They line up in front of a courthouse in southeastern France, from morning to evening, and have gathered in the thousands in cities across the country. They hold signs reading, “one rape every six minutes,” “not all men but always a man,” and “giving in is not consenting.”
They chant: “Rapist we see you, victim we believe you.”
Women across France are rallying in support of Gisèle Pelicot, a 72-year-old reluctant icon whose husband is on trial in the city of Avignon for systematically drugging her and inviting dozens of men, 50 of whom are now his co-defendants, into their home to rape her over nearly a decade.
The shocking case has sparked what many women in France call a long-overdue reckoning over “rape culture” and systemic sexism in the way the judicial system handles sexual violence.
And yet, what no-one wants to face is the fact that women rape men as frequently as men rape women:
I mean, yes - let’s lock up convicted rapists. But if 50%of cross-gender rapists are women yet almost 100% of convicted rapists are men, there’s some seriously weapons-grade gender bigotry at play, there.
A legal system that is truly based on equality should see about a 50/50 split of male/female rapists convicted, and for largely equal time served as well.
I took a look at the CDC report. Those comparable numbers are only about the 12 months preceding the survey which is, while probably statistically significant, not the whole story. It’s interesting to see why there’s a jump in those numbers for the 12 months preceding, but otherwise if you look at lifetime numbers women are victimized at significantly higher rates than men.
that’s being penetrated, I think it doesn’t include being made to penetrate, which is covered in other forms of sexual violence.
side note: I don’t know how the article got numbers for “being made to penetrate” specifically, the CDC article doesn’t seem to specifically say it. maybe I skimmed it wrong. I only saw the 1.6% of men reporting “unwanted sexual contact” in the last 12 months, which is compared to the women reporting at 2.2% of women, which is while still almost 40% higher, closer than lifetime experiences which are estimated at 27.3% vs 10.8%. Guess which is which.
This includes being made to penetrate and other things, again if you can find where the 1.6% comes from please let me know.
this is interestingly one of the categories where it is not as close in the last 12 months: women’s rate double men’s. not central to my overall point but it is surprising because if anything I expected this to be closer than other categories, considering social media making stalking easier. just a note.
here’s an interesting part about “always a man”:
women are predominantly predated by men in all forms, but men are predominantly made to penetrate and coerced by women (I guess this is expected more than men would be doing this?), while penetrated predominantly by men (I guess obvious) and suffering other forms of sexual predation including stalking by a relatively even rate of men and women.
That sounds like it all comes pretty close to “always a man”.
In the context of this post this is disgusting to bring up.
This doesn’t have any bearing on what this old lady was put through.
I think you are hand-picking numbers here. The most current CDC Report on Intimate Partner Violence does not support your claims. https://www.cdc.gov/nisvs/documentation/NISVSReportonIPV_2022.pdf
The share may differ - I’m not aware of it being equal and you bring up interesting stats right there - but regardless, men can absolutely be victims of all kinds of abuse, and we have to treat it seriously.
Yes, men forced to do what they don’t like or coerced to have sex is rape, and same for women.
Some American jurisdictions can’t even properly report a male victim of rape or sexual assault because their software is hard-coded to assign the victim as female and the perp as male.
Plus, the vast majority of men have been brainwashed into thinking that it is impossible for a woman to rape a man. So many of them don’t even see their rape as a rape, and frequently blame themselves.
And for the cherry on top, male rape victims can and frequently are forced to pay child support to their rapist if a child is conceived, thereby further traumatizing them. This happens even if the male victim was a minor - upon their 18th birthday they are hit with tens of thousands in arrears, and face jail time if they cannot immediately begin paying. Imagine - jailing a rape victim for the product of their rape!!
Think of how this would go down if the genders were swapped, and then ask yourself: why isn’t it going down like that as it currently is?
Because men don’t matter. Because men are trivially disposable. Because if men cannot provide something of value, they are worse than useless: they are a threat to society and need to be violently coerced into being useful. It’s why so many men are saying, “thanks, but no thanks” to the various “traditional” societal expectations of them (career, marriage, and even relationships entirely), and are going their own way. And I don’t blame them one bit.
I follow you, until the last part.
“Men don’t matter”, “women don’t matter” - those statements often seem to imply that the other gender is dominant and treats the other as disposable. This is not true - both men and women heavily suffer from bias, discrimination, and abuse - both in their own ways.
Traditional expectations hurt everybody, men and women, and should be thrown out the window. This includes a traditional concept that men are always perpetrators but not victims of abuse, among other things - something that is still commonly ignored, sometimes out of genuine ignorance, sometimes in bad faith.