VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN | EUROPE | ADVOCACY & POLICY | CULTURE
"No One Was Killed"
Confronting Conceptual Ladders of Violence
WORDS BY ELIZABETH SYKES | SYKES@THEIWI.ORG | 30 OCTOBER 2024
In comments made to the BBC concerning the case against Dominique Pélicot currently underway in Avignon, Louis Bonnet remarked that the people of the village of Marzan generally feel that “no one was killed”, that it “would have been much worse if [Pelicot] had killed his wife.” (BBC, September 2024).
The crimes which Bonnet attempts to compare to murder are Pélicot’s decade-long drugging, raping and inviting of other men to rape his wife, Gisèle Pélicot. Having chosen to waive her right to anonymity, Gisèle Pélicot now stands against around fifty men identified in footage taken by Dominique Pélicot of the decade-long abuse inflicted upon his wife. Scarily, at least a further thirty perpetrators remain unidentified. Commenting further on the case, Bonnet, the Mayor of Marzan, has suggested that whilst G. Péricot will “have trouble getting back on her feet again”, another rape case in nearby Carpentras is “even more serious” given that the survivor was “conscious” and will therefore “carry the physical and mental trauma for a long time” (BBC, September 2024).
Beyond the case itself, Bonnet’s comments highlight embedded societal attitudes toward sexual abuse in France. By establishing an imaginary scale of suffering, without knowledge of the experience of survivor’s themselves, Bonnet indicates the extent to which onlookers can remove themselves from crime and violence. This article will question this habit in an attempt to understand how narratives, such as Bonnet’s, impact public empathy toward survivors of crimes.
Competitive victimhood through a feminist lens
Defendants in the Péricot case have also made attempts to mediate the crimes they have committed through a lens of victimhood. One of the fifty accused of raping Gisèle Pélicot, Lionel R., recognises the suffering his actions have caused but adds that his life ‘has also been destroyed.’ (Le Monde, September 2024). Similarly to Bonnet, Lionel R. establishes a conceptual scale of suffering, attempting to filter his crimes through his own experience of pain. Bonnet’s attempt to protect the reputation of the village of Marzan (where the crimes were committed) through comparison, and Lionel R.’s attempt to highlight his own suffering, illustrate that both men believe there is more to consider than the evident horror of Gisèle Pélicot’s experience.
These attempts carry an implicit violence against Gisèle Pélicot, mirroring a social psychological concept known as Competitive victimhood (CV). In a literature review of emerging research into CV, Isaac F. Young and Daniel Sullivan identify three manifestations of CV in intergroup relationships: ‘intractable conflict, structural inequality, and intra-minority intergroup relations.’ (Young and Sullivan, p.30). Considering the Pélicot as a microcosm of wider intergroup conflict between the groups of ‘men’ and ‘women’, these competitive claims to victimhood fall under the categories of intractable conflict and structural inequality.
The feminist struggle, originally a campaign seeking to advance the rights of women, has intensified into an imagined conflict between men and women. This intensification has been led by men’s rights activists, which seek to underline systemic disadvantage faced by men, arguing that women manipulate sexual harassment laws to ‘abuse men by restricting their freedoms’ and to frame men and ruin their lives (ADL, 2024). Bonnet and Lionel R. certainly do not reach the extremes of this narrative, however their comments and claims to victimhood echo the narrative central to men’s rights activism. Rather than fully appreciate the violence suffered by Gisèle Pélicot, the urge to laterally place experiences of suffering, which are ultimately incomparable, facilitate a negating of the horror of the crimes. Both comments demonstrate the motivation for competitive victimhood identified by social psychologists; to preserve ‘power and moral image’ (Young and Sullivan, p.31). Ultimately, however, such comments are irrelevant and fail to dim the reality of the horror of the case.
The competitive victimhood established by Bonnet in particular, is born out of a context of structural inequality, involving ‘socioeconomic and power disparities rather than direct violence between groups.’ (Young and Sullivan, p.32). As perpetrators such as Lionel R. seek to protect their moral standing, structural inequalities contribute to the establishment of competitive victimhood by those with more social capital, a phenomenon motivated by ‘stigma reversal’. (Young and Sullivan, p.32).
Stigma reversal, in Young and Sullivan’s review, refers to the shifting of stigma from a previously socially disadvantaged group to their more ‘powerful’ counterparts. Following a decade-long period of abuse throughout which Gisèle Pélicot was forced into a position of impower through a programme of drugging and abuse, her decision to waive anonymity during this trial has shifted the power dynamic and implicated a stigma reversal. Stigmatised by her ex-husband and fellow rapists on the basis of her womanhood, the public nature of the case has transformed the men previously occupying a position of extreme authority within a private sphere, into public figures of moral abhorrence.
The implications extend beyond the men currently under trial; with thirty of eighty-three rapists currently unidentified, the men of the village of Marzan and its surroundings face ongoing scrutiny. Moreover, the ramifications of a trial of ‘ordinary’ men, mean that suspicion can be extended to men everywhere. Whilst this has long been a sentiment amongst women, the events in Marzan go a long way in challenging accusations of discrimination levelled against women on the basis of this instinct of distrust. Hence, Bonnet’s comments might be considered a defensive mechanism amidst the changing ability of men more broadly to exert authority over French women. Capacity to shift wider discourses about power and morality between groups, hints at why this case has prompted multiple circumstances of competitive victimhood in its first weeks.
The legal implications of the Pélicot case
Reactions by men directly and indirectly involved in the case reveal a certain sense of diminishing power and moral status, suggesting the case’s potential to instigate long-awaited changes to French rape law. Presently, rape is defined in Articles 222-23 of the French criminal code as:
‘All acts of sexual penetration, of any nature, or any act concerning oral-genital penetration committed against one person by another through violence, constraint, threat or surprise constitutes rape.’ (Code Pénal, Articles 222-23).
Notably absent from the definition is the concept of consent. Adaptation of the 2021 law has long been campaigned for by French activists. Through this definition, those under trial in Avignon can present their violence against Gisèle Pélicot as not constitutive of rape, given that all actions taken to restrain were committed by Domique Pélicot.
The case has thus revived previous calls to change the law, following the failure of bills suggesting rewrites presented in November 2023 and February this year. (RFI, 2024) French hesitance on the matter goes further, representing one of twelve countries previously in opposition to the European Union’s effort to implement a Union-wide definition of rape based on affirmative consent. Frustration with this lagging behind, has also been exacerbated by claims made by President Emmanual Macron on International Women’s Day in support of amendment to the law. Since, action has not been taken to make-good on these promises, and thus the Pélicot case has revived simmering anger concerning the legal inaction.
Competitive victimhood: the first sign of legal change?
In this context of legal stalemate, claims to victimhood made by men in relation to the Pélicot case, communicate insidious uncertainty amongst French men of their moral standing. Thus, the Pélicot might yet prove to be a watershed moment in French history. As seemingly uninvolved men make claims in their defence, there is a growing sense that change is in the air. Is France about to witness a coming-up to speed with global rape laws?