Latest / The Fourcast / ‘Good guys’ commit sexual violence too - author of Gisèle Pelicot book

Transcript

‘Good guys’ commit sexual violence too - author of Gisèle Pelicot book · The Fourcast

0:00
We want to think it's a few rotten apples.
0:03
We want to think it's psychopath, but it's actually
0:06
good guys who do this. And this is where Giselle's book
0:09
is extraordinary. The truth is both that he was a
0:13
good dad and that he took incestuous pictures of his
0:18
daughter, that he was a good husband and that he almost
0:21
tortured me to death. I mean, for me, as a moral
0:24
philosopher, that's a fascinating question.
0:27
All of the women there looked at Giselle and thought this could
0:30
be me. Are enough men looking at the
0:33
men and thinking, could this be me?
0:40
Hello and welcome to the forecast.
0:41
The trial of Giselle Pelico shocked France and far beyond.
0:45
It was a case so disturbing it forced a national reckoning at
0:48
home that raised questions everywhere about consent,
0:51
complicity and the terrifying ordinariness of the men accused.
0:56
But as the world continues to confront the vast scale of abuse
0:59
linked to billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, it raises A
1:03
deeper question. Are these crimes the work of
1:05
monsters or do they reveal something far more deep rooted
1:09
about power, entitlement and men?
1:12
Joining me today is the French philosopher Professor Manon
1:15
Garcia, whose latest book Living with Men, reflects on what she
1:18
witnessed while observing the Pelico trial and poses the
1:22
question, how can women live with men now?
1:25
Professor Garcia, thank you so much for joining us.
1:27
Thank you for having me. I mean, we want to believe,
1:31
don't we, that the men who carry out terrible sexual crimes are
1:35
in some way an aberration, A perversion.
1:39
And we can look at a man who drugs his wife and then invites
1:43
other men to come and rape her as a monster A1 off, but it
1:49
doesn't explain the scores of men who took up his invitation
1:54
to come and rape his wife. Yeah, so I think this is what I
1:58
found very interesting was the pity code trial is that usually
2:01
the cases that get public attention are cases that are
2:06
extraordinary, that are like the horrible case of Sarah Everard
2:10
in the UK. So you know, women walking at
2:13
home and and getting raped on the way.
2:16
And so this corresponds to a fake horrible scenario of the
2:22
unknown man in a parking lot etcetera.
2:25
But we know when we work on violence that most, most of the
2:28
times it happens in the family, at home, with people you know.
2:32
And so with the political trial, with the political case, you
2:35
have the, the extraordinary dimension of at least 70 men,
2:41
something that really catches the attention of everyone.
2:44
That sounds horrible. We, we have a sort of voyeur
2:49
desire to know more how horrible it is.
2:52
And then what we see is the normalcy of sexual violence.
2:56
We see a man that rapes his wife, that, you know, he loves
3:01
her, but he also does horrible things to her.
3:03
We see really complexity of patriarchy, complexity of human
3:09
actions, complexity of responsibility, moral questions,
3:14
which for me was as a philosopher was really
3:17
fascinating. I mean, you know, it's a
3:19
particularly pertinent moment to be talking to you for for a
3:22
number of reasons. You know, the headlines are full
3:24
of the Epstein case at the moment and all the talk is about
3:28
rich and powerful men and the way they abuse that wealth and
3:31
that power that they have. These were not particularly rich
3:35
men. These were ordinary men.
3:37
These were lorry drivers, a nurse, a journalist, a soldier.
3:41
And that messes with our with our head, doesn't it?
3:45
Yes. But it's so interesting because
3:48
when it happened, people were saying, look, it's a class
3:52
thing. They're lower middle class or
3:55
working class men, they're from or they're from France or
3:59
they're from the South of France.
4:00
So basically the people in Germany or in the US or in the
4:04
UK were telling me, oh, it's such a French case.
4:06
The people in Paris were telling me it's a South of France case.
4:10
The bourgeois were telling me it's a working class case.
4:13
And now people are saying, oh, the Epstein scandal, it's an
4:17
upper class case. And so the in both cases, it's a
4:22
it's the same system of entitlement of social structure
4:28
of men, not like lacking accountability and thinking that
4:34
women victims don't matter. And so it's there.
4:38
So of course the Epstein files are particularly outrageous
4:42
because it's men in power, but it's fundamentally the same idea
4:46
of we don't get to pay for anything.
4:49
We do. We protect each other exactly
4:52
like these men in in Mazon protected each other because
4:55
some of them knew to each other. Actually, some of them talk to
5:00
their friends about what they had done.
5:01
No one called the police. Even in the trial.
5:04
There were two men who had come to the House of the Pinico and
5:08
who said, no, I'm I'm not doing this.
5:11
But and and she said Pinico ask them during the trial, why
5:14
didn't you call the police? Why didn't you send me an
5:18
anonymous letter? Like imagine, you know, we've
5:21
watched all these TV shows. They had just to cut a few
5:24
letters from the newspapers and tell her your husband is having
5:27
you raped and drugged, You know, But there is this sort of we
5:32
protect each other feeling that we see exactly the same way in
5:36
the Epstein files. So it's not a matter of class.
5:39
So whether? You're a lorry driver or Jeffrey
5:41
Epstein, you are still able to rape a woman and you are enabled
5:46
by the people and and by the men around you and not just the men
5:49
in very often. What does that tell us?
5:53
So I think it tells us something about masculinity.
5:56
Not at all that all men are rapists or anything like that.
5:59
That's not I'm not interested in individual.
6:02
Well, in the case in the Epstein files, I'm particularly
6:05
interested in responsibility at the individual level.
6:08
But I'm a philosopher. What interests me is the the
6:12
social structures that make that possible.
6:15
How men are raised to think that women as singular human beings
6:22
don't count, that they're a woman, that they're a body to
6:27
which they can do things, not to whom, to which.
6:30
Because that's what you see in the videos, because I had to
6:33
watch these videos, is that they're not seeing her as a who.
6:38
They're seeing her. She says it herself as a rat
6:42
doll, as trash. They just do things to her body
6:47
as if she were not a human being.
6:49
And So what is happening socially is that men are raised
6:54
to think of women partly that way, that women's sexuality is
7:01
not seen as an alter ego with whom you can do things, but
7:06
rather a thing to whom you can do things.
7:10
But how does that come about? So, as I say, you have Jeffrey
7:13
Epstein, A billionaire, A financier.
7:15
You have a soldier, say, or a journalist in Mazon.
7:20
The grooming trials that have rocked the UK are ordinary men,
7:26
fathers, sons, brothers who can do terrible things to women,
7:32
girls and are often in denial and are shocked to be held to
7:38
account very often. Yes.
7:40
And that's something that really fascinated me on the day of the
7:43
verdict because for random reasons I found myself in a room
7:47
with the family members of the accused.
7:51
And so of course you wouldn't be surprised to know that it was
7:55
only women who had come. So the mothers, the daughters,
7:58
the sisters, the wives who had come to see their husbands,
8:02
fathers sons be sent away to jail for rape.
8:07
And there were broken, you know, really like 1 fainted, one threw
8:15
up. There were like yelling during
8:18
the verdict and you could see that that hadn't counted it.
8:24
It didn't count for these men. So it's not just that they
8:27
destroyed Giselle Pelico, it's that they destroyed their own
8:30
families and all these women, you know, like even we're we're
8:35
hearing about Melinda Gates being asked about the acts of
8:38
Bill Gates. You see that the women, the
8:43
women's life don't count. And, and this is really
8:47
something that that fascinates me, what is happening in the
8:51
culture so that men are raised to think that.
8:54
Way and what is your best assessment of that?
8:56
That is the biggest question perhaps, how has this happened?
8:59
Where has it come from? So I think it comes from
9:01
everywhere. I think it comes from the
9:03
movies. I mean, you and I, we grew up
9:05
with James Bond, you know, we grew up seeing these women who
9:09
are pushed into a wall and say no, James, no.
9:12
And then they say, oh, James. Yeah.
9:15
You know, like it's this idea that the the hunter prey system
9:20
is the way Eroticism functions, that men will always have a
9:26
woman at home who cares for that.
9:28
This sort of myth of the prostitute and the mom, these,
9:32
these two feminine figures, instead of thinking of with
9:37
women as another human being with whom you can do things.
9:42
And I think it's really hard to disentangle this and to, yeah,
9:48
invite men to think differently than the boys club.
9:51
Because what we're seeing in Westminster, it's the boys club.
9:54
But what we're seeing in Mazel is also the boys club.
9:57
It's just a different one. But it's interesting, is that
9:59
just about you talk about the social structures?
10:02
Is that just about masculinity when it comes to sex and sexual
10:07
desire, or is it something that actually permeates every aspect?
10:12
So I think of life, work, you know, home, home life.
10:15
I think it's a question of entitlement.
10:17
It's entitlement to sex, it's entitlement to care, it's
10:20
entitlement to to housework, it's entitlement to yeah to
10:28
behave. Terribly without being held
10:30
accountable. No, but what I mean is that men
10:33
feel entitled to women's attention, to women's sexual
10:38
availability, to women's work for them.
10:40
They think it's normal. And I think this is what we're
10:43
seeing right now is the backlash is that suddenly men are like,
10:47
what? I'm going to have to clean the
10:48
toilet as well. I'm I'm going to have to pick my
10:51
kids up from school like I have. Many things.
10:55
To say this is outrageous. You know that they help at home,
10:58
that they're not rapists, that they're, they're decent men.
11:01
Yes, of course. But you know, for instance, my
11:04
husband is a wonderful man. So I'm, I'm in a situation of
11:07
being a heterosexual woman and I want to believe that some of the
11:13
men out there are really good. But when he takes care of our
11:17
kids, he gets high fived in the streets all the time.
11:21
Every time he takes our kids, I don't know, on a train people
11:24
are like, what a wonderful dad every time.
11:28
You know, people tell me all the time, oh, you're so lucky that
11:31
he takes care of the kids when you're travelling.
11:34
That's extraordinary. So, but people tell him that.
11:38
So it makes even the the most well meaning people, people give
11:42
us the feeling that this is extraordinary, that he's
11:47
treating me as an equal because he travels for work.
11:50
No one tells me, oh, you're alone for two weeks, how?
11:54
Like you're babysitting your kids.
11:55
No one thinks that I'm babysitting my kids.
11:59
You know, So I think there's very many layers.
12:03
So of course not all men behave actively badly, but all men reap
12:10
the benefits of the men the the system of non accountability for
12:17
men. The thing you know, when you
12:18
said earlier that you know it is not all men, and of course you
12:21
know that me too. That was the the, the echo that
12:25
came back, not all men. The thing about the Pelico trial
12:30
was by the time you have understood that Pelico puts out
12:35
a message and the men have to live really close because he
12:39
can't risk the sedative wearing off.
12:40
So he. Wants them to come in less than
12:42
24 hours. So he plans it for the day, but
12:45
he has this rule that it has to be if he goes online in the
12:49
morning, they have to come that day.
12:52
And so that eliminates a lot of people and they need to so they
12:55
he Geo localize them, but also they need to be available that
13:00
very day. So it can't be something that is
13:04
as planned was time etcetera. So to imagine that you can find
13:09
70 men in the blink of a night that are ready to come the day
13:13
off. I mean, recently, because I know
13:15
I'm I'm very curious about what happens in other countries
13:18
because I see people thinking, you know, the French and sex
13:22
etcetera. But recently in Quebec, there
13:24
was a journalist who put on an ad on a website a bit like Coco
13:30
that Pico used, saying, oh, my wife, like I drug her and offer
13:37
her really like describing the Poliko case.
13:40
Would you be interested to come? He said he had over 100
13:43
responses in 48 hours. You know, it's in Quebec.
13:47
In Germany, they found some German journalists found a
13:51
telegram group of 70,000 men exchanging recipes of chemical
13:57
submission and pictures of how they rape their significant
14:01
others asleep. So it's not just these men in
14:06
these town. So, first of all, yeah, not all
14:10
men, but so many men. So many men, and yeah, so many
14:17
of them. And in that sense, I mean, you
14:19
sat in the trial everyday and and listened to the what, what
14:25
excuses or what explanations the men gave.
14:28
What were they saying? So it was very complicated
14:32
because I mean, you need to put yourself in their shoes, which
14:36
is a bit, but they can't say anything.
14:39
There are videos. I had to watch the videos.
14:42
The videos leave no doubt. You know, like you see that, you
14:47
see that they did what they did, but you also see that every time
14:51
she moves by 1mm, they're ready to run away.
14:56
So it shows that they know that it's absolutely forbidden.
14:59
It is very clear that she's in a in a coma really.
15:04
And so there's no doubt they they can't believe that she's
15:07
half asleep or that it's a scene setting as some set.
15:12
So they invented things like he gave us her consent.
15:19
So I, I thought it was very interesting because there is a
15:23
very old history of women being the possession of men, right?
15:29
And so there is this guy who said it was his house, his room,
15:33
his bed, his wife. And I found it fascinating this
15:37
this list because it really showed that for him it was
15:41
comparable, the bed and the wife and that you own your wife the
15:45
same way you own the bed. But also, what else could they
15:51
say there? There was no possible line of
15:54
defence. But what was interesting for me
15:58
is that because there was no possible line of defence, you
16:02
could think and, and the, the French criminal law allows for
16:06
it. If you recognise your crimes, if
16:08
you show that you've thought about it, that basically if
16:12
you're seen as much less dangerous because you've thought
16:16
about what happened, you get much fewer years in prison.
16:21
And in this case in particular, you, we don't show the, they
16:25
didn't show the videos for the men who recognised.
16:27
So they had a lot of incentives to do a mea culpa, and still
16:34
they did not. I mean, there were so many
16:37
layers to this. So you talked earlier about how,
16:39
you know, Giselle is seen, you know, she's, she's described
16:44
like a rag doll. Isn't she lying on this bed?
16:47
She's snoring. She's she's an older woman.
16:50
And they, they there, she is seen as this thing.
16:54
And at the same time, there is the men's entitlement, the sort
16:57
of denial that they've done anything wrong.
17:00
I mean, how have we got here and what does it say more widely?
17:04
So there are two anecdotes about the trial that I found very
17:08
telling. One is one of the judges asked
17:11
the few, maybe 3 or 4 men that had erection problems on the
17:15
videos and he said about what happened, but he was really
17:20
incredulous. But he never asked any of the
17:24
other men why did you have an erection, which was the question
17:28
that I wanted to hear and the response that I wanted to hear.
17:33
And it showed that there was even inside the courthouse, a
17:39
shared understanding of what was hot about the scenes.
17:44
And that I found very troubling, because I really think this
17:48
judge had no idea that it made him side with them in a certain
17:52
way. But he understood how the the
17:54
men were able to do it or were aroused.
17:57
Yeah, exactly. He didn't understand the men who
17:59
weren't. Yeah, exactly.
18:00
And that is the judge. That is really bizarre.
18:03
And then there is one of the accused who said that the next
18:07
day after he raped Giselle Pelico, he talked to friends
18:10
about it and they said, dude, that's hardcore.
18:14
You raped her. That's a sleep.
18:16
And he said, yeah, I realized I really had done a bad thing.
18:20
But then. So a part of me was really
18:23
relieved when that happened. I thought, OK, at least one that
18:26
recognizes. But then I thought, A, none of
18:30
these friends notified anyone. And B, the way he told the
18:36
story, it sounded like what you would say when I don't know,
18:41
someone said, well last night I drove too fast or I took my
18:47
parents car and didn't tell them, but it was very clear that
18:52
their day had kept going, etcetera.
18:55
But you know, had he said last night I killed someone or last
19:00
night I cut the leg of someone, the story would have been very
19:04
different. So there is a question about why
19:07
are we so used to the idea that women get raped?
19:12
What are we? And, and I think as women, this
19:14
is something we have internalized.
19:16
So I, I talk about this, it's very depressing, I agree.
19:21
But this fact that we have internalized that we're
19:23
rapeable, that we need to protect ourselves from this rape
19:28
ability, but that this is always on the horizon.
19:32
There is a very famous feminist philosopher called Susan Bryson,
19:35
who wrote a book about the aftermath of the rape She was a
19:39
victim of. And she said in the moment that
19:44
she got raped, her first thought was, oh, that's it.
19:49
That's the thing against which I was told to protect myself, to
19:54
always be on the lookout, etcetera.
19:57
That's happening. So it was as if women's lives
20:00
are kind of oriented by the sexual violence that is
20:06
permanently threatening them. But it's crazy, you know, like
20:10
imagine I don't know another, then I promise I'll stop was the
20:15
anecdotes. But I, I really don't want to
20:17
make an analogy, but in Germany, you know, you have an, an
20:21
actually all through Europe, but in Germany you see it more.
20:24
You have those little stones they put in front of the houses
20:28
of Jews who were and, and of people who were deported by the
20:32
Nazis. And I, I find it a very powerful
20:35
thing because it's a sort of decentralized memorial of Nazi
20:39
violence. And it got me thinking, imagine
20:43
what were happening if in just one St. we were materializing on
20:48
the walls. How many women have been raped
20:51
in the street? How many times, you know, like
20:55
what it would look like. So I think as a society we we
20:58
are in a sort of collective constantly renewed amnesia of
21:04
the the size of sexual violence and.
21:09
Yeah. And I mean you, you, you also
21:11
explore that Hannah Arendt's argument about which was made
21:15
about the Holocaust and the banality of evil, that, you
21:18
know, ordinary people can do terrible, terrible things.
21:24
And that is exactly true here, isn't it?
21:26
Yes, So I think what I found very interesting was aren't.
21:31
So to be honest, the reason why I used aren't in the 1st place
21:35
is because, you know, there are not a lot of women philosophers.
21:39
And so I knew that as a woman philosopher who goes to a trial,
21:42
everyone would be like, oh, you're doing the same as aren't,
21:45
even if it's two completely different trials.
21:47
So I thought, OK, I'm going to show what I have in common with
21:51
her or which thoughts we we can have in common.
21:56
And I think what she is saying about the Eichmann trial is that
22:01
Eichmann, first of all, can't say anything about what he did.
22:06
And this was also very striking for me that there was this sort
22:11
of complete lack of introspection, complete
22:15
dismount. They can't say anything about
22:18
who they are, what drives them. And that was terrifying because
22:22
if they can't say anything that you can't change them.
22:27
It's as if they're stuck, you know, they're, they don't have
22:29
access to their feelings. You know, one of one of the
22:33
things they said that I found very interesting is many of them
22:37
said, well, it was a time where my wife or my partner was not
22:41
having sex with me for X&Y reason.
22:43
So I went to Giselle Pelico and then you think, OK, so are the
22:51
two fungible? Like can you really replace the
22:55
sex that you're having with your wife by raping a semi dead body
23:00
of a woman you don't know? So that was, for me, that was
23:03
the, in a way, the most terrifying thing.
23:06
If they really think that the two are exchangeable, what is it
23:11
about male sexuality that is going on?
23:14
Like, how can we live with men? And then the second point that
23:18
Aaron makes that I find very useful is the question.
23:21
About Eichmann's crimes and his relation to it during the during
23:25
the Holocaust. Yeah, So what?
23:26
One thing that she says is that she says we need to look at the
23:30
complicity of German society. Without German society, Eichmann
23:33
doesn't exist. It's not an individual problem
23:36
and this is something that I'm trying to make very explicit in
23:40
the book. The the reason why there's
23:43
something unsatisfying about the criminal trial is that we're
23:52
there are individuals that are trialled, but it's very clear
23:55
that the problem is systematic and and social.
23:59
It's a social problem of how we perceive women, how men feel
24:04
that they don't have accountability, etcetera.
24:06
And so the, the logic of the criminal law, which is punishing
24:12
one responsible individual for one crime is very limited in
24:19
front of rape culture. I, I don't really like rape
24:23
culture as a, but in front of the, the whole system of gender
24:27
hierarchy. And and so I really feel like,
24:31
OK, you know, some people say, and I agree with this, like
24:34
rapist should be sent to jail, OK, But it's really trying to
24:38
empty the ocean with a little spoon.
24:40
You know, like we're going to take one rapist by 1 rapist when
24:44
we know that Dominique Pelico can find 70 guy in the blink of
24:48
an eye in like this in his own surroundings.
24:52
How are we are we going to build prisons every week?
24:56
More prisons and more prisons to put all the rapists there
24:59
Because, you know, we talked about not all men.
25:02
That's true. But I think you and I know that
25:06
almost all women have at least one story of sexual violence.
25:12
And so there's an arithmetic problem.
25:15
It can't be the case that all women were violated and no men
25:21
we know violated anyone. You know, like, because we feel
25:25
we have this feeling. And I mean, that's what you see
25:28
in Giselle Pelico's book. She thinks he said she, she
25:32
calls him a great chap. You know, when when she's first
25:35
arrested, she says Dominique, he's a great chap.
25:37
So she thinks the love of his, of her life is a wonderful guy
25:42
and her sons are wonderful guys. And her, well, she's she, she
25:46
doesn't have doubts about his family.
25:48
But, and I think we're all like that.
25:51
We think the people around us are great, but there is an
25:53
arithmetic problem. It can't be the case that all
25:56
our friends got violated and none of her male friends
26:00
violated. But but that business of, you
26:02
know, because it wasn't just Giselle who in that first
26:05
instance says, you know, my husband is a good guy.
26:07
Other other partners said it can't be, he can't have done
26:10
this because he's a great dad, he's a good partner.
26:14
Yes, but. And and why does society in a
26:18
sense, as you say, people didn't go, the men didn't go away and
26:21
and phone the police? Yes, but that's something.
26:24
I mean, as a researcher on these issues, I know that rapists are
26:29
guys next door. I know it.
26:32
But then I arrived in the courthouse and I talked about it
26:34
in the book. I was waiting in line and there
26:36
were these guys that were kind of cutting the line.
26:39
And I thought, well, it's not really the time to play your
26:43
toxic masculinity that you cut the line.
26:45
To get into the public galleries, yeah.
26:47
Well, to to enter the courthouse.
26:49
And so I thought, who are these guys were cutting the line?
26:52
And then I realized it was actually the accused.
26:56
So they didn't have to wait in line with the public because
26:59
they were forced to be there. And so it was my first moment
27:04
of, oh, wow, I'm very close to a rapist right now, even
27:08
physically, you know, And then a bit later that first day, there
27:13
was this guy that I saw several times in the corridor and where
27:16
I thought, you know, a bit amused.
27:18
Oh, he was so my type 15 years ago, 20 years ago, like as a
27:23
teenager, I would have loved him as a guy.
27:26
And, and then I saw him in the room and, and I had really a
27:33
very troubling experience because he's actually exactly
27:38
the same age as me. He has a kid who's born, I think
27:41
one week away from my first kid. And as I said, like I found him
27:46
very sexy. And so I could see myself as his
27:51
wife, as his victim, as he's, you know, suddenly I, I could
27:56
occupy very different places around him and I could see his
28:01
wife. She thought, oh, he's very
28:03
depressed and I'm helping him and he's such a good guy.
28:06
But the problem is that we need to recognize that you can both
28:11
be such a good guy and do this. And this is what we don't want
28:16
to see. We want to think it's a few
28:19
rotten apples. We want to think it's
28:22
psychopath. We we have really this impulse
28:25
to psychologize it, but it's actually good guys who do this.
28:30
And this is where Giselle's book is extraordinary is that she
28:34
could have said, well, I was a victim of a monster and I didn't
28:37
see it coming. But the whole book is about how
28:42
do I deal with the fact that there is no doubt that he was a
28:46
good guy, that he was a good dad, that he was a good husband,
28:51
that we really loved each other. And the truth is both that he
28:57
was a good dad and that he took incestuous pictures of his
29:01
daughter, that he was a good husband and that he almost
29:05
tortured me to death. And how do we look?
29:08
I mean, for me as a moral philosopher, that's a
29:11
fascinating question. Like how does that work?
29:15
But it's a terrifying question for all of us, isn't it?
29:18
And so you've, you've been speaking to Giselle very
29:21
recently and she has her book out her finally she can tell her
29:25
side of the story. What do you think she achieved
29:30
given, given your sort of the, the inadequacies of the court
29:34
system to, to, to tackle more broadly this issue of sexual
29:38
violence against women? She was so waving her anonymity.
29:42
She knew what she was doing because she knew people would
29:45
sit up and pay attention. Maybe the voyeurism or something
29:48
that you touch on, but what has she achieved in doing this, do
29:51
you think? I don't think she imagined for
29:54
one second that it would have that much impact, but I think
30:00
what happened. So I told her I I don't want to
30:03
talk in her place because I think she's less feminist than
30:08
me or less radical in her feminism than me.
30:10
But I do think that her book, you really see the trial as the
30:15
birth of a feminist, that she really, she right there really
30:19
thinking, I don't want to pit men against women, etcetera.
30:22
And then she went through four months at the end of which she
30:27
was talking about patriarchy and toxic masculinity.
30:30
And she had just experienced in her flesh how the system had
30:35
patriarchal sides, how these men didn't feel sorry, how how these
30:40
lawyers were helping them not feel sorry were were enabling
30:44
them in in their crimes, etcetera.
30:48
And I think it it was really, it was really a consciousness
30:52
raising exercise for her. But also, what is fascinating
30:57
about what she did is that, you know, her husband.
31:01
One thing that strikes me is that he only talks about her.
31:04
Even during the trial. He never calls her by her name.
31:08
She is only my only love, my St. my absolute love, my SO She's
31:14
this abstract figure of perfection.
31:19
And by the way, we know that there is this sort of trope of
31:22
I'm going to kill the woman for the love I have for her.
31:25
This is a very old trope of men with women, but and these fifty
31:32
other men that were trialled, they just saw her as a body or a
31:37
thing and she claimed her name. She you know, it used to be a
31:43
trial. It used to be the Pedico trial
31:45
because of Dominique Pedico. But now for everyone, it's the
31:48
Giselle Pedico trial. She got a first name.
31:52
Her her last name became her last name, not his.
31:55
And it's very interesting because in philosophy.
31:57
So Simone de Bovahin the the second sex talks about how women
32:04
are seen in a sort of general way.
32:06
They're always a woman. You know, like you have a we see
32:10
it on on the news when when we're told, oh, Peru has a
32:15
female Prime Minister or a woman got named at the head of the
32:19
World Bank or something like that.
32:21
So it's always a woman. And what Baba says is we need to
32:26
fight sexism by recognizing women are as singular human
32:32
beings. And that's exactly what Giselle
32:34
managed to do. She became a singular human
32:38
being that had the name, a last name and a story.
32:41
Because this is what she does in her book.
32:43
She tells the story of her life. She she narrates herself as a
32:47
full subject with a singular specific history.
32:52
And that is exactly the counter move of patriarchy, which is why
33:00
so so this is how the shame changed sides, is that instead
33:04
of being voiceless, she managed to have not only a voice, but
33:10
her voice, her own voice. What does it change?
33:16
I mean, but Beauvoir was writing decades ago and So what does it
33:21
change in the fight against violence against women?
33:24
For example, if your blue, your book paints the bleakest of
33:28
pictures about the men, not all men who are willing and able to
33:32
go and rape a comatose woman lying on a bed and yet still be
33:38
in denial, still be quite sort of cocky and and sort of
33:43
arrogant and in there not not willing to be held accountable.
33:48
So are we left with the idea that unless men want to stop
33:54
raping women, it will never happen?
33:56
So I mean, we can look at it Giselle's way, you know, her
34:01
book is a, an optimistic book. It's about joy.
34:05
It's about renewed hope, etcetera.
34:08
So it's from the inside the story of a possible
34:12
reconstruction. So that in itself is a source of
34:16
hope. I'm I have the the sad work of
34:19
being the outsider that describes the how how it even
34:23
happened, how it was made possible.
34:25
But I think what I do in the book is that I'm not just
34:29
writing a sort of abstract, objective philosophy book.
34:33
I write a lot in the first person about what it does to me.
34:37
And I think one of the things I experienced in this courthouse
34:42
is if is the most, the strongest feeling of women's solidarity
34:47
I've ever felt in my life. And that, you know, I'm I'm an
34:51
academic. Feminist academics talk a lot
34:54
about can we even say we, the women?
34:56
Is there even a we like women's lives are very different, but
35:01
you know, she's El Pelico. She received thousands of
35:03
letters from everywhere in the world every day.
35:06
So she really says she received letters that were addressed as
35:09
Giselle Pelico Ave. It was just the address on and
35:14
it got to her and you know, there was these Aboriginal women
35:18
from Australia who came and gave her a scarf.
35:22
She was recently in Brazil at the Corcovado and women were
35:27
crying, saying, oh, she's El Pelico.
35:30
She we were in this room applauding her every morning and
35:35
every night. And in this applause, there was
35:38
something about we're here with you.
35:40
It could be us. Maybe it is some of us and we're
35:47
having this consciousness of this needs to stop.
35:51
And I think, you know, like, this is the thing about chemical
35:54
submission and about her case that people think.
35:58
I hear some people say, yeah, it's gotten really bad sexual
36:02
violence. I'm like, no, it's always be
36:04
like that. It's just that finally we get to
36:07
talk about it. The cases of chemical submission
36:10
in the UK, like who knows if we would have heard about it
36:14
without the pity code trial. Right now there are cases in
36:16
Germany, in France, in the US, in the UK.
36:20
Suddenly people acknowledge, yeah, they are husbands who drug
36:23
their wives and their daughters to rape them.
36:26
And there is also this strong feeling that it has to stop.
36:31
I mean, we're running out of time, but I do want just a
36:33
couple more really quickly if I can.
36:36
You talk about, you know, all of the women there looked at
36:40
Giselle and thought this could be me.
36:42
Are enough men looking at the men and thinking, could this be
36:46
me? So the the whole book, so that's
36:50
why I call my book Living with Men, is that I wanted it to be
36:54
like, guys, we need you, you know, and I haven't heard you
36:58
enough. We haven't heard you enough.
37:00
And I don't want men to be shamed about their masculinity
37:04
or anything like that, but I want them to look at themselves
37:07
the way we look at ourselves and at what could happen to us.
37:11
I mean, it's way easier to identify with the victim than
37:14
was the torturer. So I understand that there are
37:18
men who say, well, no, I'm sorry, I'm a good person.
37:20
I would never do this. But the question is when like
37:25
has it happened that you've left your best friend bring back a
37:30
drunken girl from the pub? Have you turned a blind eye to
37:34
sexist jokes? Have you made other let other
37:37
women be made uncomfortable by things that happened?
37:41
Etcetera. Like the only way we're going to
37:44
change things is if men look at painful parts.
37:50
And the the problem is that just as much in the Epstein case as
37:54
in this case, people say, oh, we didn't know.
37:58
But the question is rather we didn't want to know is how
38:03
comfortable it is to not look at the difficult sides, at the
38:08
difficult tendencies. So I want to tell men like,
38:12
please look at it, even if it's really uncomfortable.
38:15
And when you've spoken to Giselle and she says she she is
38:18
hopeful, it's a she has optimism.
38:21
I just wonder, do you? I'm less optimistic than her,
38:26
certainly because also I think she gets she she is in her own
38:32
story, you know, but I'm I remember did my first day in the
38:37
courthouse was the day of the election of Donald Trump.
38:41
And I used to live in the US and I remember seeing all these
38:46
reactions to this masculinist in cell influencer Nick Fuentes,
38:50
who had tweeted your body my choice, you know, And I was in
38:55
this courtroom seeing the tweets like all these manosphere
39:00
retweeting your body, my choice and seeing all these videos
39:04
about her body, their choice. It it kind of contained my
39:11
enthusiasm and my optimism about the future.
39:15
And just to be clear, your body, my choice is is is men claiming.
39:18
Yeah, yeah. So it's men that are reusing
39:22
this feminist slogan of my body, my choice, and saying, now that
39:26
Trump is elected, you see, we're going to go back to the good old
39:29
times of your body, my choice. And I think we need to be
39:34
careful about optimism. And, and, and just finally,
39:38
everyone talks about it is about how we bring up our boys,
39:43
mothers and fathers. Is it as simple as that?
39:47
I think it's partly as simple as that, but I don't want to think
39:53
only my kids would get to see a better world.
39:56
So it's not just the boys we need to educate our husbands or
40:00
brothers or friends, et cetera. It's a lifelong education, I
40:04
think. But also one thing maybe like a
40:07
very practical aspect to to conclude is that now we've seen
40:12
studies that show the best predictor of the gender views of
40:16
children is not how much time their father spends with them,
40:22
is how their father treats their mom and participates in the
40:26
everyday life, etcetera. So all these guys who are absent
40:30
are training their kids, educating their kids much more
40:34
than the mothers that are home or taking care of the kids and
40:38
juggling a job and childcare, etcetera.
40:42
The men who are absent are educating just as much or even
40:46
more than the women. And so it needs to be also a
40:50
question about fathers. We need to educate the fathers
40:54
so that they can educate the boys.
40:57
Professor Manon Garcia, thank you so much for talking to us.
41:00
Thank you for having me. That is it from us right now.
41:03
Until next time, goodbye.