France now sees Gisèle Pelicot as a hero – but old myths about rape are harder to change | Rokhaya Diallo

Her ‘dignity’ has won over the nation, but the way we think about male violence must not depend on a ‘perfect victim’

Since the beginning of September, the face of a woman from a small village in the south of France has been splashed across global front pages. Gisèle Pelicot is the central figure in a trial in which the main defendant is her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot. He has admitted that for nearly a decade, he drugged her and invited other men to allegedly also abuse her, in her own bed, without her knowledge, so that he could film them doing so. Fifty other men are on trial alongside Pelicot, accused of rape, which many of them deny.

Against the scale of the atrocities that it is alleged she has endured, Gisèle Pelicot cuts an unusual figure as she attends the trial. Head held high, in neat and polished attire, she walks tall into the courthouse in Avignon, a living symbol of what she calls “shifting shame” from the victims of sexual assault to the perpetrators.

Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist

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