Madame Gisele Pelicot is a hero.
We are living in times where a husband can advertise and sell his unconscious wife’s body to all and sundry for shits and giggles - and the men who see the ad won’t report him to the police - they will join him in raping her.
The fact that the forum 'WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE' even exists is testament to how sick we as a society have become.
Porn is the main driver to this behaviour, and the elephant in the room.
Pornography is viewed as the last bastion of free speech - is this what we will be left with, when all the rest of our words have been outlawed?
Porn is also readily accessible to minors online - to children.
Is it any wonder our young people are confused about sex? That young women are regularly presenting at A&E with anal tears and anal prolapses? Strangulation is also doing damage to these young girls. Thanks to porn, intimacy is out the window.
I suggest that anal sex and choking are not loving touches.
New Zealand's sexual violence situation is so bad that we had to make a law against strangulation. Within six months of this law being enacted 400 charges were laid, and that doesn't include all the women who didn't report it.
These men who do these things are humiliating and hurting women, and showing us all exactly what a great many men think of us.
Returning to Gisele Pelicot - this 72 year-old woman is taking on the world. She is deliberately having a very open trial, and as she rightly says: #shamemustswapsides.
It isn't her shame to carry that her husband is a porn-addled rapist. Nor is it her fault she was drugged and raped by over fifty men at the behest of her husband. At a stage in her life where she should be enjoying the fruits of a well-lived life, she was being drugged and raped instead.
Some of the men's defenses would be laughable if it wasn't so serious.
"I thought she was dead", stated one of the rapist men, apparently believing that raping a corpse (necrophilia) was a winning defence.
Many of the men have claimed that they thought she was 'into it', because her husband said so.
Understand this. A husband cannot consent to sex on his wife's behalf.
For any man who hasn't yet grasped this, if a woman is unconscious, she cannot consent.
Other men have said they didn't know, as though they hadn't accessed her via the "WITHOUT HER KNOWLEDGE' website.
To a man they are ALL lying.
I despair for our young women.
If this is what a man who says "Until death do us part" is capable of, how are young men treating young women?
I refer you back to the unprecedented numbers of young women presenting at A&E with anal injuries. #shamemustswapsides. These young women do not need to be ashamed that young men are porn-addled and violent and have no idea how to treat young women.
The shame is for MEN to carry.
When will men be ashamed enough of the disgusting rapists and porn addicts among them to stop ignoring and excusing each other and wailing "Not All Men"?
WHEN?
The men who raped Gisele were butchers, carpenters, drivers, train drivers, restaurant managers, office managers - just your everyday blokes.
Is this what we have become as a society? Women are nothing but holes on legs? Born to be shrouded and invisible except when we're servicing men?
At least the Islamists are honest that they hate us and think women are lesser than goats.
In the West they pretend they care, and it is all swept under the carpet until a hero like Gisele comes along and tears the scab off anew.
Parents - teach your children better. Get them off the internet and away from porn.
Men - teach your sons better, and stop watching porn yourselves. #WeSeeYou. There are many telltale signs to porn use before the choking stage begins.
Teach your boys how to accept the word "No". It's OK to be rejected. It happens to everybody and it's not the end of the world. Teach your sons that porn is a disgusting hellscape that bears no resemblance to the love and tenderness of a woman who cares about them and who they care about in return.
Women - teach your girls better. Teach young girls how to say "No”, and that it’s okay to do that. Teach them that sex and intimacy is about loving touches and caring, not violence and degradation and pain, and that a man who wants to do that to her doesn’t like her, let alone love her.
Intimacy is not something to be afraid of. It is to be shared and cherished and held dear to the heart. It takes time. It is nothing like porn. #PornKillsLove #PornKillsIntimacy.
Cherish those moments where your breath is taken away for the right reasons, and bring our society back to what really matters - loving, real-life human relationships, not disconnected, porn-saturated internet engagements.
If you think I am being hyperbolic about porn, consider this: the trial of Gisele Pelicot's rapists and husband is happening right now. And yet, there are men lining up all over the internet to watch the leaked videos of the horrifying abuse she has endured. Who leaked them? MEN.
Like any other addiction, more is always needed to satisfy the craving. Porn leads people to cross their own lines in the sand.
Don't be the man that insists strangulation and anal are all he needs.
Don't be the man that sells his wife to rapists because he's addicted to porn.
Do be the man who finally takes steps to reject and condemn the rapists among you, loudly, publicly and without equivocation.
Be the man who stands up among his friends and everywhere he can and says that Gisele Pelicot is a HERO, and that the shame belongs to her husband and all the men who raped her.
By Di Landy, Co-founder, Mana Wāhine Kōrero.
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