Caroline Criado Perez on male violence and rape

[ArabellaScott]

https://newsletter.carolinecriadoperez.com/p/invisible-women-not-all-menbut-how

Contains details of the horrific French rape case.

'The second thing we just can’t stop talking about is how many of them there were. In just this one small area of France. What does that mean about how many other men would do this if they had a chance? How many men in our lives? Men who are married. With children, and grandchildren. Who seem like devoted husbands and fathers?

This is the question we women have been asking ourselves in the wake of this story as we look at the men around us. The men we love. The men we know and trust. The men who, unlike us, are not talking about this story unless we bring it up with them.

And to these men, I have a question: why are you not talking about it? Does this story not disturb you as much as it disturbs us? Are you not as horrified as we are to be faced, yet again, with just how many men we’re talking about here? With how they live among us, so well-hidden in plain sight, behind happy suburban marriages? Why are you not talking about this to your male friends? Why are you not talking about this in public? '

There are some mind boggling responses in that catcalling thread.

There is also the very natural defensiveness, that when women want to talk about male violence it appears to cast suspicon on all men. So a lot of it is NAMALT.

Sloss' version in above video: “Deep down, I know most men are good, but when 1 in 10 men are shit and the other 9 do nothing, they might as well not fucking be there.”

I know that this is reducing it to one aspect of life and single point of behaviour but that rape study would alter that proportion from 1 in 10 to substantially more.

I would really like a campaign by women to go on strike and not have any sexual or emotional contact with men until they show they can change. Difficult to organise and measure…but if there were no femicides or attacks on women that would show something. I am at the end of my tether with the misogynists and I think it is perfectly valid to mistrust them all.

Well, obviously it's very hard to work out. Very, very rough estimates come in at maybe 20% of men or 1 in 5 who are abusive.

That's a lot of men.

Russian roulette has better odds.

I've had to do a similar calculation, PatatiPatatras - a male relative of mine was slightly associated with one of the institutions in Ireland where abuse of children took place - he wasn't employed there, but his work took him there on visits.

I have no reason to believe he was in any way involved in the abuse of children.
But I realised I had to accept that it was entirely possible that he was, because all the known abusers were 'lovely family men' or 'pillars of the community' or 'grand lads altogether'.

I sincerely hope none of my male relatives would ever dream of harming a woman or a child. But I came to the conclusion that all I could do was hope, because male violence is so prevalent in all groups - it's a convenient 'out' in Ireland to focus on abuse by priests, as if they were the only men doing it - and is often so successfully hidden by the perpetrators.

Fighting against male violence is such a tricky thing, because we don't know where it's going to come at us from, and because so many women's lives include intimate family relationships with the possible source of their injury or death.

This!

Fighting against male violence is such a tricky thing, because we don't know where it's going to come at us from, and because so many women's lives include intimate family relationships with the possible source of their injury or death.

I think of this whenever I see a desperate woman post that her 12-14 year-old son has punched her, is punching walls, wrecking their home and she's at the end of her tether and there's no support for her.

“I think many men are afraid.
^^
Afraid of women's anger.
Afraid of attracting the opprobrium of other men.
Afraid of speaking up.”

I don’t think they’re afraid. I think they don’t care because it doesn’t affect them.

The restrictions which fear of MVAWG places on the lives of their female family members doesn’t negatively affect them. It doesn’t make the man’s life worse if their female family members have less freedom than they do.

And then there’s the taking it personally if women object to MVAWG. That’s so weird. It’s like taking criticism of the race rioters personally. I don’t feel defensive when I hear criticism of the race rioters. I mean, why would I? I would never behave like that so why would I be offended by the criticism? Which makes you wonder about the real reason so many men want to shut down discussions of male sexual violence.

“Are any men's WApp groups discussing this? If so, how?”

Well, let’s face it, there’ll be groups discussing what they can learn from the case, to avoid getting caught.

And campaigning for the right to anonymity for men accused of rape.

Well, maybe it's a mix.

I expect some men don't care, and some men are uncomfortable, some are defensive, and some are guilty.

But I guess we won't know unless men start talking about it all.

“One of the things that stood out for me was that she went to the GP and described her symptoms and he was sitting there beside her. He knew what was wrong with her because he was the one doing it to her.”

I knew a situation where the husband looked after his wife with early onset dementia at home right though to her death. He was regarded as a hero for that.

What didn’t get mentioned was that, many years before, she’d briefly left and gone to a women’s refuge. Perhaps it had been kept a secret. But knowing that, I found it chilling, not heartwarming, to think about her being looked after by him in her final, most vulnerable years.

Slightly off topic, but bear with me…

A friend of mine set up an initiative in his workplace about Standing Up To Sexism, prompted in part by a discussion we had had about how men often ignore women who complain about their sexism, but might occasionally listen if fellow men call it out - I.e. don’t just be a bystander, use your voice. There’s obviously a delicate line between this and paternalism, but I see it as a sort of way forward from NAMALT - because obviously not all men are like that, but the good ones need to find a way to stand up and be counted. A bit “courage calls to courage everywhere” in a way.

Thinking about that type of initiative and the discussion on this thread about whether groups of men are talking about this, but recognising that the impact on men will be different from the impact on women, what should we be trying to get men to be talking about/asking themselves? I don’t quite know where I’m going with this but sometimes I think people almost need to be given permission to express their revulsion at things - including revulsion at how easy and common place this horror had become, and if it could happen at such a scale in one place, what is to stop it happening on a similar scale elsewhere. If anyone else can work out what I’m trying to say and come up with some suggestions, I’ll be grateful.

On this point in the article you posted,

Worryingly, most men who indicated that they would commit rape did not even recognise their actions as such.

I think it is interesting, and shocking, to see that in French law a huge number of rapes would be considered to consensual sex if there were no “violence, constraint, threat or surprise.”

French law defines rape as 'sexual penetration, committed against another person by violence, constraint, threat or surprise. ' President Emmanuel Macron took a divisive stance on March 8 by speaking in favor of adding the notion of consent to the law.19 Mar 2024

https://www.lemonde.fr › article
The debate over adding consent to France's legal definition of rape

And to these men, I have a question: why are you not talking about it? Does this story not disturb you as much as it disturbs us? Are you not as horrified as we are to be faced, yet again, with just how many men we’re talking about here? With how they live among us, so well-hidden in plain sight, behind happy suburban marriages? Why are you not talking about this to your male friends? Why are you not talking about this in public?

Rhetorical question. Men either do things like this themselves or know men who do. If they don't do it, they don't want to intellectually associate themselves with those men and see it as "not their problem"

I think it is interesting, and shocking, to see that in French law a huge number of rapes would be considered to consensual sex if there were no “violence, constraint, threat or surprise.”

I read somewhere that GP was reprimanded for describing her SA as rape during the court case because of the definition in French law.

I've also just seen that, inevitably, the photography was not restricted to the wife but there are images of the daughter and daughter-in-law.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/france-rape-trial-court-gisele-dominique-pelicot-avignon-mazan/

All of this is reminding me of the film, Women Talking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Talking_(film)

It's so important for women to talk and there's so much energy expended to try and prevent that.

what should we be trying to get men to be talking about/asking themselves?

Frankly, at the moment I'm wrestling with the reality that 1in 3 to 1 in 5 men may be problematic. I'd suggest that the number is plausibly greater among some senior personnel (the cliché about the number of sociopaths in senior positions). These men are promoted and praised because of their ability to disregard the lives and wellbeing of others.

I need to stick my head in a basin of cold water and start on this weekend's batch of reviews. Work I do to facilitate the publication record and career advancement of (largely) men who go on to dominate academic and clinical research.

Why does each story i've read about this always have to stress that no money changed hands??

I agree with this... it is very overwhelming.

Because "sex work is work" and so, if there had been money involved it would have been "empowering" and "liberating"... 🙄

Thanks for finding and sharing the research, @ArabellaScott. So not Oxford uni after all, but not 10-15% either. Nor was it a huge sample of 'people', as the report called them.

But eye-wateringly awful, all the same.

Too true.

It was this. Appalling Gaslighting from the judge.

That’s revolting. How DARE a judge say it’s not rape?! If that happened to a man- drugged and penetrated by scores of men, would THAT be rape?? How is that not violence against a person??
Is it that women often allow penetration of their bodies, so they somehow implicitly consent to any penetration?
Im totally appalled.
In the past I have asked my dp and my sons if they feel any shame or upset about the fact that men carry out horrendous acts of violence on a regular basis. They all said the exact same thing which was basically, no, because I’m not one of them so I don’t feel responsible or linked to it in any way 🤷🏻‍♀️
Which to be fair is exactly what white people say when you ask them if they feel any responsibility for racism.
I just feel so bleak and depressed about this French case that so MANY seemingly normal men could have such total absence of empathy, and how many men apparently found it exciting to have sex with a woman who had essentially been turned into an inanimate object.