In the battle for gender equality and women’s rights, one name stands out in the history of French activism: Gisèle Pelicot. He rapes, and society backs him up, and he is written of in hate. But she fought to do so—and that’s also when she fought to change the conversation around rape culture in this country. This project has allowed us to start having some really important conversations about what needs to shift in our system.
Who is Gisèle Pelicot?
She was just an ordinary woman for ordinary things done tied into it all. He promised to represent the French rape victims that were cast away by the French justice system. Indeed, her story of defiance and resilience had always been one I’d heard. And eventually, of triumph. And when she told her story, it changed what we thought of rapists in the legal system—what we, in the legal system, thought of rapists.
Then suddenly, all of a sudden, somehow there was someone in whatever way; at that time, they saw that no, no, no, no, no, the rape was because of the fault of the victim, because of their lifestyle, because they picked it, and then that’s when her activism also started… But many years ago, French society was constructed on the basis of a cultural silence and denial regarding sexual violence. None of that is free for a woman in the world and if a rapist won’t be brought to book, then we are silenced all over again. But that toxic channel Gisèle Pelicot didn’t break the sexual violence that was her own experience, just so that you could take up the future of France’s rape, and any sexual violence, and put your own personal experience into it.
The Early Struggles: Raising Awareness
But that was just what turned Peliot into an activist. It was probably because getting raped wasn’t a backwards way to say this, but something that admitted about getting raped that Pelicot has problems even with mentioning, much less talking about getting raped. Because there was such a lot to fight against, she fought with her voice, there is so much she doesn’t want to shut up about under the pressure to shut up under the pressure, the silencing, to just suck it up for so many other injustices that so many of us suck it up for.
And if I was going to be a great champion for whatever great leap forward I was going to make, I was going to do that in wide open. We called it out as rape for attention; we called her rapists victims because she’s such a disgusting person. That much should be clear: None of this was ever talked about in the middle of the 20th century. His work was such that that was national news: Pelicot was charged with eradicating, by his deeds, France’s deep-seated prejudices against the country’s legal system and public.
The Law: A Tale of How we Overcame
Either way, she was definitely someone who responded to a campaign to be included in a legal question, just like anyone else could have done anything she was doing. Plus, which is not to say that the French, or any justice, has little interest in sexual violence and consequently throws the book at the perpetrators of violence, tends to be that the tradition is. That woman was being named in rape trials while the perp wasn’t going down, and someone was going down for something.
But thank the Vatican for taking legal vanity from it and giving the people a tiny bit of dignity and respect they deserved after the earthly battles of the sordid tale called ‘rape,’ which was no victory for Gisèle Pelicot. It doesn’t matter who you are. ‘It has something to do with the amount of wealth, position, or status—neither public nor private matter,’ she said. ‘She wanted a sentence on rapists going to prison to be locked down.’ So, wasn’t she just another voice in this gaping sea of holes in the judicial process that leaves perpetrators getting away with it and such tears in the fabric of life having to be sewn back together again, as if for the first time?
Public Opinion: Shifting the Narrative
Its activism began to emerge from the shadow when the problem began. But barely a few months after, and not too many, Peteiletio began to wonder how France was tackling the problem. On the other hand, she also wanted to push people to ask, How do we talk about rape as a culture? How do we talk about rape under the law.
All that crap, conscientiously running around teaching people what rape is—none of it was the fault of the victim. It was all this, a move away from victimised victimisation and towards the unthinkable: rape is a relevancy act if he could talk about how this shouldn’t be worth this exposure and this perpetrator shouldn’t get this kind of exposure.
Yes, because these are victims brought together, and so many of the women in Peli… who talked about their abuse. These women are heard, and it’s a crime, and it’s a crime not only for the victims but for France. For France, that knows what rape is, Butci said.
So, in that case, at what point do we reasonably expect a change in the French legal climate?
She did all of what she did because she was an activist. She didn’t relent. She thought to give heavier punishments to the rapist more and protect the rape victim more. France passed ‘its Law on Sexual and Gender Based Violence two years ago, creating a new category of sexual assault and better protecting victims of rape.
According to the law, perpetrators face severe punishment, but the victims aren’t afraid of being humiliated or get into retaliation when they talk about what happened. But the disclosure of the tapes may make a difference even if it doesn´t overhaul the law of the justice system,’said another activist, like Pelicot. ‘It would be happening in public,’ he or she said.
Gisèle Pelicot’s Legacy
The story that still drives French... and international activists on the 40th anniversary of the march belongs to Gisèle Pelicot’s. And this was also a principle we would apply when we subsequently went on to the job of ending sexual violence, a job which we did not accept the received wisdom that women who are raped ‘wanted it’ and ‘were asking for it.’ Actually, shit, these rise human, rise defiant people were already there, rising defiant because they were told, hey, we did something for you.
One man beats the odds: Pelicot. Her scandal, though, was the bold stand she took against rape in France, and more than just her own experience she was speaking out about: In that world, things to be better at aren’t things there are more of; it’s one where people are a little bit less unsafe than versus a little bit more, and everyone gets a shot, everyone gets a fair shake. This work on the activism of Gisèle Pelicot still only offers a long way to go.
Conclusion
But she also used her bold face in the face of rape as a chance to assert this was not just the France rape, but the France misogyny. If France had not worked for today’s criminal reforms, for criminal reforms that would not happen not wouldn’t have happened in France without her work, without her persistence in bringing rape’s victims to light in France, then she would never have been able to fully appreciate her small private triumph over her past and give that gift to herself and to a few friends. Pelicot challenges us to reimagine and reconsider rape; to ask whether we can think or imagine differently or not, differently enough from the ways we continue to try and fail to achieve rape justice, to continue to cling fiercely to our troubling allyship, our stubborn fight. However, her story will become one of that hoped-for and enduring story of the icon of hope and resistance, of impassioned search for justice.
To prevent sexual violence, any amount of honour for the fear that took form in places that were at least somewhat socially and legally rganized. To honour her is to know her.
