In the year before last, when Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman who’s husband had been drugging her, advertising her unconscious body available for any and all men online for service for free for years, declared that her trial and choice to jettison anonymity was meant to “make shame change sides,” the world rallied around her. As her story ascended into THE global moral benchmark, a ridiculous double standard took root. Barely a whisper was heard about this lady’s raging racism the blacks, “coloreds,” and the Middle Eastern “magic carpet men.”
Mainstream coverage quietly sanitized her and her husband’s backgrounds, preserving her dignity as a hapless victim to her monstrous husband’s secret sexual proclivities while bypassing his and hers racism, which saw her husband set up some encounters with types of individuals she expressed disdain, open hostility toward and extreme prejudice for which titillated and aroused him, knowing it would emotionally destroy her.
Compare that to the immediate, intrusive scrutiny directed at victims like the Cornell “Jane Doe.” While an older, matriarchal whte woman’s routine racism is conveniently “scrubbed,” if you will so the international public can root for her without discomfort. The young college co-ed engaging in standard university life in between Bible study groups? They rip her to shreds. Going out, having a drink or taking a bump at party is treated like a moral failure that somehow instantly revokes her right to basic bodily autonomy and consent (of the enthusiastic variety, of course).I guess these inalienable, Trump-given rights just disappear like these would have in a different chat app I’m sure these predator’s wished they’d used.
We see this same selective editing in ow society handles victims when institutions, whole countries possibly feel uncomfortable with the raw truth. When Chinese national, Jun Lin, was brutally unalived in Montreal by Luka Magnotta, the infamous internet cat kller that moved from those adorable kitties directly to Jun Lin. The official media narratives heavily framed Lin as a quiet, unassuming exchange student, which, not for nothing, he essentially was. Details about his use of Craigslist and apps like Grindr to frequently meet people is how he got to the place Magnotta carried out his demise. His family and their representatives kept his life in the shadows, preserving his dignity and sidestep the conservative backlash that comes with being a gay foreigner hooking up with strangers regularly. I could never find out the reason he would be at this guy’s dirty, dungeony, empty ass apartment from the beginning. Them and their whole nation deliberately protected his image so the sanctimonious right wouldn’t say, “Well, what did he expect?!”
Society eagerly cleanses or omits certain narratives to maintain and protect an ideal while leaving a young woman unprotected against the extraordinary league of victim-blaming gentleman. Because more than likely not one man but a goddamn league of them.
To analyze these cases requires more than much more than Pelicot suggests; you have to completely snatch back the uncomfortable details of all these lives that everyone else flew over to challenge just how grace is distributed. Pelicot’s somehow even pettier racism is nothing in comparison to what her own whte husband did to her. It does not mean she deserved the abuse heaped on her by any means But the public’s willingness to give her near total absolution while cross examining a college girl’s night out reveals a very dubious standard for who is allowed to be human and how many drinks, bumps, and minutes you’re allowed to be at Cornell frat house before it’s mandatory to have charity sex with boys so repulsive that if you weren’t a lesbian BEFORE reading that group chat and didn’t decide to become one AFTER, means that you are probably illiterate.
Pelicot’s directive is to force shame onto the opposing teams roster. A real shift needs more than a turnover. We must treat every attempt shame makes at survival as an offensive rebound it cannot be allowed to secure. By pulling down the defensive glass and dominating every possession, we don’t just force shame to “switch sides,” we force total league ejection, retiring its jersey and exiling it from the game altogether.
