This story originally appeared on Good Faith Media. This version is the full version that was not redacted for editorial/length purposes.
Giséle Pelicot
A few weeks ago, the harrowing trial of Giséle Pelicot’s abusers concluded. There are two ways to describe it. Giséle was the object of unimaginable abuse. Giséle is a feminist icon who subverted a system of shame and retold her story in an unimaginable dignity and poise.
Around 2020 Giséle began noticing that her hair was falling out, she was losing weight and experiencing inexplicable black outs. Her husband of nearly 50 years took her to various clinics without ever getting a satisfying explanation. Then in September that year her husband Dominique was caught using his phone to film up the skirts of women in a nearby grocery store. The police were called, and they confiscated his phone and then his laptop and electronics from his house. What they found were pictures and videos of an unconscious woman being raped and screenshots of conversations about raping her. Eventually they would identify that woman as his wife Giséle and the rapists as 51 different men including her husband. As for the other 50 men, who ranged in age from late 20s to their 70s, they were invited there by Giséle’s husband. Giséle now had an answer for her mysterious blackouts; she was being drugged by her husband.
Giséle’s now ex-husband Dominique Pelicot pleaded guilty. The other fifty men registered differing objections including that they themselves were drugged by Dominique Pelicot, that they thought Giséle was role playing, or that she had consented. 49 of the men and Dominique Pelicot were convicted of rape and given sentences ranging from 3-15 years while Dominique got the maximum of 20 years. One abuser was convicted of aggravated sexual assault.
As bizarre and disgusting as this story is, what we will remember from this trial is not these men who have collectively been dubbed “everyman” by the police, media outlets, and others, but Giséle. That’s because Giséle made the courageous choice to make this a public trial. Catherine Porter who has covered many rape trail stories for the New York Times has noted that in all the years she’s covered them only one other victim has elected to go public with her trial. The option of anonymity for rape survivors is thought be form of dignity offered court system. So why did Giséle decide to go public in what has to be one of the most awful rape trials in history? “I wanted to open the doors of this trial last September so that society could see what was happening. I’ll never regret this decision. I have confidence in our capacity, collectively, to find a better future, in which men and women alike can live harmlessly together with mutual respect,” she told reporters. Giséle has accomplished all of this and more.
In her article “The Face of Courage” New York Times writer Vanessa Friedman captures the scope of Giséle’s impact. The victorious and prolific nature of Giséle’s face can be found on mock covers of Time as person of the year, protest posters on the side of French buildings, and on the digital cover of Vogue Germany. From day one she entered the courtroom unashamed as a stylish grandmother. Friedman writes, “Her jacket and coat collars were turned up just so. Often, she wore a white scarf draped around her neck. The colors she chose were sedate, the prints discreet. She didn’t wear obvious makeup, but she looked well groomed. She looked recognizable. She looked like what she was: a pensioner and grandmother without pretensions, but with self-respect.”[1] The scrutiny that women’s fashion comes under in public facing moments is often off putting, but Friedman’s description serves a deeper editorial purpose. She’s establishing that Giséle’s normalcy has become iconic and not because she’s abiding by a fashion script prescribed by French culture, but because she’s defying the look of victimhood. Giséle’s look is part of the seismic shift that happened during this trial. She became someone while her abusers became no one, or everyman.
But how did this happen? How is it that her courage has subverted the system of shame?
Engaging the Powers
In 1993 the late theologian Walter Wink released his award winning third installment of his “Powers Trilogy” Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination[2], in which he introduces readers to a third way of handling violence. As opposed to fight or flight, Wink argues Jesus teaches a third way response. To do this wink cites Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus coaches followers on how to respond to violence (Matthew 5:38-42). Wink exegetes Jesus’ commands to turn the other cheek, offer you cloak and walk the second mile, with profound nuance so that readers can see that far from the call to a passive acquiescence, these are creative responses that establish the agency and dignity of the oppressed.
“Turn the Other Cheek”
To understand the subversive act of cheek turning one needs to know a few things about the mechanics of honor shame cultures. To begin with, hitting someone with the left hand was prohibited. Left hands were for unclean tasks. So as we move forward with this visual you’ll have to discount the possibility of striking with the left hand all together. If then someone can only hit you with the right hand, and based on Jesus’ words they hit you on the right cheek, they have backhanded you. Backhanding was the proper way for masters to indignify slaves and other household dependents. But what if, after getting hit, the marginalized person, instead of cowering, offered her left cheek. The conundrum for the oppressor intensifies because not only has the oppressed responded with fortitude, they’ve only left the oppressor with the option of hitting their left cheek with a slap or fist, an action normally only exchanged between peers. Hence, the oppressed proposes a response that demands the oppressor make a choice about them as a person with status.
“Give them your cloak as well”
In the Hebrew scriptures we repeatedly see that forms of predatory usury are clearly prohibited (Exod. 22:25-27; Duet. 24:10-13, 17; Amos 7-8; Ezek. 18:5-9). One can imagine a scenario in which a debt collector might come looking for objects of value, textiles included. Only the poorest of the poor would be down to their garments as a form of collateral. Alas, this form of debt collection happened. Jesus’ solution was for the poor to up the ante. As an act of prophetic action, the poor are encouraged to double down by giving their cloak as well, which was their last defense against nakedness. Their nakedness then would become the mechanism by which the predatory behavior is exposed for what it is, namely a practice of taking from the poor what they don’t have to give in the first place. Because of nudity’s taboo role in Hebrew culture, it would shift the humiliation from the prey to the predator, i.e. the one who rendered the circumstance.
“Go the second mile”
The phrase to describe being “forced to work” is angareia, likely a Persian word and practice on loan to Aramaic. A familiar use of this word and practice in the gospels occurs when Simon of Cyrene is “compelled” by soldiers to carry Jesus cross angareu-ousin. The secondary literature discussing the role of angareia by Romans soldiers is well documented; enough to signal how abusive and rampant this problem was. Wink argues that the willful volunteering of the burden bearer to a second mile would be bewildering to the Roman soldier that it would shift the sense of power. Wink writes, “Is this a provocation? Is he insulting the legionnaire’s strength? Being kind? Trying to get him disciplined for seeming to violate rules of impressment? Will this civilian file a complaint? Create trouble?”[3] In short, the oppressed complicates the oppression.
At the end of this section of the book Wink offers a bulleted list of third way tactics a few of which I’d like to include here: assert your own humanity and dignity as a person, break the cycle of humiliation, refuse to submit to or to accept the inferior position, take control of the power dynamic, and shame the oppressor into repentance to name a few.
It would seem that Giséle Pelicot took a page out of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount playbook and offered us a masterclass in non-violent third way resistance. Wink says, “To those whose lifelong patterns has been to cringe before their masters, Jesus offers a way to liberate themselves from the servile actions and servile mentality … They can begin to behave with dignity and recovered humanity now, even under the unchanged conditions of the old order.”[4] As Giséle’s trial continued the courtroom swelled, not with reporters, but women. Women who formed lines to applaud Giséle as she left each day. As #MeToo stories continue to be told and testify to the continued presence of the unchanged conditions of the old order of patriarchy, here arrived a woman who incited change on systemic level. A woman who defied expectations and took back her dignity not just for her but for survivors everywhere. Giséle found a third way.
[1] Friedman, Vanessa. “The Face of Courage.” New York Times, 12-19-24, Gisèle Pelicot: What Courage Looks Like – The New York Times. 12-27-24
[2] Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992).
[3] Wink, Engaging, 187.
[4] Wink, Engaging, 189.
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