• This Wednesday, March 8, marks Women's Rights Day as they are the first victims of sexual violence.
  • Every year in France, 94,000 women are victims of rape or attempted rape.
  • "She was raped," "she confessed to rape," etc. The vocabulary surrounding gender-based and sexual violence helps to disguise or minimize the reality of the facts.

When we talk about rape, it is often through the prism of numbers. 94,000 women are victims of rape or attempted rape every year in France. Nearly three rapes are committed every hour. Only 12% of victims file complaints. Less than a third of sexual violence cases are prosecuted. A litany of statistics that try to show the extent of a phenomenon often assimilated to a one-off drama. But what about words? Of these expressions, these constructions, these structures that we use without thinking about them to evoke sexual violence?

"She was raped", "she confessed to her rape", "the parking lot rapist", "she confessed to his sexual assault", etc. The expressions surrounding sexual violence are regularly questioned by feminist associations. "To say 'to be raped' is to add to the crime because in the expression 'to be raped', there is almost the idea of participation, connivance, intention," decrypts linguist Véronique Perry. If "she makes a coffee", it is indeed "she" who "does" the action.

He "told me, 'You confessed to your rape.' But I have nothing to hide."

Giulia Foïs, a journalist, wrote the book Je suis une sur deux about the rape she suffered. In her journey "to the after", the "words saved [her]," she explains. Emmanuelle Piet, president of the Feminist Collective Against Rape, helped her on this path by allowing her to "put the right words". "She told me, 'You didn't get raped, you had nothing to do with it. You were raped." That sentence took away a weight of ten tons," she recalls.

This formulation "makes it possible to reverse responsibility while the perpetrator is the rapist", abounds Emmanuel Piet who adds that it is a mechanism "quite specific to rape". By speaking publicly about the rape she suffered, Giulia Foïs, was particularly exposed to this vocabulary. "One day, a journalist said to me, 'Giulia, you have decided to confess to your rape.' But I have nothing to confess. I didn't do anything. I have nothing to hide," recalls the journalist. To speak of confession or confession in such a context "is to imply that having been raped is an eternal stigma," notes Véronique Perry. The linguist adds that these terms are "always related to stigmatization", as in the equally inappropriate expression "confessing one's homosexuality". "We must stop blaming women in part. Whatever you have done, you are never responsible for having been raped, "says Emmanuelle Piet.

The "trivialization of evil"

Beyond the reversal of guilt, the vocabulary of sexual violence also often masks the facts. In the media, some cases are dubbed such as the "trial of the turning", which evoked gang rapes of two underage girls, or the "parking lot rapist", which referred to a man who committed at least eighteen rapes. "We talk about 'turning' but it's not a game [in ping-pong, we talk about a turning point when several players exchange balls while running around the table], it's a gang rape. We talk about a 'car park rapist', but it is not car parks that he rapes," says Emmanuelle Piet, who adds that the Feminist Collective against Rape works on the vocabulary surrounding sexual violence and has made recommendations since 1986.

"This trivialization of vocabulary is a trivialization of evil, as Hannah Arendt [an American philosopher] said," says linguist Véronique Perry. "These words matter because minimizing the crime or hiding the victims always leads to the same thing: protecting the aggressors," says Emmanuelle Piet. For the president of the Feminist Collective Against Rape, using words like "perpetrator" rather than "aggressor" or "pedophile" rather than "child rapist" minimizes the facts. "There is a glamorization of rape at all levels in the choice of vocabulary" but also in culture such as "films or advertisements," denounces Giulia Foïs. This is called rape culture.

The woman, this "object"

"Every word is a prejudice," wrote the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. And the "glamorization of rape" is already lurking in the vocabulary of sex. They say "shoot a shot", "hit a woman", "smash a woman". Expressions that feed on military vocabulary. A violent, warlike vocabulary. A vocabulary of conquest. In this term, the woman is never the subject. It is (almost) never she who "takes" the other, who "fucks" the other, who "does" the action. As if, in heteronormative sexuality, the woman were only an object that one possesses. We "make a woman", as we "make a McDonald's". And it's a gender issue. Because if men are sometimes also raped, it is in infinitely smaller proportions that women and rapists are 98% of men. "In these words, there is already a form of legitimization of rape," denounces linguist Véronique Perry. Sexuality and rape obviously have nothing in common. We are talking about violence. But in the context of rape, "the scene of the crime and the weapon of the crime is sex," says Giulia Foïs. And rape is a crime that dispossesses victims.

"From subject, one becomes object. You have to accept that you have been reduced to the state of an object," explains the journalist. However, in everyday sexual vocabulary, the woman is already verbally reduced to the state of object. And it's very much rooted in social rituals. "In the United States, we talk about 'date rape', it's a consumerist ritualization: I pay you the restaurant so you sleep with me. It's a tacit contract that pushes women to give in," says Véronique Perry. "Women are only objects, it is the culture of rape," summarizes Emmanuel Piet. Debating the right words, the right terminology, the right verbalization of this sexual violence is often perceived as a secondary topic.

Our dossier on sexual violence

Sometimes even laughable. "We will always find people to say that we are fighting the wrong fight," says Giulia Foïs. "But as long as we say 'she was raped', we will reinforce the collective unconscious in the idea that she is partly guilty. We have to be very careful about the words we use to finally arrive at a fair representation. Rape is violence and mass violence. And with 0.6% of convictions, the fight is being waged at all levels," concludes the author of Je suis une sur deux.

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  • Sexual violence