Sexual shame looms large in my novel, X in Provence, set by sheer if harrowing happenstance in Mazan, a village now sadly synonymous with rape. Rai, an ambitious journalist, moves to Mazan to be with her French lover, oblivious of his destructive tendencies – narcissist that he turns out to be. Shame is what she feels for caving in to his emotional abuse and manipulation while still craving his body. Call it the Stockholm shame syndrome, detesting your abuser even as you beg him for sex.
X in Provence, weirdly enough, describes an intense, darkish sub-culture of sex-as-a-hobby in the region around Mazan – a sign that perhaps there are no coincidences.
I know what shame feels like in the face of sexual violence. When I was 16, I was raped. Harsh in self-condemnation I blamed myself, the shame burrowed inside, deep and wide.
It happened a few months after I’d moved to Manhattan from London. I was walking along Third Avenue when, a few blocks from home, I was approached by a much older man, tall and stocky. It was around 8pm on a crisp, late autumn evening. The stranger stopped me and introduced himself, saying he was a photographer and musician. Full of superlatives about my looks, he offered to put my face on the cover of a record he was producing. He could take some photos of me right now, as a matter of fact, at his nearby studio. I agreed.
His “studio” turned out to be a seedy motel somewhere south of 1st Avenue and 86th street (long since gutted). By the time I’d cottoned on to his game, he was pushing me up the stairs, into a room and onto the bed, threatening severe violence if I screamed. So I offered no resistance. But here’s the thing. In between the raping, he would pour his heart out to me, harking on about his woes with women. And I listened. I even sympathized – hoping this was my ticket to freedom. And maybe it was, for after vowing to never let me go, he eventually did, hours later. Terror gave way to a kind of ecstasy. I’d survived and was free and alive. And full of shame, because in my mind I’d allowed this to happen. I’d been stupid, naïve and gullible.
Which is why I didn’t mention a thing to my parents. However, a few days later I confided in my older sister and she immediately told my mother and father. I was furious with her for exposing my secret, and when brought to a therapist to discuss the rape (I was also taken to a doctor to check for venereal diseases and pregnancy), I clammed up. The incident was filed away and “forgotten”.
Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame is what silences women who have been sexually violated – to the empowerment of abusive men. Because silence leads to impunity. Rapists are rarely convicted or punished; mostly, they get away with it. Who does not know this?
But now shame has been named. Gisèlle Pelicot has broken the mould. By waiving anonymity in the mass rape trial of her husband and 50 other men, she is bravely telling – no showing – the world that “shame must change sides”. The men who committed the sickening deeds against her in a hidden-away house in Mazan should feel ashamed – not her. Of course not her. Only in this upside down world we inhabit have the victims of rape been shamed and made to suffer the consequences; because that’s how the system, designed by men for the benefit of men, has worked. To hear many of the defendants plead innocent in the Avignon court room amid irrefutable video evidence of their crimes, is to understand just how ingrained their chauvinistic thinking is, how desperate these “every men” are to evade responsibility and cast aspersion on others. It’s typical misogynistic behaviour. Let’s pray the judges, in their final verdict, don’t fall for it.
The Gisèlle Pelicot effect – as perhaps it will be called – is a giant step towards a genuine paradigm shift away from shaming and blaming women – at least, that is the aspiration of all who uphold justice for victims of rape and sexual assault.