Not all men (but always men)
Dear good men, we're terribly sorry for hurting your feelings when we're scared to death you too may want to secretly rape us. Love, women.
Where is Emmanuele Carrère?
That’s the question I’ve been wondering ever since the Pelicot affaire got under my radar. This is totally up his street, the stuff his literary career is made of, so why is he nowhere to be seen?
I have no manners, excuse me.
Emmanuele Carrère is a household name in France whose latest book, V13. Chronicle of a Trial (V13. Chronique judiciarie in the original French) is an account of the trial of the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th 2015. Carrère has previously written in another book, Yoga, about the terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo as he had to be summoned back to Paris in the middle of a Vippasana silent retreat as a close friend of his had died on the attack.
Most importantly, Emmanuel Carrère is the non-fiction hero of French lettres thanks to L’Adversaire, his first non-fiction work focused on the Jean-Claude Romand affaire, a man who for 20 years managed to keep appearances with family and friends convincing them he worked as a researcher at the World Health Organisation when in reality he was unemployed and hadn’t finished his medicine degree. When he was about to be found out, he thought the best course of action to avoid the ensuing shame -and the many debts he had accumulated- was to kill his parents, his wife and his two children before he attempted to kill himself.
L’Adversaire is a In Cold Blood-type of account where Carrère can’t help to include many subjective elements and personal opinions, which gives the book its very unique and addictive style.
There is in fact a running joke that all books Carrère has ever written are about himself regardless of what he writes about. Having read a good chunk of his work is hard to disagree. Limonov, where he is at his top writing game and which will be soon on cinemas with Ben Whisham on the leading role, is no more about the extraordinary life of Édouard Limonov, founder of the National Bolshevik Party, than it’s about Carrère’s own.
Perhaps that’s why he hasn’t been following the Pelicot trial like he did with the Paris attacks even though Dominique Pelicot is the kind of character that screams ‘this is the stuff Carrère’s books are made of’. My bet is that Carrère wouldn’t have been able to talk about himself on a book about this process and made it unscathed.
However, there will be a book and it’ll be written by a woman, Monique El-Faizy, who has been covering the trial extensively. As have many other female writers such as Janice Turner for The Times or Angelique Chrisafis for The Guardian.
Which has led me to another question: where are the men in the Pelicot affair?
I mean, where are the good men, those who are quick to claim ‘not all men’ and feel hurt by our rage and frustration with their gender when we assist to yet another appalling act of violence against women.
Are they writing about it? Are they having conversations with the people, both men and women, in their lives about this appalling act of violence and abuse towards an innocent woman? Are they sharing, commenting, raising awareness about how male violence concerns both men and women, and perhaps more the former even if the latter are usually at the receiving end? Are they calling their male friends out when they cross a line with women, whether in the way they talk about them or in their behaviours?
I’ll tell you where these good men are not.
They’re not calling the police when a man offers them to rape their drugged wife. Or making sure a woman who seems to be unconscious on a bench is ok instead of raping her. Or a girl gets home safe instead of abducting her, raped her, and killed her. Or letting a woman go for a run in peace in plain daylight without raping her. Or enjoying a quiet night out without gang raping a girl. Or asking their ex-girlfriend to meet in a parking lot to speak but they end up killing her.
And because I’m feeling generous today I’ll also tell you where all these (admittedly very few) good men are: in the comments of articles written by women -like this excellent piece What Would A Woman Do To An Unconscious Man If She Thought No-One Would Find Out? by Anna Wharton - pissing all over women’s concerns with their standard “not all men” and blindly ignoring every single reasoned argument being made about why we are frustrated, angry, disappointed, scared and sad about an event that we fear and pray we never have to experience in our lives and which men can’t even imagine happening to them.
We thank these good men for their mansplaining but honestly it wasn’t necessary.
We already know it’s not all men, otherwise I guarantee you we’ll be all lesbians in the blink of an eye. If there’s something we women can do well is sisterhood and if we have to embrace it all the way to stay safe, we wouldn’t hesitate. But if there’s a reason some of us are still, against all logic and common sense, heterosexual is because there are good men, excellent men, exceptional men out there too.
The problem is that we never see these good men show up for ourselves and condemn their own in the situations that matter the most to us and make us feel more vulnerable and that’s what needs to start changing if we really want to fight violence against women effectively and nip it in the bud for future generations.
It starts with you, the men, in particular with the ones ready to blurt out ‘not all men’ when we are venting our existential dread of living in a woman’s body that can be attacked, raped and abused by men, any men, even the so-called good men.
I hope you’ll excuse us for hurting your feelings, dear good men, when we talk about the bad apples -which in recent crops seem to be in the tons. We’re terribly sorry to offend you and make you feel attacked in your masculinity, but you see according to Rape Crisis 97% of women know the person who raped them. So we’re a tad sensitive on the topic.
What we really need from you is to say ‘you’re right, it’s time we man the fuck up and start taking responsibility for ourselves and our fellow male friends and relatives and stop making excuses for our behaviour against women and towards each other. We should feel ashamed to do anything that puts another human being in danger, perceived or real. That’s not what a man is and that’s not how a man acts.’ That’s how you can show us not all men are rotten or secretly dreaming of raping us if it didn’t have any consequences for them.
Because what the Pelicot affair has showed us is not that men are capable of abusing a woman, that unfortunately we already knew. What it has proven is something rather more terrifying: that given the opportunity and convinced that no one is going to find out, men would chose to rape an unconscious woman without blinking and of their own free will. No one has put a gun to their heads, or coerced them, or threaten their families to death. No man has acted under duress in the Pelicot affair. It’s very important we never forget this to understand why this case has received so much attention and how serious the facts are.
And please, please, please if you’re a man reading this and thinking you would never, not even drugged like the poor Gisèle Pelicot, or threaten to death, abuse a woman don’t leave a comment telling me what I already know: not all men are like that.
I’d much rather prefer you speak to the women in your life and ask them about their fears. I bet you’ll be surprised at what they tell you, if they trust you enough to share their innermost fears with you. Hopefully that’ll be the start of a conversation that would help you understand that this is not an isolated and unfortunate incident that has happened to a poor woman and that these men were all sociopaths. An exception, not the rule.
That’s the other issue with this case: the 50 men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot were regular men across all ages and professions, many of them have families, were her neighbours and spoke to her regularly at Mazan, the village where she lived at the time. That’s why they’ve been dubbed Monsieur Tout le Monde by the French press, they are truly your average man. Not all your average men, but all were men.
Even the few men who refused to take part into this horrible abuse were your average man: none of them thought of calling the police. Not even once. They weren’t the kind of men who didn’t rape unconscious, old women, but neither the kind who could have put a stop to it by denouncing Pelicot. Not even one of them thought about Gisèle, about whether she had any idea of what her husband was doing behind her back, offering her like a piece of meat to anyone willing to fuck her.
These good men simply thought about how unlike Dominique they were. That exonerated them from guilt. Not all men rape women, putain, they must have told him, offended at Pelicot even suggesting something like that to them, perfectly decent men. Mais c’est n’importe quoi ce type-là, hein? Although knowing these kind of good men, they probably didn’t use the word rape. They never do because for them it never is.
Men are in fact so blissfully oblivious to the dangers of being a woman, that even the seemingly good men fail at the most basic safety test as seen at that Graham Norton show episode, where a gleeful Paul Mescal and Eddie Redmayne joked about self-defence with a mobile phone while Saoirsie Ronan listened to their banter with a knowing expression. Every woman watching Paul Mescal saying “Who’s going to think about that?” has rolled her eyes ten times before he’s even finished the sentence. “That’s what women have to think about all the time,” Saoirsie finally manages to say after being cut off twice, a proof that telling the joke was more important than stating the facts.
Men have the unfair privilege to live in a parallel reality where they don’t fear for their physical integrity as they go on about their daily lives. They feel so safe that they can joke about it without even considering that may not be the case for others. But then it’s up to women to make sure that if we point out the ways in which the patriarchy has done us dirty, the good men don’t feel bad, offended or attacked. Taking care of their emotions when we are the ones hurting also seems to be the women’s responsibility, because we’re supposed to be nurturing and caring not outspoken and assertive.
Right on cue the one lightening the mood after the obvious has been stated is not Paul Mescal, or Eddie Redmayne, or Denzel Washington or even Graham Norton as the quick witted host he is. It’s Saoirsie once again. “Am I right, ladies?”, she asks the women in the audience, who cheer and clap acknowledging a reality the men on the show seem to be confronted with for the first time. And yet they fail to make their excuses to her for their appalling ignorance, so it’s yet again Saoirse who has to carry the moral burden of making sure these good, naive, innocent men don’t feel bad -nor their masculinity questioned- about our reality as women living under the patriarchy.
My dear good men, you must know that your lack of responsibility for your actions and absolute disregard about other people’s deepest, most visceral, and completely justified fears make us feel even more frustrated with you. So we’d really appreciate if you stopped feeling offended for us talking about our lived experiences.
We shouldn’t be morally responsible for not hurting your ego or ruining your mood when we talk about the awful men who exist in the world and the things they do to women. That burden is for you to carry, not us. As Gisèle Pelicot has said, we’re not the ones who should be ashamed for your actions. And while you’re at it, maybe work on why men feel such a need to dominate and hurt. What hidden trauma has been left unresolved that has to be compensated by exerting power and abuse over other people, often more vulnerable?
It shouldn't be on women to prove that not all men are rotten, but the fact that they collectively haven't taken action to prove us wrong at some point over the past 2000 years, to call each other out, to call the police when someone invites them to rape their drugged wife it's, once more, very telling of what each of us chooses to do of our own free will.
The fact that not even the average good men have a clue about the mental load we carry, the multiple scenarios we envision in which we may be in danger and the micro-decisions we have to make on a daily basis before leaving the house makes it even worse because it means that violence against women is still perceived as a women’s issue when it’s most definitely a men’s one.
Men don’t have to think about what to wear if they don’t want to attract too much attention -they will never be blamed for wearing something too revealing anyway- or plan how to get back home and at what time in advance, or choose a place to meet with friends that it’s safe for everyone to get there.
Most definitely, men ignore all the ways a phone can be a weapon -or at least a deterrent- because when they leave a group of friends after a night out, they never have to ask those who have to make the journey alone if they have long to go, which way they’re going, if they have someone waiting for them, if they want us to talk to us on their phone or text while they make the journey. Men haven’t grown up waiting to send or receive a message that says “Home safe xxx” before they can go to bed in peace.
Women aren’t scared of other women. We are scared of men. Not all men, but always men. Even the good ones who pretend to be your friend and secretly are creating deepfake pornography with your face to pass the time. It’s very hard to tell if good men are what they claim to be or simply pretending to be nice and trying to camouflage they’re sociopaths, perverts, psychopaths, narcissists, emotional fuckwits or megalomaniacs that will find secret pleasure in our pain. Bridget Jones already made a comprehensive list of men to avoid in life - no matter how attractive they are.
I can understand how good men don’t want to be put into the same bag but then it’s on them to prove themselves worthy by their consistent actions in support of women. Perhaps good men are too afraid to do the work in the same way women have been doing for decades and they avoid on purpose to ask themselves how the patriarchy is hurting them too because, unlike us, it’s keeping them safe. If not emotionally - suicide is indeed the leading cause of death for men under 50 - at least physically.
There are exceptionally good men out there who suffer under this system, too.
Men willing to listen to the concerns of the women in their lives, but also ready to be vulnerable and share what troubles them openly, and in doing so they contribute to creating safe spaces for others -both men and women- to help them break trauma and abuse cycles, to stand for and protecting those more vulnerable and ultimately to care for each other’s emotional and physical wellbeing.
Because those are not gendered actions and the world is indeed a better place when all men find strength in becoming a nurturing force and thrive on inspiring others to do better, to hold themselves accountable for their words and actions, to feel secure in their feelings, which invites genuine love and compassion into their lives. Not when some men exert power over others for their selfish pleasure because that’s the only way they think masculinity can be fully expressed. That’s a zero-sum game for everyone in the long term and men and women end up paying the price of a world where we live in fear of each other.
Luckily, the world is full of good men who are a great catch, with absolutely nothing wrong with them, and who want nothing but our utmost happiness. Dating apps, for instance, are full of them.
As Saoirsie Ronan would say, am I right, ladies?
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You are right. In TEN YEARS, not one single man contacted by either Dominique Pelicot or any of the 72 rapists on the videos investigators found (because don't tell me they didn't brag) was troubled enough to tell the police or get word to Giselle Pelicot herself. Not one. Truly, I'm finding the "not all men" argument less convincing all the time.
Really great piece. Thanks Cristina.
For years I fell into the trap of the “not all men” saying. It seeps into your actions too (e.g. I don’t need to cross the street, im a nice guy, im no threat). Until I had a series of conversations with my wife on the subject and she was open and honest about what she goes through and has gone through on a daily basis that completely opened my eyes to how naive I’d been. It shouldn’t have been on her to explain it to me either.
Honestly I think a public campaign is required, a bit like the “don’t drink and drive” campaigns you see on tv, to get it in to men’s heads that it’s on each of us to do better.