Where are all the good men?

Why is the abuse of women a problem for women to solve?

Mobilus In Mobili, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Guys. Give us a break. Please.

Now that the Pelicot trial is over, I was hoping to be able to take a little breather from all the grimness before I jump into book research.

It all looked so promising. Paris is bedecked with holiday decorations. Friends are in town. Both my boys are home. We were invited to a few lovely Christmas parties. I was poised to turn off and unwind, just for a couple of weeks. I even managed to spend more than an hour drinking champagne with one of Gisèle’s lawyers before the topic of the trial came up.

Sure, there was the—infuriating—Blake Lively stuff, but I was distracted enough by the endless philosophical discussions my sons have with one another to be able to avoid focusing on it. (At one point I heard my boys debating whether, if we should all love all beings, it was okay to love their mother more than a cow. I stayed in my room for that one.)

I get a daily digest of articles about the Pelicot trial, and there were several that spoke of the lack of safety for women globally, but I emailed them to myself for consumption in the new year without letting them impact me too much.

And yes, every time I meet up with friends, they want to hear all about the trial and rehash all the questions that we all have about the rapists, the sentences, the law, and scores of other things, but I’ve had those conversations enough times that I can now, mostly, keep a mental distance while discussing those issues.

I had sort of started sleeping again and, while I’m still having strange dreams, they are less disturbed than they were before. I could even imagine being able to someday, possibly, have sex without the images of Gisèle being raped flashing through my mind.

And, the icing on the cake, the sun had been out.

I should have known it was too good to last.

My friend A sent me an Instagram reel that referred to German broadcaster ARD’s investigation of a Telegram chat in which 70,000 men discussed how to drug and rape women. They even provided links to online shops where one could buy the necessary drugs, disguised as hair products. Lovely.

Dominique Pelicot said at his trial that he was not the first to drug and rape his partner, nor would he be the last. I was convinced he was right. I often said that I was sure that what he had done to his wife was more ordinary than we would like to believe but that the scale was extraordinary.

Apparently, I was wrong about that. The magnitude of the Telegram network eclipses that of Pelicot.

The Telegram chat included men from different countries, but they generally spoke English. One has to assume that there are other such groups in other languages. The point of this group, it seems, was to teach men how to rape women, including their wives, partners, sisters, and mothers.

I wouldn’t have thought they needed a group for that; from where I sit, it seems that plenty of men had been doing a pretty thorough job of that for quite some time.

For fuck’s sake.

Some of the men posted photos of their abuse; others streamed live video, according to new reports. At least one of the group’s members, a man in Germany, talked about drugging his wife and offering her up to other men. So much for “to love and to cherish.”

What the hell, men? And yes, I realize it’s not all men. But it is a fuck of a lot. Enough that it’s time for all of you to stop pretending it’s a few bad apples and start speaking up. And it is always men. Or very close to always.

What the hell is going on? Why are men so broken? And why do they hate women so damn much? Because that is the only explanation for this kind of thing. A desire to so thoroughly abase and denigrate someone can only come out of deep loathing, no?

Given that I’m writing a book about the Pelicot trial, I’m reading everything that crosses my transom about it. And you know what I’ve noticed? That the vast majority of the articles, columns, blogs, social media posts—you name it—are written by women. Why?

We all seem to find it natural that women are more interested in this story. I think that is problematic. Women are the victims, both in the Pelicot case and in the Telegram group. Which means that WE CAN’T FIX THE PROBLEM. Only men can. So they should be the ones talking about it.

We are all wringing our hands about consent and drugging and all kinds of things—things that deeply matter—but those conversations are distracting us from one simple fact. The majority of men simply don’t give a shit about all this. Not enough to speak out, anyway. And that silence makes them complicit. Men, if you are not outraged and speaking up about the widespread abuse and objectification of women, you are, quite simply, part of the problem.

Each day, when Gisèle Pelicot left the courtroom, a crowd of women was there to cheer for her. Sure, there were a few men, but very few. Women’s marches? Men are always in the minority there. When there are causes that concern men—think of the demonstrations after the murder of George Floyd—women show up. We understand that societal problems affect all of us.

Why aren’t men showing up for women? They all have mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters that they say they love and care about. Just not enough to put on a pair of shoes and take the streets to show their support.

It’s time to stop letting men—including the “good guys”—off the hook.