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Viva Gisèle Pelicot, my Che Guevara

The Frenchwoman has changed the rules, reversed the language and given women permission to reject shame

Image: TNE/Getty

In June of 2023, I stumbled upon early reporting of Gisèle Pelicot’s case and tweeted this. That tweet reached 2.3 million people and I struggled to open my mentions for a couple of weeks – they were constant and I was unable to continually think about the crimes against her. 

The reactions and shared trauma were too much for me. I felt sick. And scared. How did this man in a small French town find so many men willing to hurt this unconscious woman? I could not process the cruelty and the sport of raping this poor woman. 

At the time Gisèle Pelicot was a nameless, faceless wife of a cruel and deranged man. The thought of her invoked rage and pity. She had been subjected to decades of abuse at the hands of her husband and countless others and did not know about it.

This poor helpless woman. That was the refrain in my head. How wrong I was.

I struggled to process a newspaper article about what tons of men did to her. Let alone comprehend how Madame Pelicot would cope and react to her being raped for decades in her own bedroom at the bequest of her husband.

I couldn’t imagine how anyone could survive the trial of her own rapists. Implicit in my thinking about what was done to her was the shame and pity I was heaping upon her.

We’ve been told the only ‘real’ rapes are the bogeyman with a knife or gun to our head. Otherwise we are advised how difficult prosecution and justice is, and how it is easier to get therapy and move on. 

We’ve learned not to make a fuss. To fix our clothes, wipe off the ruined mascara. Destroy the evidence and compartmentalise the violence done to us. 

To minimise our trauma, someone has always had it worse. We were lucky, we got away without an STI, without a pregnancy, without “actual” rape. We can voice that it was not our fault and we do not deserve shame, but the internalised misogyny and messages have always been that the real reason we can’t get justice is that we didn’t do a good enough job stopping the men that violate us.

That’s why we aren’t really believed. That’s why we doubt ourselves. We can scream at the top of our lungs that it wasn’t our fault – but we have never been taught to actually believe it. No one is harsher on us than our own consciences.

We have never heard or seen anyone publically actually say that the shame is not ours to bear. I am one of those loud voices saying men need to stop raping us, while still rating my own experiences on a barometer of pain and violation. Weighing them up against much worse attacks.

Shame. We have been conditioned and fed shame for our entire lives. That we would not want the pictures of our bruises in the press. That if we froze and didn’t fight back, they believed it was consensual. That we would not want the details of the acts forced upon us shared. 

That the word survivor was not applicable. That assault was too strong of a word for a misunderstanding. 

But then Gisèle Pelicot did the unthinkable. She changed the rules and reversed the language. She demanded that the court show the tapes to her rapists and journalists while she faced her attackers. She stared the rules in the face and challenged the decision and sat in the courtroom facing her rapists. And she has won. 

She changed the rules. She held her head high and gave us permission to reject shame. 

Gisèle Pelicot did not let her rapists look away. She did not let the court look away. She did not let the world look away and in doing so has radically altered the conversation.

She told the court in Avignon she wants women who have been raped to know that “it’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them”.

It is like the world I operate in shifted on its axis. Gisèle Pelicot’s radical act of rebellion hasn’t just impacted her trial. It has shone a flashlight in the dark corners of my mind where I still blamed myself for violations. 

It has done what years of therapy and working in violence against women was not able to do. It has altered how I view my own experiences and how I treat the woman in the mirror. And in doing so, also erased the hypocrisy I have felt in being able to recognise other women were not at fault, but not giving myself that same respect and grace.

I am done being ashamed or making excuses for the men that violated my boundaries.

I have done hundreds of interviews talking about the need for men to be responsible for the violence they inflict on women without internalising the words I parroted. I believed it in the abstract, but had not truly applied that theory to my own experiences.

I went so far as to have subsequent consensual interactions with some of those men, convincing myself that I had gotten it wrong, I had misremembered, that I was drunk and what I knew had happened hadn’t really happened. It happened. I know the truth that I’ve never wanted anyone to know in case they thought less of me.

By refusing to bear any of the fault or shame for the acts that were done to her, Madame Pelicot has not only stood up to her rapists – she has demonstrated to the world how to reject shame. 

“I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pelicot did it, I can too. I don’t want them to be ashamed any longer,” she said, referring to her request for an open trial and for the videos of the alleged rapes to be shown.

I have not even allowed myself to be privately angry let alone publicly addressing what has been done to me. My own shame wrapped me in wine for decades. 

With her head held high; Madame Pelicot has given all of us permission to lay complete blame at the feet of our male perpetrators- it is theirs to live with, not ours. 

It does not matter who agrees with our truth, all that matters is that we no longer accept the shame. The revolution is taking place in how we treat ourselves. It does not matter who believes us. We are allowed to know and say out loud that this is on our perpetrators and not on us.

Madame Pelicot’s acts of bravery are a revelation. She is my Che Guevara. That is the revolution. Her acts have released me of a lifetime of shame for acts against me. 

Shame needs to switch sides. I had no idea how much I needed that permission. 

I want her celebrated in history books. I want her enshrined in bronze. Madame Pelicot for the Médaille d’honneur. Madame Pelicot for the Nobel Peace Prize. Madame Pelicot for Time Person of the Year and every other honour that can be bestowed on her.

Viva Madame Pelicot. May your name forever be remembered not with pity or sorrow, but with absolute awe, respect and gratitude.

Jamie Klingler is co-founder of Reclaim These Streets

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