Without Her Knowledge

Gisèle Pelicot’s case may redefine rape culture as genocide against women.

Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Key points

• Rape culture needs to be redefined in light of the case of Gisèle Pelicot.
• To prevent rape culture, we must have the courage to name it.
• Some domestic rape cases align with the definition of genocidal rape.

“We know that to end systemic violence, we must address the root causes of it. We also know that you cannot change what you refuse to name.”

This quote is from Jasmine Ramze Rezaee and Sami Pritchard’s Toronto Star article, which was published this July. The story was a call to action to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic in the province of Ontario, where last year alone at least 62 women and girls were lost to femicide.

We hear a great deal about sexual violence in the media, including the recent cases of Sean Combs, the ex-Harrod's boss Mohamed Al-Fayed, and Alice Munro, who remained silent about the sexual violence perpetrated by her husband Gerald Fremlin against her youngest daughter.

Rape culture and the Pelicot case

Rape is part of our culture. We even have myths about it, which sounds almost fascinating—except it’s not. We’re not talking about Icarus, whose wings melted because he flew too close to the sun. We are talking about the routinized nature of sexual violence and torture, which is most often done by men to women and female-identifying people.

The horrific case of Gisèle Pelicot, the 72-year-old French woman who was repeatedly drugged and raped by leagues of men under her husband’s calculated watch, is a case of such magnitude that it reveals the need to redefine the way we talk about and classify rape.

As detailed in a BBC story, men of all ages, occupational backgrounds, and marital situations first encountered Mr. Pelicot on a chat room called "Without her knowledge" on a now-closed website that hosted pornographic material. They were not instructed or forced to engage in this heinous activity; they were invited by Mr. Pelicot to rape his wife.

One man told investigators: “It was like raping a corpse.”

Rape typology

These are the dominant types of rape that exist and how they are defined:

• Acquaintance: Between two people who know each other; “date rape.”
• Aggravated: Forced sex acts by the threat of death or serious bodily injury, including acts with unconscious/drugged victim and children under the age of 12.
• Age-related: Sexual actions with a person below a minimum age; statutory rape.
• Diminished capacity: Forced sexual penetration on another person who cannot consent to the sex act.
• Gang: Rape of one person by a group of people
• Genocidal: A “weapon of war”; rape as deliberate policy and strategy.
• Incest: Parties involved in the sex act are closely related or family members.
• Partner: Rape of former or current spouse by previous or current partner.
• “Other”: Rape by strangers or in conjunction with a hate crime.

Rape as genocide

With the exception of incest, this example reflects each of the typologies above: acquaintance, aggravated, diminished capacity, gang, partner, stranger, other, and genocidal.

Genocide is a powerful term that is reserved for very particular conditions, and this case is one of them. Genocidal rape is rape as a deliberate policy and strategy. It is also systematic and widespread, writes political scientist and feminist historian Clémence Pinaud.

The Pelicot case involved groups of men as well as the physician who kept supplying the prescriptions used to drug Gisèle. It was a decade-long mass attack that was maintained by a code of silence, coercion, and patriarchal pleasure shared among men from all walks of life.

This was not a "simple" gang rape, which is usually random, opportunistic, and singular in occurrence. It was designed to target the member of a specific group—a woman who was married to her rapist.

Most genocidal acts occur within the context of geopolitical unrest and war, and they are considered hate crimes and crimes against humanity. In a quiet home in Mazan, a picturesque town nestled in the countryside of Provence, a war against a woman blazed without end for a decade. She lost hair, lost weight, had multiple gynecological problems, and thought she was losing her mind.

The question of how this could have happened is, to me, less pressing than what we do now that we know it did.

Is rape part of our evolution?

Evolutionary researchers demonstrate that the rape of female animals by male perpetrators has occurred over history and within different species, including insects. These behaviours emerge under specific conditions and often hinge upon some form of reproductive advantage. It’s even referred to as a “conditional mating strategy.”

However, because rape behaviors may have a genetic component does not mean that men cannot control their behavior.

Also, mating isn’t always about reproduction, especially when the victim is past reproductive age, as in the case of Gisèle Pelicot. Research about the sexual assault of older women indicates that these attacks may be particularly brutal and largely motivated by anger, a need for power, or sadistic intent. It also suggests more severe psychopathological processes in men who sexually assault older women than in those who assault younger victims.

What now?

What does this case mean for how we think about rape, gender, age, and digital culture in 21^st century? Do we need to rename rapes like the Pelicot case or all of them? Can we include domestic cases as acts of genocide? Should we, possibly to gain access to more state-level resources?

Do we deny Wi-Fi access to men in Mazan, or elsewhere? Perhaps we adopt the syndemic framework, which occurs when two or more diseases or health conditions cluster and interact within a population because of social and structural factors and inequities, leading to an excess burden of disease and continuing health disparities.

There are no simple or clear answers in terms of a way forward, other than the clear need to rename what is happening to women across the planet. And speak it, often.