Despite having always firmly believed that most men are decent human beings and that the accusations of sexism and misogyny levelled against them by feminists are greatly exaggerated, recent events have unfortunately made me seriously question that belief.
The most obvious case is that of a 72-year-old woman, Gisele Pelicot, in France, whose husband systematically drugged her and then invited random men into their marital bed to rape her, while he filmed and took photographs.
Over the course of a decade, at least 80 men desecrated it, including a local councillor, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, nurses, a soldier, a firefighter and a civil servant.
Fifty people are currently on trial, ranging in age from 26 to 73 at the time of their arrest.
With incredible bravery, Gisele Pelicot, 72, appeared in court this week after coming forward to see her rapists and husband brought to justice.
These are not people living on the fringes of society, but ordinary men, husbands, boyfriends, fathers and sons, as normal a cross-section of society as you can imagine. And yet they seem to have thought it was okay to show up at a stranger’s house and have sex with an unconscious middle-aged woman, old enough in some cases to be their mother.
Some have tried to claim that they didn’t know Ms. Pelicot was an unwitting accomplice to this sick game. But how could they know? The website where her husband recruited them openly talked about non-consensual sex, and they were under strict instructions to avoid wearing any kind of fragrance or smelling of cigarette smoke, and to stop if she so much as lifted a finger.
Mrs Pelicot even knew one of her alleged rapists, a man who had visited her home to talk about cycling with her husband. “I saw him from time to time at the bakery; I would say hello to him. I never thought he would come and rape me,” she said.
But Ms Pelicot – whose courage in facing the defendants in court is nothing short of heroic – is not the only victim of dark, twisted and disgusting misogyny. Last week, Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei was doused in petrol and set alight by her ex-partner. She died from her injuries.
In another horrific case, a man in Poland was arrested for allegedly keeping a young girl as a sex slave for four years. He is accused of performing perverse experiments on her, including removing her teeth and lips.
In India, where attacks on women are endemic, the name of a young medical intern who was raped to death during a night shift has appeared on pornographic sites as perverts search for the video of her attack. One man arrested for the attack is a police volunteer.
Women’s rights and bodies are being violated all over the world.
Another example is what happened on October 7, when Hamas terrorists targeted girls and women as part of their depraved killing spree, then gang-raped them, mutilated their bodies, reveled in their degradation and filmed it for their own enjoyment.
That’s why I was so surprised by Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s decision to suspend arms sales to Israel. It’s hard not to think that he is minimising the suffering of those women, in effect rewarding Hamas for what they did and sending the message that such depraved behaviour is somehow justifiable.
Meanwhile, Britain continues to sell arms to Qatar, which hosts Hamas leaders with considerable fanfare. The same men who receive funding and support from the regimes in Iran and Afghanistan, whose treatment of women – from the mass rape of Yazidis to the latest human rights abuses and restrictions on basic freedoms – are the same men who are affected by domestic violence.
All of this has created the dystopian hell that women in these parts of the world live in today. All of these behaviors betray a deep misogyny, unconscious or not. But where does it come from? There is a common threat that unites all of these atrocious and, in some cases, barely comprehensible abuses against women: pornography.
The increasing use of Internet pornography over the past two decades has planted an evil in the minds of men whose consequences we are seeing more and more frequently.
The successive failure of politicians to impose even the most basic restrictions on sites like PornHub and co. has meant that the depraved attitudes and behaviours commonly seen in online porn have not only become normalised, but are even seen by some as legitimate. After all, if it’s not illegal, how can it be wrong? Many of the grotesque scenarios described above, and seen in cases of sexual violence against women, mimic the perverse fantasies played out in pornographic videos.
The fact that some of these atrocities, like the attack on the Indian doctor, are being searched for on pornographic sites tells us all we need to know about the appetite for such things.
Back in 2015, when I first became interested in this problem, I spent an afternoon with a man whose job it was to monitor pornographic sites on the internet for illegal or non-consensual content. That was (and still largely is) the only way to get these sites to take down content.
The level of violent misogyny shocked me deeply. Very few of the videos had anything to do with actual sex; it was all about humiliating the women involved as much as possible.
Slapping, strangling, rape, prolonged and painful penetration: these were the main themes. There was no sense of enjoyment on the part of the women: it was all a violent fantasy directed by the men, a sexual release of barely contained hatred towards the women involved.
I remember thinking that this had nothing to do with pleasure. It was about revenge, punishment, rage, and the feeling that women were getting what they deserved. What was most surprising, too, was that the nastiest videos were the most popular. The algorithm, driven by user preferences, placed them at the top of the feed.
At the time I wondered what kind of man could possibly enjoy watching such things. Now, thanks to these recent and horrific cases, we know.
Ordinary men. Family men, fathers, sons, civil servants, firemen. It could be anyone: the taxi driver, the man sitting next to you on the train, the guy at the checkout at the supermarket.
Online pornography is a virus that has been slowly but surely infecting men for the past two generations. It has desensitized the male psyche to attitudes and behaviors toward women that have no place in a civilized society. It dehumanizes women and promotes a twisted narrative that justifies the abuse of women.
In the past, these dark perversions were forbidden. Now, they are available to anyone with access to a smartphone. There are no longer any barriers even for the most depraved content.
Today, boys and men consume this product regularly and from a very early age, and its real-world consequences are undeniable.
From Gisele Pelicot to Sarah Everard (murdered by another porn fan, Metropolitan Police Officer Wayne Couzens) and the countless victims in between, this is a genuine crisis for women and girls.
Sarah Everard, kidnapped, raped and murdered by Metropolitan Police Officer Wayne Couzens, who was addicted to brutal sexual pornography.
This must end.
We have the Internet Safety Bill, but so far nothing has happened, despite constant attempts by various parties – including Lord Bethell, one of the hereditary peers Labour is so keen to get rid of – to bring the issue to light.
In the United States, a tenacious woman named Laila Mickelwait has waged a successful legal campaign against PornHub that has resulted in the removal of 90 percent of the most horrific, violent and stolen content. Her book, Takedown: Inside The Fight To Shut Down Porn Hub For Child Abuse, Rape And Sex Trafficking, is an eye-opening read.
As a woman and mother of a daughter, it is hard to shake the feeling that Germaine Greer was right all those years ago when she wrote, in The Female Eunuch: “Women have very little idea how much men hate them.”
I always thought that just wasn’t true. Now I’m not so sure anymore.