When the Pride Roars / Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos with Marie-Louise McGuinness

 

When the Pride Roars

Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos

with Marie-Louise McGuinness

Tonight, I watched a movie about a producer accused of taking advantage of countless aspiring actresses. As I listened to multiple witness accounts, I felt guilt. I knew the story, we all did, but I had never acknowledged the victims’ pain and I was shocked to realise I had cultural and gender bias against women.


Back in 2017, I welcomed the #MeToo movement with mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I despise abusers and rapists. Yet there was always a doubt hovering in my mind about how far a young want-to-be actress might be willing to go to get a role. Who would meet a man with such a reputation in his hotel room? Why take so long to come forward?


Today, the same sentiments echo as hundreds of women are coming forward to say that the owner of a world-renowned retail establishment sexually abused them when they were young, working for the company or for him directly and now, when it looks as though there is little doubt of his culpability, I've heard men, in 2024, wonder if the women were jumping on the bandwagon for monetary gain rather than in an attempt to finally achieve a semblance of justice.


Objectively it is easy to see how a man of such wealth and influence would be difficult to say no to. He was the boss, who would you report him to, being a nineteen-year-old working in a stockroom? Who would listen to your voice when he held all your livelihoods in the lining of his pocket? But why is there automatic doubt placed on the women and their intentions when they come forward to speak decades after the event, when they are no longer cowed by his wealth and influence?


The same goes for the coaches or managers accused of abusing their athletes. Who could young girls or professional athletes turn to if their mentor, the man who got to pick the team, systematically took advantage, bullied and harassed them?


Maybe being French played a part in my refusal to fully take the women’s side—there were so many scandals, most hushed, dismissed, and forgotten. Politicians, producers, artists… Countless prominent men were accused again and again, yet walked out scot-free. Growing up in a wealthy town, I came across many daddy’s boys who assumed they could do as they pleased, and I lost track of the number of times I slapped their young cheeks so hard it left a mark. In the 90s, non seemed to mean very little to French men. Have things changed since then?


Last month, I came across a harrowing case, where a husband was accused of drugging his wife and inviting strangers to abuse her. It felt different and even more sordid somehow. Is there deeply rooted rot within French society?


It has now become clear that this was not a situation prevalent only in France, worldwide the culture has been to view women through a lens of their value to men, be it sexual or domestic.


Even in households with no overt abuse, women are often raised to tiptoe around the men in the house. We serve, modelling the traditional gender roles we were brought up with, even when contributing as much financially as our partners. As children, we remember being told not to gloat when we had good news, a good score in a test, a sporting accolade or, in fact, when we achieved anything. Did this result in women curbing the expression of their needs to avoid upsetting the patriarchal status quo?


Even now, women tend to be blamed for any sexist or abusive incident. Most will remember threading our keys through our fingers as a weapon when walking home alone, being told to wear longer skirts and conservative tops lest a man gets the wrong idea and can say that we asked for their unwelcome advances. If we dare to voice our displeasure; what are we seeking to gain? Is it that time of the month?


It sometimes feels as if we were not raised, but weakened, and told off if we wanted out of the chrysalis of gender expectation smothering us. Why study? Why go abroad? Isn’t a woman’s role to look after her parents, her husband, her children? Why are we secondary to others in our lives?


The indoctrination left a deep scar in our psyche. Worldwide, generation after generation of women accepted their fate; forced into marriages, dress codes to adhere to, ritual humiliation. All too often, women are muted, blinded, silenced.


We learned to mistrust any woman complaining or fighting back; they are the troublemakers. The ones trying to rebel were called hysterical and sent away, are called bad-tempered, hormonal, or emotional and frowned upon. Have women been gaslighted for generations?


This was notable in Ireland, where the Catholic Church ran homes for women and girls deemed ‘fallen’ or wayward. These places were often run as financially productive laundries where their prisoners worked without kindness or monetary recompense. Oftentimes they were taken there for becoming pregnant, as if that were a solo endeavour for which they should be punished. The most shocking thing is that the last Magdalene Laundry closed its doors in 1996. The horrors of such institutions are coming to light because the women now feel able to share their stories. They tell of forced adoptions and degradation at the hands of the religious leaders, many of them nuns. In one such home in Galway, a mass grave of women and infants was uncovered by an excavation in 2016/17. All buried without ceremony, many within a septic tank.

How was this allowed to happen? Where were the men and boys who made these girls and women pregnant? How were they punished? The truth is, they weren't. Even in cases of rape and incest, it was the women and young girls who suffered. They were the sinners.


Blame should rest on the abusers, not the victims.


I first heard about Afghanistan’s morality law this summer when my husband mentioned it. We had many a conversation on the subject, wondering how women could fight this, and whether the international community could or should get involved in domestic matters. Can real change be imposed from abroad or should it come from within? What can a woman do without the right to talk, to take a walk or shop on her own, to show her face? What can a woman do when she is denied the right to be and have a voice? I thought long and hard about how I would fight such a system, and my conclusion was a bleak one and flawed because, as always, I am biased. I am a European through and through and do not have sufficient knowledge or understanding of a culture I’ve only read about or viewed on TV but never experienced. It’s also flawed because it doesn’t take into consideration the doctrine in which these women are raised and the fact that they know no other reality. Sadly, the same goes for many other countries.


This month, though, I watched in awe as a brave young Iranian strolled on university grounds in her underwear. How she forced us all to see her. But what will become of her when she’s fighting alone?


Back in the 90s, I loved the concept of the internet; the possibilities, knowledge, communication, understanding would be endless—surely, this would benefit us all, create empathy. But now, witnessing what use we have made of it, I am so disappointed. In us. People. Why use such a powerful tool to hurt others, troll, and harass?

A few weeks ago, sexism and bullying reached a new level, when a man perverted the slogan ‘My body, my choice’ to ‘Your body, my choice’ on X/Twitter—Social media has made it so easy to spread hate while hiding behind an avatar of power for the weak. If sexual harassment and abuse are difficult subjects, abortion is just as sensitive. I don’t believe making that decision is ever simple. Each situation is unique and, as thus, deserves to be treated with care and respect. There is nuance that can be lost in blanket rules. This is illustrated in examples from countries where a ban on abortion has led to women being unable to access surgical intervention in cases where the fetus is no longer viable, such as a missed miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. How has it come to pass that women have become unable to access medical intervention to save their lives and despite the Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm', doctors could be prosecuted for interceding in such life or death situations? Let us just stick to the facts for a minute; a pregnancy happens inside a woman’s body, not a man’s. Therefore, should it not be the women who have the final say?


I always felt that, unlike men, women could not truly unite. Why is that? Is there something inherently wrong with how women see each other? It is often said that women, upon becoming single, tend to find themselves distanced from their coupled-up friends. Is there an air of competition amongst women that rears its ugly head when men are deemed a prize to be won? Were we raised to compete against one another?


My grandmother’s generation, the Great Generation, inspired me as a child and to this day—their down-to-earth attitude, their incredible fortitude, their resilience. They relied on their community; women helping one another, as family members as friends and as neighbours. They were not perfect; bitterness and jealousy hid in their shadows, but they had a sense of duty to the community that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. When did we lose that?


I believe women have never been weak. They have shown time and time again that they are lionesses, but unlike the fierce felines, they forgot that strength is in numbers; they forgot their prides and how to roar together. If we shouted loud enough, the men would have to listen, wouldn't they?


Imagine if women listened to the actresses, the employees, the athletes, the student, the victims, without casting doubt on their stories, their voices, their pain. Imagine if we put ourselves in their position, taking our own personal experiences into account? Imagine how nice the world could be if women had the same voices as men? Imagine the power of that roar!