I am loath to accept Marilyn French, the late American radical feminist author’s notion that “all men are rapists”, not least because that must include me and my three adult sons plus all my male friends. But if you rephrase it to read “all men are POTENTIAL rapists” then I cannot disagree.
The older I get and the more I study men and masculinities, the more I am attracted to radical feminism; which basically comes down to the realisation that all men are potentially dangerous not only to each other, but especially to women.
You don’t need me to provide masses of empirical evidence to back up that realisation; just read the news, and the history books.
France is currently coming to terms with its own evidence that all men are potential rapists, with the trial of 51 of them accused of the raping or sexually assaulting 72-year-old Gisele Pelicot, aided and abetted by her husband; Dominique aged 72. Apparently, her husband liked to give guys (over 80 of them) a ‘good time with his wife’ first ensuring she was knocked out through a cocktail of drugs. He even filmed the proceedings. This was not a one-off event, it happened regularly over a nine-year period, only ending in 2020.
What sort of man would invite 80 men into his home to rape and assault his comatose wife? And what sort of man would accept the invite?
The answer is, any man. OK, not every man for sure, but too many to make rape an exceptional act.
The 51 men now on trial in France for the rape and assault of Gisele, are certainly monsters but they are far from being unusual. These are very ordinary men: aged 26 to 74, and with occupations as diverse as lorry driver, nurse, journalist, prison warden, soldier and farm worker. Several have previous convictions for assault on women, but most have no criminal record. Some are single, some married with children. Yes, everyman.
Who is to blame for this situation, apart that is from the men standing accused? This is a question France is now agonising over.
The answer lies in a statement made by one of the men:
“As the husband had given me permission, in my mind she agreed to it”
A clearer statement of patriarchy in action one couldn’t devise. The rapist didn’t see himself as a rapist nor committing a violent act against a woman, because her husband ‘permitted it’. No agency or choice for Giselle, no compassion for her either. To these men she was just a body, owned by her husband and therefore available to do with as they pleased. She had no identity, no feelings, no agency, no individuality, and they had no guilt, shame or remorse. Well, they may have now but only because they face years in prison.
One shouldn’t underestimate the degree of hatred that many men have towards women because as the radical feminists argue, misogyny underpins patriarchy and male violence.
I recently received this message from a man who I will leave anonymous.
“The male feminist is the kapo in the concentration camp of the gender wars – they will gas him last. Powerless and castrated, he will dutifully serve their bidding until his death.”
Nicely structured sentence, good grammar and punctuation; this guy is educated. But I have to ask, what planet is he living on? And how many men are there who think just like him?
Around the same time, I received this personal observation on men from a Gen Z Australian woman:
It’s subtle really, the way girls are told to be cautious around boys. We are told if they’re mean, it means they like us. So we laugh it off and brush it aside. But it doesn’t stop there. Eventually we take the longer route home, hold our keys a little tighter or make phone calls just to feel safer. It just becomes second nature, like an unspoken rule we’ve learned to follow without question.
Who is living in the real world, the man in fear of the gender wars and how women will ‘disempower and castrate’ him, or the young woman reflecting on how she’s had to learn to be careful around men, learn the ‘unspoken rules’ of survival and safety; which means learning not to trust men totally.
Very likely, Giselle trusted her husband. That was a mistake.
We all live together on this planet but in our heads and experiences we inhabit very different worlds. Until men begin to climb out of their toxic masculine cave and stop behaving like monsters towards women then society has no chance of becoming truly civilised. How to fix this problem? We start in the schools; teaching respect, consent, self-awareness, empathy, non-violence and emotional intelligence. The next generation of rapists is in our classrooms right now. We must therefore act to ensure we prove the radical feminists wrong.
