Why Is Rape Culture So Prevalent Today?

Questioner: Namaste, Acharya Ji. Acharya Ji, I wanted to bring this case to this forum and discuss it with you. It's about a woman; her name is Gisèle Pelicot. She's from France, and she's 72 years old now.

She's in a public trial against her husband because they were married for 50 years, and it was a wonderful marriage in her own understanding—until her husband was reported for taking upskirt images of two women out in the open. That opened up essentially his media images in his phone. There, he was drugging his wife for 10 years, and at least 72 men raped her. So, her husband was calling men and he was allowing them to rape his own wife. This guy—her husband—was filming it or taking images.

At this age, when she's 72, she's quite old, in her vulnerable stage, but still, she has chosen to stand up, to face these ugly facts and she's taking it to court and has made it a public trial so that everyone can see.

I just wanted to discuss this, and I wish that it could have been in Hindi also because I come from India. We know that we are taught so deeply that we have to preserve the image of our relatives. We tend to attach ourselves to our close ones—whether it's our father, husband, brother, or whosoever—and we just wrap their ugly facts of our lives and never stand up. So, I just wanted you to take this up and discuss it.

Acharya Prashant: Which country are you coming from currently?

Questioner: Me?

Acharya Prashant: Yeah!

Questioner: I am from Switzerland.

Acharya Prashant: See, what I found remarkable about this incident is not that we have a pervert here who got his aging wife raped over a decade by 70-odd men. I didn't find that particularly remarkable because that is happening all over the place, all over the world, since one does not know when. What I found remarkable was that the woman very daringly waived her right to anonymity. Victims in such cases, in most countries—including France—carry the right to anonymous court proceedings — the whole trial. But she said, "No, it needs to be public."

Questioner: Exactly!

Acharya Prashant: She made it a point. She said, "This thing needs to be public. I don't want to hide my face. I want to come out. I want to let my face be seen, and I want the faces of my husband and those 70 men to be seen." That is remarkable.

I could have said that what is also remarkable is that the whole thing spanned over a decade, and none of these 70 men thought it fit to inform the police. I could have said that her husband must have contacted dozens, or maybe hundreds, of other men beyond these 70 as well. It's not that his success rate would have been 100%. He would have been contacting probably all and sundry, "Come over and rape my wife." A lot of people would have refused. Even they did not find it necessary to inform the police.

I could have said that this is remarkable, but even this is not very remarkable because even this is something not entirely rare. We know of crimes on women, and who wants to stick his own neck out and inform the police or get into personal trouble? We know of the Ujjain rape case in India recently. A woman was raped right at a busy crossing on a footpath, and just so many from the crowd were standing there having fun. Even the act was video-graphed and circulated on social media. Unsurprisingly, it went viral.

So, all that is not remarkable. Public apathy towards this is not remarkable. The husband doing this is not remarkable. Nothing distinct or extremely shocking about these things. If we pretend shock on a husband deciding to rape his wife or deciding to get his wife raped, then we are lending credence to the idea of sanctity of marriage. You see, if you say, "Oh my God, how could a husband do that?" You are reinforcing the belief that husbands do not do this. But husbands do this all the time.

So, there is nothing shocking about a husband involved in the rape of a woman. If the husband does not get a woman raped by outsiders, for sure the husband does rape the woman himself. And I also agree that women might also be raping men. Wives might also be raping husbands. That too is quite likely.

Rape is not just the narrow domain of sex without consent. You also have to look at the nature of consent. If the consent is out of fear or greed, the act ought to be called as rape.

Questioner: Absolutely!

Acharya Prashant: I can extract consent from somebody by terrorizing that person, and there would be consent. And this terrorization need not always be very visible or crude or open or conscious. If the woman knows that she will be homeless, shelter-less, and money-less if she refuses consent, the consent will come. The consent will come, and the woman herself might not know where the consent is coming from. The consent is coming from her fear. That is rape.

Rape is happening all over the place. Husband raping a woman is not something new. Public apathy, nobody reporting the rape, that is again not something new.

What is new is the woman standing up, and standing up not just in a way that displays raw courage, standing up in a way that displays something deeper. She is challenging the very notion of female honor. That is what is, to me, remarkable about this case. She is saying....

Questioner: One more point!

Acharya Prashant: Yes, please.

Questioner: Sorry, Acharya Ji. But one more point, Acharya Ji, which I really liked about this woman is that she lived with him for 50 years, essentially, which is more than the lives of many of us, the age of many of us. And whatever—even if this was abuse, of course, the case was clear but there are so many forms of violence or you know, things which we should not be conforming to.

And what I find so beautiful is that even after 50 years, even at the age of 72, whenever she got the facts and as you say many times, facts are the door to truth and she saw the facts, she is not neglecting the facts. "I will live up to it." At one place she also says that people are calling her strong, but "I have to rebuild myself." And I see this as a clear case of destroying your own ego or own identity. She was holding on to an illusion, but as soon as....And I think that's quite beautiful to see.

Acharya Prashant: Yeah at the age of 72, you are usually too tired to even attempt rebuilding anything. And you are too habituated, too accustomed to the kind of life you have lived and to the person you have lived with. You don't want to drag your companion of 50 years into courtrooms and media trials, huh? You want to just, you know, say, "Oh, I'll forgive and forget. Anyway, one of us is going to drop dead in the next few years, so what's the point in raising an entire show now?"

But she has chosen otherwise, and that's what is remarkable about this case. Very remarkable! What she's doing is, she is decoupling female consciousness with the social concept of female honor. She's saying, "My consciousness need not be dependent on the definition of honorability that you provide me. I'm neither just this body, nor am I a product of this society."

She’s challenging both the biology and the society. So you could say biology and psychology both are being challenged. She's saying, "No, I, on my own—my Consciousness—need not borrow its definitions from you or tradition. My honor is not dependent on how you look at me." And in that, she is, in fact, redefining honor itself.

How is a victim losing her honor in the event of a rape? Not so much in France, but much more in India and other developing countries, where there is just so much victim shaming. The victim is thought of having lost something irrevocably— Izzat Chali Gayi! Izzat Chali Gayi!

It intrigues me, 'Who’s Izzat?' Izzat — Honor. Who’s Izzat? How has the woman lost her respectability? If there is someone who has lost his dignity, his self-worth, his self-respect, it is the perpetrator of the crime—it is the rapist. But no one says the rapist lost his honor. If you're a rapist, nobody will say—Iski to izzat ud gayi.

If you're a rapist, no one says he has lost his respect. Instead, if a woman has been raped, we are saying, 'Iski izzat ud gayi.' And that is very bemusing! How on this Earth…? And that is, again not just related to something particularly feminine.

You see, if I'm sitting here and you come and spit on my face, there would be a lot of people who will say, "Oh, AP lost his respect." You come and spit on my face—how is it that I have been belittled? If you spit at the sky, what does the sky stand to lose?

But don't we operate that way? Someone yells and abuses at you, and you feel a pang of guilt within, especially if there are others who have heard the thing. You feel something wrong has happened to you. The fact is, if something has happened in a despicable way, if someone has fallen, it is not you but the other one. But the other one!

The very notion of respect, honor has to be understood in a deeper way.

There was this man abusing the Buddha—we know of this story—but somehow we never want to apply it to ourselves and especially women! Anything related to the Buddha is not applicable to women—that has been the custom. I don't know how, as if the Buddha belongs to a particular gender, as if the Buddha is masculine.

So there is this man who comes to the Buddha, and he is doing all kinds of things—throwing abuses and he also spits on the Buddha's face. The Buddha does not react. Does not react. So people around him get angry. They are all actually warriors by upbringing. They get very angry. The Buddha is calm, but his disciples are getting extremely angry. They say, "You know, we'll forget that we are monks. This chap has abused our teacher—we'll kill him!"

The Buddha says, "He cannot do anything to me without my consent." Yes, he did abuse, but I was not abused. I have not gone down. He abused, but I was not abused. Nothing can happen to me without my consent.

And look at the deep wisdom contained in it. I am not the body. Even if you destroy my body, I have not been reduced. If you have raped my body, how have I been reduced? First of all, I did not do anything. Secondly, whatever you did was confined to my body.

First of all, it was you who executed the rape or whatever crime it was. I was not involved in that crime. Secondly, whatever you did pertained only to my body. And how does my honor lean on my body? What kind of way is it to look at a woman only as her body so much so that even her honor is dependent only on her body — specifically, not even on the body, but specifically on the genitals.

Somebody touches your hands or somebody does something to your arms, you will not say Izzat Chali Gayi! But if somebody does something to your sexual parts, then Izzat Chali Gayi!? First of all, the woman is the body, and even in the body, she's just the sexual organs — that has been challenged now. That has been challenged several times before as well, but this is a very remarkable case.

The woman is declaring upfront, 'Yes, by body, I'm a woman; by reality, I am Consciousness.' I do not feel belittled. I do not feel blemished. I do not feel that something has been reduced from me. In fact, I want to make an example of this case by coming out in the open. I want the entire world to see who has been reduced. These are the 70-odd people who have shown themselves to be small, petty, violent, unworthy of being called humans. I'm all right. If this change can come, it will be such a great liberator.

Biology and society get together to condition the woman in a way that she becomes almost entirely just her body—just her body.

Her life energy is sapped by her body, and that is what the rapists use. They say, "This is just the body. Even if we rape her, the rape will go unreported because her honor is tied to her body. She will not come out in the open."

We know of the number of rapes that are reported—one rape per 15 minutes. We also know the number of unreported cases is many, many times than the reported ones because the woman feels that if I come out, then it is 'I' who stands to lose, not the rapist. In fact, the rapists often take this as a tribute to their masculinity. They will often openly declare that they have raped that woman, and that adds to their social power.

It does happen in many regressive societies, small towns, and villages—it is still happening, at least in North India. You rape a woman, and then you go out and declare it in the open, and that, in fact, adds to your popularity and respectability. People grow in awe of you—"Oh my God, look at his virality! If you offend him, he can even rape, so let's be respectful." Are you getting it?

And women internalize this notion very, very deeply. First, "I am the body." Secondly, "My honor depends on my chastity. I must remain sexually very pure." And what does this purity mean? This purity means that I will reserve my body only for the socially sanctioned one—not for reasons of love, not for reasons of wisdom; not for reasons of the spirit, but for reasons of society.

I am honorable if my body belongs to the socially sanctioned rapist. It’s not that there are rapes and no rapes; there are socially prohibited rapes and socially sanctioned rapes. Very few instances of sex copulation involve no rape—very few instances. We cannot have data on this, but my hunch is that less than 10% of cases of sex do not involve rape. Otherwise, sex is just rape—it is rape with consent, rape with consent.

The woman has two kids. The woman never got educated properly. The woman does not earn. The woman has no property of her own. The husband demands sex. Will the wife ever refuse? And how is that not rape? That is rape with consent.

So we are saying socially sanctioned rape and socially prohibited rape. What is socially prohibited rape? You're supposed to reserve your body for a such person. If your body goes to somebody else, then that is prohibited, and you'll be ostracized and will have to pay all kinds of prices.

Fifty percent of humanity—women—have been chained to their own bodies, to their own chastity. They do not know what love means. And if one half does not know what love is, how can the other half know what love is? What is love? Is it possible?

So the entire planet has become loveless. You talk of ecological destruction, you talk of climate change, you talk of the nuclear Armageddon—are they all not manifestations of our lovelessness? A thousand species getting extinct every passing day—is that not clear evidence that we are a loveless people? And if we are a loveless people, obviously, we are loveless in our relationships as well.

The husband and the wife—they are a loveless lot—and then there is rape. It requires a fundamental shift in consciousness to see that the husband is not the body, the wife is not the body, and the body is not something that is to be controlled by society. The body is to be controlled by consciousness—that which you really are.

I am not the body. I am my understanding. I am consciousness. And then who will control the body? Not the society, but consciousness. And if consciousness is to drive the body, then there is love—the possibility of love, at least.

We are a special species. We are a conscious species. We are a liberation-seeking species. Everything that we do, everything that we have, has to be for the sake of liberation.

In other species, sex is for the sake of reproduction. Sex is for the sake of reproduction, right? The cow and the bull, the male and the female wolf—they mate so that the cycle of the species can keep going. But that's not so in the case of human beings.

Human beings can do much better than animals, or they can do much worse than animals. Animals mate for the sake of reproduction. Human beings can fall much below animals, and they can mate for the sake of recreation. This falling involves rape as well. Rape, at least from the point of view of the rapist, is recreation, entertainment—something that will supply him with pleasure.

Or human beings can rise above animals and mate for the sake of liberation. Unfortunately, because we are not conscious people, our sex becomes just recreation.

Animals—Reproduction. Most human beings—Recreation. But if you are a conscious person, then even sex is for the sake of liberation. Liberation is not something that excludes sex. No, not at all. Liberation is something that includes choosing the right person for sex. Because if there is a man and a woman, it is quite possible that there would be physical intimacy. And physical intimacy brings all kinds of repercussions—mainly bondages. The moment you choose the wrong person, you're finished.

But if you can have the right partner in life, that can be the greatest blessing as well. And by life, I do not mean the entire life. Life is a flow. Our animalistic notions have to be challenged, and the lady in the case here deserves respect for doing exactly that.

I just wish that this case is able to inspire a lot of women—in fact, human beings—to look at themselves, their bodies, the social norms, and all their identities, the very purpose of their consciousness, in a fresh light.

Questioner: So, probably, the act of sex is not a problem, but the act of imagination of sex is a problem. And that, probably, is what I understand from this narration. That is the reason we see how Japan is suffering. And maybe I should not even take the name of a country, but it's the idea or the imagination of the act of sex that is probably creating a whole lot of, I think, psychological issues around it. Like, if you are having sex, that's not a problem. You just have the act of it. I don't know, maybe.

Acharya Prashant: That’s what. When you don't have the right purpose in life, sex becomes recreation.

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