Essay: What Does a Rapist Look Like?

Gisêle Pelicot, centre left, leaves the Avignon courthouse with her sons, David, left, Florian centre background, and her lawyer Stephane Babonneau, right, in Avignon, southern France, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP photo: Lewis Joly)

tw: rape

What does a rapist look like?

One of the most harrowing rape scenes I’ve seen in a television show lasted just a few minutes. The rape of Dr. Melfi in The Sopranos was in the stairwell of a parking lot. We did not see what her rapist looked like and the anonymity, speed and efficiency with which he attacked her made his violence even more horrific.

The bruises on her face and her hypervigilance during a session with Tony made clear what a victim of rape looks like. But her rapist was anonymous perp in a stairwell.

We know what a victim/survivor looks like. A popular refrain to counter men’s violence–be it verbal sexual harassment or sexual assault–asks “What if it was your mother/sister/daughter?” It’s an appeal to men that’s meant to kick in their protective instinct. And it makes it easy to see that the victim can be any woman you know. She is everywoman.

We joke that men discover feminism when they have a daughter. But why do I need to establish my relation to a man in order to be safe from another man?

It’s an appeal to men’s sense of protection for their female relatives as a way of reminding them their victim is someone else’s mother/sister/daughter. We joke that men discover feminism when they have a daughter. But why do I need to establish my relation to a man in order to be safe from another man?

What we should be doing instead is remind everyone that a rapist could be your father/brother/son. That would make it easy to see that a rapist could be any man they know. He is everyman.