It seems that the Pelicot case has been an inspiration for some.
European lawmakers have voted in favor of defining sex without active consent as rape, marking a historic step for women’s rights and survivors of sexual violence in the EU.
The European Parliament’s resolution, passed on Tuesday by an overwhelming margin, urges all EU member states to adopt an only “yes means yes” legal standard for consent while recognizing that a “yes” obtained through coercion is not valid.
The move seeks to replace the traditional “no means no” principle, which activists argue fails to protect victims by not requiring explicit, affirmative consent for sexual acts.
In other words “Hey, she didn’t say no” will no longer be the standard.
Dutch MEP Anna Strolenberg said that “a society that truly respects women does not ask whether they resisted enough, it asks whether they freely agreed.” She told CNN, “No one can consent while asleep, drugged, unaware or paralyzed by fear. Any law that leaves room for this doubt, leaves room for violence,”
At present, rape laws in Europe generally follow one of two models – consent-based, which considers rape a sexual act without consent, or coercion-based, which requires a sexual act to have taken place by force. Twenty-one of the EU’s 27 member states have adopted consent-based rape laws, according to Amnesty International, and in some, including Sweden and Spain, the law follows the “yes means yes” approach. Meanwhile, in countries like Hungary and Latvia, the law generally requires proof of use of force, threats, or coercion.
Which, oddly enough, is not always easy to provide – in fact it’s almost never easy to provide. Sorry, bitches.
In October 2025, France, after years of opposition, updated its criminal code to explicitly define rape as any sexual act committed without consent. The move followed a public reckoning in the wake of the landmark Pelicot trial, where 50 men were charged with the mass rape of Gisèle Pelicot, whose ex-husband Dominique Pelicot drugged her, and organized her rapes with men he met online.
A series of similar, high-profile drug-facilitated sexual abuse (DFSA) cases have also come to light in Europe. In December, a German man was found guilty of drugging and raping his unconscious wife over several years and filming the assaults.
While European lawmakers have historically struggled to agree on a unified, EU-wide definition of rape, Irish MEP Maria Walsh said that CNN’s recent reporting on an online “rape academy” has accelerated the debate.
CNN’s discovery of a Telegram group, where nearly 1,000 men shared step-by-step instructions on drugging and assaulting their partners, and which was part of a wider network of non-consensual image sharing, underlines “why a European-wide response is so badly needed” when it comes to prosecuting sexual assault, Walsh said.
Sigh. It’s so depressing to keep learning that so many men aren’t content with plain old-fashioned sex, but instead want to spice it up by degrading the women involved. You know? I mean…if you despise your wife that much why is she your wife at all? I just don’t get it. Why live with someone you hate enough to watch her being gangraped by a bunch of strangers at your behest?
Leave a Reply