Do you think women are angry? You’re right. Like Gisele Pelicot, we are furious

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The phrase “angry woman” is used as a kind of insult; spit out in the same breath as “angry feminist” or “goody-two-shoes” or “calm down, honey.” We should be ashamed of the accusation, embarrassed, intimidated. We should withdraw into ourselves and keep our mouths shut. Well, not anymore.

Angry woman? You bet. We are furious. I am personally a baseball bat to a glass window wild that in the past week alone we’ve seen headlines describing an incredibly brave woman – Gisele Pelicot – whose life as she knew it fell apart in 2020 when she discovered that her husband had been drugging her in her own home for years and inviting strangers to rape her, filming it – as “public revenge against men”. It’s not revenge for telling the truth. It’s bravery. It’s justice.

Her husband, Dominique Pelicot, 71, does not deny the charges, although the trial continues. Some (but not all) of the 50 other defendants do deny taking part in the alleged rapes – which were orchestrated by an “invitation” via a website, now closed.

Gisele, now 72, waived her right to anonymity in a show of defiance. She told the court in Avignon—now witness to the most unimaginable, horrific stories of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, the kind of detail that could easily be included in a (male-directed) torture porn plot—that she hoped her testimony would save other women from similar ordeals.

She has said that she pushed for a public trial in solidarity with other women who are not recognized as victims of sexual crimes. Listen, listen. Gisele Pelicot is not “just” a survivor. She is a hero. She speaks for angry women everywhere.

And there are many of us. Millions. We are outraged, this week alone, by the murder of Ugandan Olympic marathoner Rebecca Cheptegei, who died in her Kenyan home after being doused with gasoline, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend.

We are disgusted by the fact that she is certainly not the first – that yes, her status as an athlete could have brought her cause more attention, a justified outrage; but what about the hundreds and thousands of other women whose voices are not heard? Whose voices – as in Afghanistan – will now literally never be heard again, thanks to the oppressive, deeply misogynistic rule of fearful and pathetic men who have been given too much power.

What happened to Rebecca Cheptegei is a trauma. A devastating act of violence. But it is far from an isolated incident. In Kenya alone, femicide has increased by 50 percent in the past 10 years, a trend that specialist journalists have been reporting since January and that the rest of us have shamefully failed to highlight.

The BBC World Service’s gender and identity correspondent, Megha Mohan, who has has been investigating these cases for months and puts it this way: “These stories should be told before a famous woman is murdered.” She’s right.

We should all have the right to tell our stories. If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine: but I warn you, you’ve heard them before. Because what is being a woman if not the utterly banal and familiar stories of abuse?

Anecdotes, honed to the point of being “almost funny” (if they weren’t so utterly tragic): of exes who filmed us in bed without our consent; who abused us and called it “love”; who gave us the silent treatment when we dared to ask to be treated the way we deserved; who lied and cheated and (in the case of one former lover) created an entire double life in which he was “single” and had “moved away” when in fact he was living with his girlfriend the entire time. Yawn – I told you so. You’ve heard it all before.

Or take the stories of the women I know: many of them have been abused; some have been raped; all of them have been lied to. The men who forced them to have abortions so they wouldn’t be caught cheating; the ones with wives and girlfriends at home; the jealous and controlling; the ones who treat their partners like slaves; the ones who use their mental health as a weapon to get away with whatever they can.

I will never forget the famous man who put his hand up my skirt at the Baftas, or the man who groped my crotch as I walked down the street, visibly pregnant. Or the (multiple) men who showed me off when I was in my school uniform, aged 12 or 13. Abuse is so commonplace that I have reached a point where if a friend tells me that she have not When I’ve been groped by a stranger, that’s the only time I’m truly shocked.

An acknowledgement at this point: no one, it can be argued, needs another white woman to speak out about everyday injustices. We are already at a point of profound inequality: where certain voices are amplified and others are diminished; where the experiences of a few are somehow treated as “more important” or used as a “call to action” while others are left hanging, forgotten, and barely making headlines.

But what I can offer is this: an everyday expression of solidarity and a shared, tangible sense of anger. A commitment, even on a personal level, to not “stay still” and silent. To keep talking and shedding light on what women – all women – are overwhelmingly confronted with the hands of men. To imitate the brave and heroic actions of Gisele Pelicot.

And now that we’re hearing high-profile calls from the likes of Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, or Elon Musk and his pathetic plea for “high-status men” to rule the world (newsflash: they’re already doing it), it feels more important than ever to speak out. As writer Caroline Criado Perez put it in her newsletter this morning: “To (these) men, I have a question: why aren’t you talking about this?”

Yes, women are angry. The real question is: Why aren’t you?