Gisèle Pelicot has rewritten her story – and electrified women all over the world. But what about men? | Rebecca Solnit

Gisèle Pelicot's husband and 51 other men were found guilty of drugging her and offering her up online to be raped while she was unconscious.

The conviction of her rapists and the husband who orchestrated them is justice of a sort, but it could all have taken place in the context of the same old story: the shaming, blaming and bullying of a woman in court.

She made two key decisions that transformed her into a feminist hero in France and around the world.

Gisèle Pelicot ’s heroic boldness in facing the horrific things that had happened to her in rejecting shame, in standing up for her rights is admirable.

France is a country where accusations of male sexual crimes have long been ignored; the accused excused or even celebrated by conflating being libertine with being liberated.