A hashtag for fall 2024

A colleague messes around and asks if she can sleep over in Paris on her way home to Stockholm. She has been in Mazan in the south of France and covered the trial where 51 men stand accused of assaulting Gisèle Pelicot.

“I need to wash off Mazan”, she writes and it is not difficult to understand.

The pictures of how over eighty men – around thirty have not been identified, two have been released due to lack of evidence and one is deceased – raped a sleeping Gisèle Pelicot at her husband’s instigation over a period of nine years is difficult to get rid of.

Everyone knows that society harbors sexually perverted and dangerous men. They are called Josef Fritzl, Kapten Klänning and Nytorgsmannen and are easy to distance themselves from. But that so many men from such a small geographical area in France responded to Dominique Pelicot’s offer on a sex site to sleep with his “sleeping” wife and followed through when they realized she was unconscious – how are we to understand that?

Their names are Jean-Pierre, Jacques, Mohamed and Philippe. They are between 27 and 74 years old, they work in warehouses, as nurses, several drive trucks. They are a cross-section of the French population; a majority are white middle-aged men, half have families, just under ten are of North African origin, a handful were born in French overseas territories. One visited the house in Mazan seven times.

In questioning, they say: “I’m not a rapist, I thought it was a game”. “I had consent – from her husband”. “I felt that something was wrong, but only after a while”. “I thought about reporting it to the police, but it went down the drain”.

The 72-year-old Gisèle Pelicot has said herself that her life is ruined forever. But she has insisted that the trial should take place in front of open doors “to place the shame where it belongs”. She has sat in court and endured the footage of unknown men raping her because she believes the world needs to know.

The waves of indignation have went high in France during the autumn. The TV presenter Karim Rissouli received the most reactions when he said that which is not said with impunity: “I am ashamed as a man”.

The statement resulted in a debate that landed in the highly anticipated hashtag #inteallamän – Hello 2019, I haven’t missed you – and here we are now.

Few want to hear about the talk of rape culture, that is, a joint maintenance of destructive masculine norms that enable this behavior. I can understand the discomfort. For the vast majority of men, it probably also seems far-fetched to put up with a scenario like the one in Mazan.

Let’s talk anyway a little about the number. How could none of the more than eighty men who came to the house in Mazan turn the door and report Dominique Pelicot to the police?

Outside the court, feminists have greeted Gisèle Pelicot with banners and songs all autumn. But where are all the (French) men who insist that these are certainly grotesque crimes, but that there is no male collective responsibility, no shared guilt?

Why are they not there and supporting the raped Gisèle Pelicot regardless?

Do they still feel… some sort of shame?

Where are the dad feminists when you need them?

Not in the Swedish media anyway. There is a striking masculine omertà here. A review of the major Swedish newspapers – I make an exception solid news reporting here and of course may have missed some article – shows that the environmental analyses, of the leading pages impact, the columns, the chroniclesthey self disclosure , literary and reasoning the cultural texts and – the reportage about the Pelicot case has been written by journalists with a clear chromosomal commonality: All are women.

First, eighty men prey on an unconscious woman over a decade. No one sounds the alarm. Then it is women’s responsibility to problematize the whole thing in the news flow.

I don’t know if hashtags change the world, but here we have one for fall 2024 anyway: Not a single man.