The Silence of the 'Good' Man

WHY YOUR SOCIAL COMFORT IS KILLING US

- BY RIHAAB MOWLANA

Last week, I posted a short, frustrated note on my personal social media account. I didn't expect much.

We have been screaming into the digital void for years, and usually, the void just stares back. But as the comments and direct messages began to roll in, and as I watched the news cycle break open the global rot of internet-enabled sexual violence, I realized we are no longer just talking about bad apples. We are talking about an orchard that has been meticulously tended to by the silence of good men.

The world was first forced to look at this in 2024 during the trial of Dominique Pelicot in France. We watched in horror as a 71-year-old man admitted to drugging his wife, Gisèle, into a state of comatose sleep so that strangers-recruited from a chatroom titled "Without Her Knowledge"-could rape her. She was violated multiple times by over 50 different men. But while the website he used was shut down, the behavior did not disappear. It merely migrated.

THE CURRICULUM OF CRUELTY

When we first heard about Dominique Pelicot, we wanted to believe he was an anomaly; a monster from a different era. But the most haunting question hanging over the trial isn't just how he did it, but who he recruited to help him. When the co-defendants stood in that French courtroom, the world looked for monsters. Instead, we saw a local journalist, a forklift driver, an electrician, and a nurse. Most were fathers; many were married.

When women talk about the fear of men, the immediate response from many is defensive: "Not all men." But "not all men" is a statistical shield used to avoid a hard truth. The math of our reality is that men are the greatest living threat to women and children.

This reminds us of the hard truth women have to face: How do we know who the good man is? The answer is that we don't. We can't.