In Gisèle Pelicot’s place, I would completely refuse the trial, the publicity, all of it. Mind you, I’m not saying she should have refused. I’m saying I would have. In my worldview, I’m at least equally responsible for the relationships I create. Once again, I’m not saying Pelicot is responsible. I’m saying I am. I’m an active agent of my life, and if my half-a-century marriage were to lead to such ugliness, I’d care about nothing before figuring out why I constituted it this way. I’d definitely not want to spend the last few good years of my life on being a public spectacle.
I respect Pelicot’s choice but I really don’t get her lionization on social media. People are wailing that she’s the person of the century but that would be really sad for the century. A decade of being completely asleep to her own life and a passivity of extraordinary proportions do not merit all the gushing.
Clarissa's Blog 
But that is what is extraordinary about her, right? Her reaction is admirable. It’s obvious she had painful introspection moments. She also said she is broken for life. Besides, she had to endure snarky questions that are allowed by French law, whose goal is to remind her that she is partly responsible for what happened.
If I were her, I would destroy everything and everyone with a baseball bat, especially those who keep and will keep reminding her how courageous she is, everywhere she goes, always… I wish her peace and space to scream and to cry, even though I fear she won’t have them. I fear the worst is to come for her…
Ol.
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I’m like you. This is exactly what I was thinking this morning when I heard the news.
I’m not saying it’s her fault, not at all. I understand that in taking her public stand she wants to provide an example for others who might be suffering in silence. I’m just saying I wouldn’t do it. It’s not a question of courage. It’s a question of knowing who I am.
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Her testimony put 51 rapist-predators in prison. You don’t know why she is lionized?
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I don’t want to get too graphic but it’s impossible for a woman not to know, when she wakes up in the morning, that she had sex. It’s possible for a man but not for a woman. It’s especially not possible for 10 years. Female physiology makes it utterly impossible to have sex for a decade and not know it. Especially when you are menopausal. Especially if it’s not enthusiastically wanted sex. Not an inexperienced girl but a 60yo woman doesn’t know what it feels like, what it smells like when she’s participated in a sex act? An unwilling sex act that must have left abrasions the size of craters?
Sex is a different proposition for women than it is for men. It leaves marks in a female body. Abrasions, a changed microflora, extraneous smells. As I said, I don’t want to be too graphic, but we all know what I’m talking about.
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