By Laura Bonjean
In February 2024, the Commission signed the first-ever EU rule to fight gender violence – the first one of this kind. It is not to be mistaken with the Istanbul Convention, which was signed by the Council of Europe. The agreement includes measures to prevent sexual assault, raise awareness on consent, the criminalisation of female genital mutilation, the penalisation of “cyber-flashing”, and the implementation of specialised support for victims of sexual violence. In May 2024, the Council adopted the EU directive. The law has strong legal and symbolic potential. By doing so, the EU becomes an official actor to protect women.
The directive focuses on three essential aspects: prevention, protection, and prosecution. The aim is to impose minimum standards in EU law regarding the criminalisation of gender-based violence and to improve justice accessibility and victim support. The Commission decided to sign the rule as to bring forward women’s rights and to ensure that the EU will guarantee them.
While the directive is a crucial milestone, it was not able to establish a common European definition of rape. Indeed, France, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and other countries decided against it. The definition of rape was caught between the “Yes means Yes” and the “No means No” discussions, blocking any possible compromises. As politicians, jurists, and other officials were arguing over words, unable to find a compromise, it seemed easier to simply leave rape out of the question, letting each country decide for itself. It is common for law to be caught up in formulations, phrasing, and in wordy debates whose content only the initiates can comprehend.
However, this process is becoming increasingly frustrating when it comes to such daily-life topics. When it comes to rape or sexual assault, it seems that focusing on a definition tries to norm the action, as if finding a rational definition might simplify the persecution of the assailants to be prosecuted. Behind such failure to harmonise a rape definition lies the root of the problem: the fact that a norm should dictate the experience. This tenacious need to have an encompassing definition speaks for the inability to recognise rape in most cases in the first place. Women’s words seem to be not enough. Women’s voices are caught up in a suspicious narrative, doubting their experience. When it comes to trusting women, there is a still a long way ahead.
This is not a new phenomenon. In her essay King Kong Theory (2006), Virginie Despentes writes “In our culture, the testimony of a woman accusing a man of rape has been systematically called into question, from the Bible and the story of Joseph in Egypt onwards.”, More than ten years after the King Kong Theory was published in 2006, the #MeToo movement gained worldwide popularity. Voices were liberated and women publicly expressed their assault, showing the world and themselves that they were not isolated but part of a united system. The movement soon received valid criticism, especially addressing its shortcomings regarding intersectionality. One of its most prevalent criticisms was its tendency to encompass all women in the same narrative without providing a broader account of the violence that women cumulating different forms of discrimination can experience. Six years after the explosion of this movement, women are still speaking up about their experiences but a parallel discourse has gained ampler: women are accused of lying and damaging “good” men’s reputations to get attention and money (#NotAllMen). But outside social media, it appears that women struggle to access justice. In France, 86% of rape cases are discharged, and the accused are not prosecuted.
This highlights the lack of trust that society feels toward women. Indeed, women supposedly still fit within three categories, which all originated in the Victorian Era: The Lady, The Whore and the Spinster. The public image of women has been shaped in the Western sphere, since the first mythological appearances, and its repercussions are still felt nowadays. It is found within the wives, or the goddesses, of The Odyssey, or the Virgin Maria. Faced with these ethereal figures, beyond perfection and too human to exist, are their counterparts: Pandora, Lilith and Eve. These three female characters bear nothing less than humanity’s blame. This intrinsic link between women, lies, and deceit diminishes their ability to speak their truth and enhances the dominant male narrative. It seems that history is repeating itself as the #MeToo movement brought with it a new rise of antifeminism and shed a strong discredit on women’s accusations of men assaulting them.
Looking back, the dominant discourse created a rhetoric net depriving women of credibility. Stuck between two roles, women can only be trusted if their discourse fits into the dominant narrative. And if they dare to contradict it, they are transformed into creatures of suspicion from the general audience.
The #MeToo movement has not lost its vigour. In the dazzling atmosphere of the latest Cannes film festival, the filmmaker Judith Godrèche and her team posed on top of the stairs, their hands covering their mouths. Her movie and the gesture are part of a movement challenging the male-dominated industry, which tends to silence women and their suffering. Her short movie “Moi Aussi” (Me Too) denounces the sexual violence that women suffer from in the cinema industry. It was, for her, a cathartic experience where victims could make their voices be heard. Yet the movie is only the tip of the iceberg of sexual abuse in French cinema as well as their gesture of denouncing: Women are not heard, and impunity remains powerful. Their gesture, like the one of Adele Haene’s, are proof that impunity is not ruling anymore. This small sign and the EU’s directive are nevertheless small proofs that things are slowly changing in Europe.
However, the law will not be able to change, or to create any real change if there is no structural reformation of our society and its narrative. Justice will not come by only accusing the oppressors, it is about dismantling the narrative created by privileged people, the rich ones, the powerful ones, and the white, cis straight male ones who control the images of the others. As long as we do not change the narrative we have been told, the same things will continue happening.
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The Euroculturer 