Not All Men.
But always men.
A CNN investigation revealed an illicit website instructing men how to rape their wives received 62 million visits. On the site men shared tips, images and videos related to the abuse of women including how to drug and incapacitate them. This included Telegram channels with British men engaged in the same. This was visitation in one month. February. The shortest month.
If this was a website that recorded 62 million visits to find out how to rob a bank, how to drive a car into pedestrians, how to fly a plane into a building… those who own the website, those who visit, they’d be facing serious consequences. It would be terrorism. A crime so serious there are whole police teams dedicated to monitoring and uncovering, and dismantling these illicit and dangerous groups.
In legal terms, there is something called: ‘conspiracy to commit’, for a bank robbery it’s 12 months in jail. If you solicit, encourage, persuade, or endeavour to persuade, or propose to, any person to commit any murder – you can be liable to imprisonment for 25 years. Drugging women to rape them is conspiracy to commit: assault,rape, murder. 62 million visits puts it at a scale that is incomprehensible. It puts it beyond gender terrorism to a full-scale gender war.
As a woman I have tried to fathom this. What it means. It makes it hard to say ‘not all men’. Because clearly it’s a lot of men.
And they’re not going there by accident. They’re going there to see what other men are doing. They’re going there to learn. They’re going there to socialise the assault and rape of women. Men that women have married. Men that are trusted by the very women they drug and rape. It shocks us women to the core.
I try to imagine if the reverse had happened. If there were 62 million visits by women to a site where we showed videos of men being assaulted. Where we learnt how to drug men. How to harm them. How to humiliate them. Where we formed a covert sisterhood in our desire to commit sexual violence on someone who loved us.
And when men called us out we’d say. ‘Stop woman-shaming us’. We’d say ‘Not all women’.
And good women would do nothing. Because they’d feel vindicated by not drugging and raping men. That the absence of that behaviour suddenly made them virtuous. Where good women became good, just because they didn’t rape and assault men.
That’s the world women inhabit. We sat wide-eyed when we listened to the story of the remarkable Gisele Pelicot. The woman who waived her right to anonymity in a multiple rape case where her husband of 50 years drugged her and facilitated the rape and assault not just by him but by dozens of men. We thought that was an anomaly.
But it’s clearly not. 62 million visits in one month tells me it’s normalised behaviour. It’s been going on for some time. It’s ORGANISED. It’s not the drink in the club that’s been spiked by a stranger, but the cup of tea from the man you trust.
Every name on that website needs to be released. Every email needs to be published.
These men need to be charged. The owners of the website imprisoned.
Because women have a right to know if their brothers, fathers, boyfriends or husbands have conspired to commit a crime against them. Or if they already have.
To men who know this. How will you step into the light when so many men are lurking in the shadows? How will you call out violence? How will you drive change?
We’re not your mummies. We can’t fix you. We can’t save you. We can’t do this ugly work.
It’s yours. It’s the bleeding stain of the patriarchy.
When it comes to addressing this violent betrayal, it’s not just the perps.
It’s on all men.
Please step up. Somehow, despite the violence. The assault. The betrayal. The rape. Despite all this, we are still prepared to love you.
I think that’s fucking remarkable.
62 million reasons not to. Yet we still believe in you.
Show us that you’re worth it.
Mandy Nolan’s column has appeared in The Echo for almost 25 years. She is a writer, comedian and artist, and was the Greens cadidate at the past two elections.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
