your partner of cheating then, as the statistics do support that.

Obviously cheating isn’t on par with rape or sexual offences, but it’s the same vein of conversation – most people are with their partners because they believe them to be good and faithful people. Or else they wouldn’t be with them.

Of course rapists are in relationships with unsuspecting woman – the key word there being ‘unsuspecting’. So yeah, I think it’s a bit of a ridiculous question to ask women if they suspect their current husband of sexual crimes and ‘how they cope with that’.

Dodgy exes – sure. Current partners – no.

Really? I think the ‘all men watch porn’ crowd are likely the people of this thread arguing that most men would be capable of sex crimes. They are usually extremely derisive about men in general on those threads.

That’s interesting to me. I usually find those arguing all men watch it are the ‘pick me’ types who think that it’s a male’s natural instinct to watch porn and they too want to be watching it with them. I’ve found anti-porn posters to be more measured and understanding that not all men choose to watch it, and that it’s a societal standard that we should think they do.

Saw this a few days ago and think it belongs here.

Well no, I wouldn’t automatically think my partner would never cheat, I’d like to think she wouldn’t but I could never be 100% certain. I can say with 100% certainty she’d never rape anyone though. The idea of it is just ridiculous. Women are just not built like that. Even the butch lesbians 🤣. Many other women also think their husband is capable of cheating, evidenced by the many, many threads on here saying things like “DH is friends with female colleague. Should I be worried?!”, “should I go through dh’s phone to check if he’s cheating” etc etc. I guess it’s not so horrific to imagine your partner might cheat than it is to imagine they might be a rapist. I imagine most women would find it very difficult to even go there in their minds. It’s not a ridiculous question though, given how the Gisele Pelicot case revealed just how many “ordinary” middle-class family men were involved in this. Logically it would make sense to think your own husband may be capable of such a crime, statistically speaking, but I get that emotionally it wouldn’t make sense for a woman to suspect her own husband. I asked the question because I was wondering if there were any especially unemotional, logical thinkers out there who could separate the emotion from the facts (which I get is a tough thing to do when it’s someone you love). I’m sure Gisele and all the wives of the men who participated never suspected their husbands either though

Sorry, I don’t think it is logical to think your current partner may be capable of rape. You’re using ‘logic’ a little incorrectly here. Logic is to use clear and sound reasoning to make sensible decisions, not to use statistics out of context to put your current partner under suspicion.

Are some of these husbands rapists? Yes. Is it logical for their partners to suspect them in the absence of any red flags, but on statistics alone? No. That’s not ‘emotional reasoning’, that is logical reasoning.

You are also claiming that the rapists of GP were ‘ordinary’. Do you know that? Just by virtue of them being married and middle class? What is ‘ordinary’?

Did they have any functional substance abuse issues? Did they have any unreported history of violence, emotional or verbal abuse towards their current or past partners? Did they gamble? Have uncontrolled debt? Had they harmed animals? Were they nazi apologists? The list goes on … all of that can go on in a very seemingly ‘ordinary’ life of a middle class, married man.

You’re assuming none of these men had any detectable red flags for not seems completely out of the ordinary. One doesn’t have to have a criminal conviction or a history of known sexual assault to have red flags.