OK, ths only popped up on the BBC website recently because of the trial. Not heard it mentioned on the TV news because I imagine Auntie Beeb thinks it might be too triggering or distressing for a big chunk of the broad BBC demgraphic.

There are no excuses for what was done, but it is just one more of the myriad shitty things people have been doing to other people for millennia. Nothing unique or particularly shocking about the thing itself. What's new is it actually being publicly admitted to have happened at all. 50 years ago, Pelicot, if found out, would have been quietly locked up in a madhouse and his wife confined in a convent or sanatorium. Scadal was to be avoided then.

As to protection, women have been making it clear to men since the 1960s that they neither want nor need our protection. To the extent that simple acts of courtesy such as opening doors or offering seats on public transport are now treated as mortal insults. You had your part in making the bed Gisele Pelicot lay drugged in. After spurning our protection and standing on your own feet for 60 years, you shouldn't be begging for it now. After all, we cant go denying you your agency, can we? Your absolute right to defend yourselves without patriarchalist protection via displays of toxic masculinity?

Final note, there are great many men who would rather take their chances with the bear. You know where you stand with a bear. The same can never be said of a human, of either sex!