Pelicote against victimhood
On Tuesday, the book in which Gisèle Pelicot offers her firsthand account of the gender-based violence she suffered will be published: as is well known, for ten years her husband, Dominique Pelicot, drugged her to offer her to more than eighty men, who raped her while he filmed everything. The so-called Pelicot matter It shocked French and Western society, all the more profoundly as more of the abhorrent acts came to light during the trial, in stark contrast to the serenity, lucidity, and dignity she displayed in publicly confronting the horror she had suffered in her inner circle. The book is being published simultaneously in twenty countries and bears a title that is at once ironic, melancholic, hopeful, and terrifying: Te la joy de vivre.
To accompany its launch, Gisèle Pelicot is doing the corresponding promotional campaign (no, neither that nor the money she may earn takes away any of the importance or truth of her testimony): she gave her first interview to the newspaper Le Figaro And, among other relevant points, she made two reflections worth highlighting. On the one hand, Gisèle Pelicot rejects the status of victim: it was appropriate during the trial, but she doesn't want it for the life she wants to lead going forward. On the other hand, despite being aware of the impact her story has had on many sectors and forums of Western society, she is extremely bothered by being considered an icon of nothing.
Gisèle Pelicot's behavior makes perfect sense and is consistent, but it seems unusual at a time—an era—when so many are literally willing to do anything to appear as victims and to be considered iconic figures. In particular, victimhood is one of the most widespread rhetorical traps of our time: whoever manages to be recognized as a victim—whether a person, an organization, or an ideology—automatically acquires a kind of immunity that makes them unassailable and unquestionable. It is, by far, the preferred tool of the far right: for them, victimhood serves as a pretext for hate speech, even for crimes against humanity. For example, the genocide of Palestine is perpetrated by the Israeli government as a supposed act of defense against alleged "anti-Semites." For example, Trump's ICE agents execute activists in the street to protect themselves from alleged "terrorists." For example, the Spanish and Catalan far right exacerbates hatred against immigrants as a response to supposed "enemies of Spain" or "those who hate Catalonia." Etc. Regarding the desire to become icons, in a time of maximum individualism and exhibitionism devoid of any substance (which means toxic content), we encounter it daily in all aspects of public and private life. That is why the attitude of someone like Gisèle Pelicot, who has some substantive ideas to share and explicitly rejects being treated as a victim and being seen as an icon, is so refreshing, so healthy, and so welcome.