Another granny takes on the patriarchy

The so-called silent generation is showing that action does, indeed, speak louder than words

I love to see women standing up for themselves.

And I hate how often they have to.

My hero of the moment is nearly 70 years old and just won a more-than-a-decade-long battle against French courts that found she had an obligation to have sex with her husband, even if she didn’t want to. Last week, the top human rights court in Europe ruled that the French decision had violated her rights.

The woman, who lived in a suburb of Paris and is identified in court documents as HW, had married her husband, JC, in 1984 and had four children. In 1992 she started experiencing health problems.

The couple’s sex life had begun to fall off after the birth of their first child, but the real chill came when JC became verbally and physically abusive in 2002. Two years later, HW stopped having sex with her husband entirely. In 2012 she initiated divorce proceedings.

The case took some time to make its way through the courts. In a 2015 filing in which she sued JC for fault, HW alleged that he had prioritized his career over his family and had been violent. He countersued, contending that she was at fault because she had shirked her marital duties—i.e., she had stopped having sex with him.

In 2018 a family court judge in Versailles dismissed the grievances of both parties, finding that HW’s health problems justified the lack of a sexual relationship. Given that the couple had already been living apart for two years when they first filed, the court granted them a no-fault divorce on the grounds of permanent impairment of the marital bond. However, the court also rejected HW’s request for financial support. She appealed.

That didn’t go quite as she had hoped. The appeals court was far more sympathetic to JC’s claims and in 2019 found HW at fault due to her “repeated violation of the duties and obligations of marriage”.

HW appealed again, this time to France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation. It dismissed her appeal without giving a specific reason.

Still, HW persisted. Having exhausted all the legal avenues in France, she took her case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2021.

"It was impossible for me to accept it and leave it at that," the woman said, according to news reports.

"The Court of Appeal's decision condemning me was and is unworthy of a civilized society because it denied me the right not to consent to sexual relations, depriving me of my freedom to make decisions about my body. It reinforced the right of my husband and all spouses to impose their will."

Preach.

This time, the court sided with her. Unanimously.

"In the present case, the Court could not identify any reason capable of justifying this interference by the public authorities in the area of sexuality," the ECHR said in a statement, ruling that French judges had violated the woman’s right to respect for her privacy and family life, a concept enshrined in European law. "The Court concluded that the very existence of such a marital obligation ran counter to sexual freedom, (and) the right to bodily autonomy."

Agreeing to marry is not synonymous with agreeing to have sex, the court said. To suggest that it does is effectively to deny that marital rape exists and is a serious crime, the ruling stated.

HW lauded the decision as a step forward in ending "rape culture" and promoting consent within marriage.

Consent has been a thorny issue here in France, and one that came up repeatedly during the Gisèle Pelicot trial. As I wrote here, many feminist groups oppose adding a consent clause to the law. A recent report issued by the National Assembly’s delegation for women’s rights, however, recommended that one be added. The report has been in the works since 2023, but the Pelicot trial highlighted the need for a new definition of rape, the authors wrote, one that specifies that “consent is specific, must be given freely and can be withdrawn at any time."

Such a definition would also address rape cases involving paralysis, coercive control, or the exploitation of vulnerable situations, the lawmakers wrote, noting that these currently fall outside of the scope of the law.

Adding a consent clause to the law would bring France into compliance with the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, which states that “consent must be given voluntarily as a result of the free will of the person considered in the context of the surrounding circumstances.”

The tide in Europe is turning in the direction of consent laws, with 19 countries (20 if you include the UK) here having explicit references to consent in their rape statutes.

Adding consent to the law won’t be enough of course—societal attitudes in France are still woefully sexist (and not only here, as even the briefest of glances at the US will attest), but it’s a start.

And at the risk of repeating myself—though it bears repeating and I no doubt will do so many more times to come—I’m going to point out that the two lawmakers who wrote the report were women. HW, who fought for more than a decade for her bodily autonomy, is a woman.

Again, women are waging this war against the violence and patriarchal attitudes of men. Eventually, though, it is the men who are going to have to change.

I had pretty much wrapped up this piece on the train home from Reims, where I teach on Tuesdays, and had gone to meet my friend Linda for dinner at Cafe Les Deux Gares, a lovely little bistro near the Gare de L’Est. We started talking to the man and woman at the table next to us and, perhaps not surprisingly, the topic turned to the Pelicot trial.

The man had two daughters, one of whom is trans, and clearly viewed himself on the right side of the fight against violence against women. He told me that it’s difficult to face down the macho culture, so often, men like him just stay quiet. He’s a rugby player and the rugby group chat he was part of was so anti-trans that he left it—without ever confronting or calling out the attitudes he found offensive. Had he done so, he said, he would have been ostracized.

I can well imagine that that is true. But maybe that’s the cost of change. Men not being willing to confront their peers means women are left alone to take on men. And that’s simply not right. Men need to challenge their friends and their social circles to think differently. To do better. And, men, if you are not doing that, you, too, are part of the problem.