Mit Männern leben Quotes

“Dominique Pelicot’s fifty co-defendants raped Gisèle Pelicot, but in the end, it is as if she hadn’t even been there. The House of Sleeping Beauties and indeed Sleeping Beauty itself are myths in which the woman is there as a representation, as an object, but where she, as a person, has no place. She is a body and nothing else. The necrophiliac fantasy that fuelled the rapes of Gisèle Pelicot functions in the same way: it is her, but it is not her. Everything that makes Gisèle Pelicot Gisèle Pelicot – her joy, her gentleness, her strength – all of that is dissolved and drained away by the drugs, leaving only a lifeless object. This absolute objectification, which serves to negate the very existence of the other, is reflected in the language used by the defendants. Dominique Pelicot never mentions Gisèle by name: she is his ‘saint’, his ‘love’; in his obscene correspondence she is his ‘slut’, but these are just standard images, the Mother and the Whore.”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“When Ludovick B., Saifeddine G., and others explained that they went to the Pelicots’ house because they no longer had a sex life with their wives, or not enough of one, what they were suggesting was that for many men, sleeping with their partner and the mother of their children and sleeping with a woman twice their age who is so sedated that she looks dead, basically amounts to the same thing. This is no figment of the imagination: the equivalence has been established in numerous studies.1 Rape can be substituted for sex, and the experience is more or less the same for men – incidentally, this is the idea conveyed by the theory that only the victim’s consent allows us to draw the line between sex and rape.”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“Even though, of course, men, children, women, anyone can be raped, knowing and perceiving that one is rapeable at any given moment is an experience specific to being a woman. Girls and women are brought up to believe that the threat is always there, and that it is their task to adapt to it: don’t walk alone in the street, don’t be too sexy, walk fast, lower your eyes, pull in your chest, don’t smile. Keep a close eye on your drinks in the evening, don’t leave your drunk girlfriend alone, check the Uber plate, ‘Message me when you get there?’ But ‘pre-victim’ means only that rape is presented to us (rightly) as a likely occurrence; it does not mean that we will actually be considered a victim if it happens to us. No, knowing that you are vulnerable to rape also means learning in spite of yourself that if something were to happen to you, it would be because you had broken the rules: you had to go out alone didn’t you, you really wanted to wear that dress, because you’re a tease, because you didn’t stay in your proper place. We have to protect ourselves from men’s (alleged) inability to control themselves, and any aggression will be seen primarily as a failure on the part of the victimized woman, who should know men and should protect herself better. Either way, we are guilty.”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“It is because we believe that rapists are strangers in parking lots, that they are maladjusted monsters, it is because we live in a world where sexual violence is constantly minimized, pathologized, and invisibilized, that there is this temptation to exonerate those Guys Next Door who do not think twice about raping because, deep down, they think that they have a ‘right to sex’.”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“I find it particularly interesting that rape never appears as a paraphilia or a paraphilic disorder. Does psychiatry have nothing to say about rape? Why is it that, on the one hand, we take seriously a disorder that involves being obsessed with lingerie or shoes or being a voyeur, and yet rape never appears anywhere? Is there no sexual deviance involved in rape? Is a predilection for ‘rape mode’ just being a normal man?”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“The criminal trial can only do what it was designed to do: punish those whose actions threaten social order, while respecting their fundamental rights. It can never heal the victims, nor adequately repair the ten years during which Gisèle Pelicot thought she was dying, not knowing she was the victim of gang rape at the instigation of the love of her life.”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“Submission is like a social destiny set out in advance for women; therefore, to submit is more a question of following a path that has already been mapped out and inscribed in advance, rather than carving out one’s own path. Everything conspires to ensure that women remain in ‘their place’, that of lovers and carers rather than fully fledged human beings. Starting from when they are in the womb, girls are encouraged to be quiet, to not move around too much, to learn how to cook, clean, look pretty, and take care of children – if need be, a quick glance at any toy catalogue will convince you of this.”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“But I am also well aware that in focusing on heterosexuality, even so as to criticize it, one participates in the fact it appears as a norm, and contributes to the invisibilization of those who reject heterosexuality and the gender binary that goes with it. Norms of masculinity and femininity go hand in hand, and together contribute to rendering invisible and pathological all modes of existence that refuse this binarity. They play a part in structuring reactionary slogans such as ‘A family is made up of a father, a mother, and children’, and help justify the hatred and persecution of queer people. And their presupposition that masculinity and femininity are at least partly biological helps explain the endless persecution of trans people. Gender transition appears to some as an unbearable transgression of the gendered order of the world, which demands that people remain in the normalized box assigned to them at birth, the function of which is to inscribe them within a kind of preestablished destiny. If one is born with a penis, there can be no question of being a woman and renouncing masculinity, and vice versa. (In case it’s not sufficiently clear, I find this position both absurd and dangerous.)”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“Arendt’s point is not that Eichmann’s thinking is evil, but simply that he does not think, and that this is what makes him terrifying. In this respect, an intriguing parallel can be drawn between the surprise exhibited by many of the accused, who, even three years after their arrest, really did not seem to understand what they were doing there, and who continued to see themselves – like Eichmann – as good family men and fathers.”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess

“The idea that sexual relations require an explicit contract is the product of a conflation of the different functionings of consent in civil and in criminal law. In criminal law consent is a criterion for distinguishing criminal acts (rape) from lawful behaviours. Sexual consent cannot therefore be equated with a contractual relationship.”
― Manon Garcia, Mit Männern leben: Überlegungen zum Pelicot-Prozess