The right to return. The right to exist in a space that was rightfully yours, from which you were removed by force. A just and powerful concept for displaced people, for refugees whom political violence tore from their homeland. I never imagined, for a single second, that I would encounter it applied to rapists. Yet I did, while reading people's reactions after the second conviction of a Moroccan artist charged with rape. What does a rapist return to, exactly? Rape? The right concept should have been rehabilitation. And even then, I struggle to extend it to a rapist. Some of you might find it hard to believe that people like me exist, people who refuse to extend that grace to rapists. Yet here we are.
I have witnessed since childhood perpetrators receiving more empathy than victims, excuses easily found for the guilty and charges doubled for the innocent. Correcting that imbalance is where I stand. I am fully convinced that justice for rapists must go beyond the courtroom, that society itself has a responsibility to shut the door.
Right after the second conviction, thousands of fans, celebrities, ordinary citizens, without looking up a single fact, without reading the confessions, the testimonies, the documented history, dove headfirst into a rape culture-empowered discourse. That, paired with hundreds of fan accounts repeating the same talking points and conspiracy theories endlessly. Everything gets instrumentalized: patriotism, religion, status. Everything is permitted in the court of public opinion. And everything is a matter of gender, class, power, and money.
Celebrities have everything working for them, in both the court of law and in society. Money for the best lawyers. PR teams working overtime to clean their image and smear their victims. Enough power to secure the support of fellow celebrities and, by extension, their platforms. Easier access to media. These advantages stack on top of a patriarchal system already crushing victims before the extra weight is even added. The victims, on the other hand, only have us; a small community with enough basic empathy to grasp the horror, enough conscience to dig into the facts and search for truth, enough will to offer what little support we can, and a voice not nearly loud enough to match the roar of money and power.
Defending a single victim is about defending all victims. It is a burning sense of justice and a defense mechanism against systematic and systemic oppression. Defending a rapist, on the other hand, is an act of fanaticism, a projection onto society of one's own potential to oppress, once the means are available. A majority of the arguments pushed are either trying to deny the concept of consent or what it "might" mean to them in the given circumstances, or accusing the victims of going to court for money and fame while simultaneously participating in their smear campaign. Funny how religion and traditions get recruited to construct that argument.
So, as the oppressed have always done, society should lean toward the quiet force of non-action. We revolt as a working class through strikes, as consumers through boycott. We revolt against rapists and rape culture in the exact same manner. We stop growing their platforms, entertaining their nonchalance, interacting with their content, buying their products. As for their defenders: those who knowingly choose complicity over facts deserve the same withdrawal. Presence, when it amplifies crime, is no longer neutral.
Withdrawal is the only moral response. It sends a clear message: society refuses to normalize such actions, will not turn its back on victims, and will protect what remains of their lives by refusing a platform to their rapists, offering them, instead, the space to heal.
A question someone posed to me sat on my mind for a while: what if a rapist acknowledged their wrongdoings and used their platform as a redemption arc? What if it served to speak directly about rape culture and fight against it? My answer, as some of you might have guessed, is that the best redemption arc is to retreat. Guilt and redemption are supposed to be internal, private work. Not a performance.
A rapist already stole life from their victims. Stealing the victims' voices to appropriate them as their own narrative is not the redemption people think it is. The audacity to silence someone twice, and frame the second silencing as help, is breathtaking; serving in both cases their pleasure and ego. The first forcefully and privately. The second, when performance is needed to appeal to public opinion, loudly. The best thing a rapist could have done is respect consent and others' bodies to begin with. The second best is to serve their punishment and carry their shame quietly.
Cancel culture is not a mob action to threaten people with. It is a simple act of activism for when institutions, media, and celebrities fall short of their principles. I am aware that it has misfired before, that the court of public opinion has, at times, moved faster than truth. But this is not that. Two convictions, documented confessions, recorded testimonies. Withdrawal here is not a rush to judgment. It is a response to one. And bringing the right of return into this discourse disrespects both rape victims and refugees alike. You have the right to return to your land, and the obligation to respect every living soul in it, if you want to be included in its society.