Noémie Renard created the blog Antisexisme.net in 2011 to document, through scientific and social science articles, the persistent inequalities between men and women and to fight against sexist clichés. She notably wrote Ending rape culture (Les Petits Matins, 2018), a work in which she deciphers preconceived ideas about rape and sexuality.
The phrase “rape culture” has been widely used since the start of the Mazan rape trial, both in the media and on social media. How does this case reveal the existence of a rape culture in our society?
The Mazan rape trial shows how integral sexual violence is to our society. Over a period of ten years, Gisèle Pelicot was the victim of eighty men, fifty of whom were identified, all recruited by her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot. The latter does not seem to have had any difficulty in finding men willing to have sex with his unconscious wife. And none of the men who refused notified the police.
These simple facts prove that rape is not a phenomenon that is marginal to society, as numerous studies have shown. If rape can be so massive and widespread, it is a good thing that our society tolerates these acts and turns a blind eye to many cases of sexual violence.
The notion of “rape culture” allows us to conceptualize this phenomenon by emphasizing the fact that sexual violence is systemic in nature. Emerging in the United States in the 1970s within radical feminism, this notion began to be used in Europe from the 2000s onwards and remained confined to feminist circles for a long time. The Pelicot affair, by its extremely shocking nature, left its mark and revealed to the general public the prevalence of rape culture in our society.
The term “rape culture” is often misunderstood. What is cultural about rape?
The term “culture” refers to everything that members of a society share: beliefs, traditions, laws, representations, ways of relating to others, types of organization, etc. This notion therefore assumes that the massive presence of sexual violence and the impunity of the aggressors are not “natural” but are the result of a collective imagination, of cultural representations as well as the presence of power relations that structure society (men-women, adults-children, organisation at work, in the family). Rape culture refers to all the stereotypes and social facts that encourage acts of sexual violence and prevent them from being identified as such once committed, making them pass as normal sexual relations.
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